Grieving Someone You Had a Complicated Relationship With

Grief is already complicated. But grieving someone you had a difficult relationship with can bring up feelings you weren't expecting.

Maybe you loved them, but you were also angry with them.

Maybe you hadn't spoken in a while.

Maybe there were things that happened between you that you never really got over.

Or maybe you always thought there would be more time to figure it out.

Then they died.

And suddenly there is no more time.

You can love someone and still be angry with them

I think sometimes we expect death to erase everything complicated about a relationship.

It doesn't.

If someone hurt you while they were alive, that hurt doesn't disappear because they died.

If you were angry with them, you may still be angry.

If you were disappointed in them, you may still feel disappointed.

And at the same time, you can miss them terribly.

That can be confusing.

One day you may be devastated. Another day you may feel angry. You might even feel relief and then immediately feel guilty for feeling relieved.

None of those feelings cancel out the others.

You don't have to choose one.

Sometimes you're grieving what you never got

This can be one of the hardest parts of losing someone when the relationship was complicated.

You're not only grieving the person.

You may also be grieving the relationship you kept hoping you would eventually have with them.

Maybe you thought they would change.

Maybe you thought you would change.

Maybe you imagined that eventually you would sit down and talk about what happened.

Maybe you were still waiting for an apology.

Or maybe there were things you wanted to say but never did.

When someone is alive, there is always the possibility that something could be different.

After they die, that possibility is gone too.

And sometimes that is its own kind of grief.

Other people may not understand your grief

This can make an already complicated loss feel even lonelier.

People may know that the relationship was difficult and assume you shouldn't be grieving this much.

Or they may only talk about the good things and leave you feeling like there isn't room to talk about what was actually true.

You might even start questioning your own grief.

Why am I this upset when we weren't even close anymore?

Why do I miss someone I was so angry with?

Why am I still thinking about things that happened years ago?

Because relationships don't become simple just because they end.

And neither does grief.

You don't have to rewrite the relationship

You don't have to pretend everything was good in order to grieve someone.

You don't have to forgive things you aren't ready to forgive.

You don't have to forget what happened.

And you don't have to feel guilty because your grief looks different from someone else's.

You can love someone and acknowledge that they hurt you.

You can miss someone and still wish they had been different.

You can grieve the person you lost and the relationship you never got to have.

Both can be true.

Maybe part of grieving someone you had a complicated relationship with is allowing yourself to stop trying to make the relationship simpler than it actually was.

You get to grieve the whole thing.