To Grieve or Not to Grieve?


To Grieve or Not to Grieve?
Once that final decision has been made to cut the cord of a relationship...

Pinkee here~ Once that final decision has been made to cut the cord of a relationship, whether it was mainly your idea or the other person’s, you will have feelings that need to be felt and expressed.  You do have a choice.  You can choose to grieve or not.

Basically there are two types of not grieving.  The first type may look like grieving, but it’s really not. It’s drama.  I’ll give you an extreme example of this type of non-grieving.  When I used to work with homeless people, there was an elderly man at the shelter I visited.  He used to drink all day every day.  At times he would break down and tell me that he HAD to drink because he’d lost his dear wife of many years.  She had died.  He would cry at these times, so it looked a bit like grieving.  But it wasn’t.  It was getting drunk, thus avoiding having to ever face his grief.  What’s the difference between real grieving and what he was doing?  Drama.  He was feeling so sorry for himself that rather than actually feeling his pure feelings and allowing them to pass, he just perpetuated them by adding that drop of drama into the mix. This kind of “grieving” takes on a life of its own.  You’ve probably seen these types. They cry about losses that happened up to fifty years ago.  This type of suffering can go on indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of one’s life.  Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?
The second  type of non-grieving is probably very familiar to you.  It’s when you break up with your loved one, call a friend or two, say some unflattering thing about your ex, and suggest you go out drinking, after which you may or may not have a one night stand. This one night stand may or may not turn into another relationship.  But either way, you will eventually get into one, seeming to skip over your grief.  The key word is “seeming”.

What would happen should you choose not to grieve?   (Grief is grief, by the way.  I write abo ut relationships generally but all that I’m saying applies to your dead cat, mother, or the fact that you got fired from your job.)  Usually one of two things.