Coping with Grief as a Couple
Many events in life cause stress, and one of those events is loss. Loss affects us in profound ways, and we can’t always anticipate how we’ll respond to it. Grief and loss are inevitable on this side of heaven, and as a fact of life, that means we need to be equipped to cope well with it. Whether you are single or in a committed relationship with someone, coping with grief is a useful skill that we need to nurture. Coping with grief requires understanding what it is, how it functions, and how it affects individuals. When you are in a relationship with another person and you experience a joint loss, you need to understand how both you and your partner are coping. The stress of grief can affect how you relate to each other. It’s possible for grief and your response to it to damage your relationship. Understanding Grief Grief is the emotional and psychological response to loss of any kind. Grief can be intense, disrupting how you think and function in daily life. It stirs up many complex emotions such as sadness, regret, anger, peace, and weariness. Grief is brought on by many things, including bereavement through the death of a loved one or family pet, the termination of a relationship, betrayal, or the loss of a cherished goal or dream, for example. What makes one person grieve might not affect another person at all. One’s response to loss will depend on many things, including the nature of the relationship, one’s personality, the nature of the loss, as well as what caused it, and the mental and emotional resources one has to deal with the loss. Grief is often explained as unfolding in five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. These stages depict what many people [...]
