Emotions following the loss of a partner

Losing your partner means losing a loved one, but it often also means seeing a very large part of your life change suddenly.

It is not just that someone is missing. You may miss the person you used to talk to at the end of the day, with whom you made decisions, shared habits, responsibilities, worries and plans. The way you live in your home, spend your free time, imagine the future and even think about yourself may change.

This is why the emotions following the loss of a partner can be particularly intense, changeable and, at times, difficult to understand.

Sadness, anger, fear, longing, guilt, loneliness, relief and disbelief may all occur together or alternate over time. There may be days when grief seems to take over everything and others when, perhaps unexpectedly, you manage to laugh, work or take an interest in something.

There is not necessarily any contradiction in these fluctuations.

Grief does not follow an orderly emotional sequence that is the same for everyone. Rather, it is a process of adapting to a profoundly changed reality, in which different emotions may emerge at different times and take on different meanings.

Why the loss of a partner can be so deeply affecting

Every bereavement is unique, and there is no hierarchy of losses. The death of a partner, however, has certain distinctive features because a relationship as a couple tends to be interwoven with numerous aspects of daily life and identity.

Over time, two people build up routines, shared language, memories, roles and mutual expectations. Even many seemingly insignificant gestures become part of a shared framework: going shopping, choosing what to eat, sharing stories, organising a trip, complaining about a difficult day, deciding what to do at the weekend.

Contemporary research on grief highlights just how deeply attachment bonds are embedded in our emotional systems and in the way the brain organises expectations regarding the presence of significant others. After a death, we know rationally that that person will not return, whilst many automatic behaviours built up over years of relationship continue, at least initially, to function as if that person were still part of our world.

It can therefore happen that, for a moment, we think of telling our partner something, look for them when entering a room, or feel the urge to send them a message.

These are fleeting moments in which the new reality clashes with a relationship which, deep down, has a history far longer than the time they have been gone.

The sadness and pain of loss

Sadness is probably the emotion we most immediately associate with bereavement, but even this word can describe very different experiences.

It can be an intense, almost physical pain. It can manifest itself through tears or as a quieter sense of emptiness. It can strike suddenly when looking at a photograph, listening to a song or passing by a familiar place.

Sometimes, however, it surfaces in the most ordinary of situations. An empty chair. One side of the bed that is no longer occupied. An item in the supermarket that you used to buy for two. A television programme you used to watch together.

These are seemingly small moments, but they can bring something enormous into sharp relief: daily life goes on, whilst the person with whom you shared it is no longer there.

This sense of loss can therefore resurface many times, even long afterwards. This does not necessarily mean you have taken a step backwards in your healing journey. Grief can come in waves: what changes over time is not necessarily the possibility of still feeling grief, but its frequency, intensity, familiarity and the way that experience fits into one’s life.

Nostalgia: still longing for the other person’s presence

Alongside sadness, there can be a strong sense of nostalgia.

It is not just about the great moments shared together. Often, it is the most ordinary things that are missed: a voice coming from the next room, a particular way of laughing, a phone call, a joke that only that person would have understood.

In the grieving process, there can be a genuine longing for the other person’s presence – what is often referred to in international literature as ‘yearning’.

From the perspective of attachment theory, this search for the loved one is understandable. Our brain has learnt over the years that that person existed and that we could reach them. After death, it must gradually come to terms with a different reality.

For this reason, nostalgia need not necessarily be fought against.

Over time, it can even become one of the ways in which the relationship with the deceased continues to hold a place in one’s own story.

Anger: directed at someone else, at oneself, at what has happened

Anger can be the most surprising of all.

You might feel angry with the doctors because they were unable to save your partner. With other family members because they seem to have gone back to their own lives too quickly. With friends who don’t ring often enough or who say things that come across as superficial.

You may feel angry at life, at God, at fate. And, sometimes, even at the person who has died.

“Why did you leave me here?”

It is a phrase that may seem irrational, especially when the death was in no way dependent on the other person’s will. But emotions do not necessarily follow logic.

Anger can also be an expression of protest against something we didn’t want to happen.

In some cases, moreover, the relationship prior to death was already fraught with conflict, disappointment or unresolved issues. Death does not automatically erase that history. It is possible to miss someone whilst still feeling angry with them.

Guilt and thoughts about what we could have done

After the death of a partner, difficult questions may arise.

• “Could I have realised sooner?”
• “Should I have insisted that they went for that check-up?”
• “Why did I respond to them like that that evening?”
• “Could I have done things differently?”

Your mind may keep returning to those final days, to the decisions you made, and to the conversations you had – or didn’t have. Sometimes it conjures up alternative scenarios in which a different choice on your part would have led to a different outcome.

These ‘if only…’, ‘I should have…’ or ‘I could have…’ thoughts are well-documented in grief research and can fuel rumination, particularly when we are constantly searching for a definitive answer to something that can no longer be changed.

Of course, there are situations in which a person may have genuine regrets. But feeling guilty does not automatically prove that one is actually responsible.

Sometimes guilt is also the mind’s attempt to attribute a controllable cause to something that has confronted us with our own powerlessness.

Fear and anxiety following a loss

The death of a partner can also profoundly alter one’s sense of security. Someone who was part of one’s life and seemed destined to be there tomorrow is suddenly gone. This can make the world seem less predictable.

It can heighten the fear that something might happen to your children or other loved ones too. Some people become more attuned to their body’s signals, fear falling ill or interpret minor physical symptoms with greater concern.

Others experience a more existential anxiety: if this has happened, what else might happen?

Anxiety and grief can therefore become intertwined, and it is not unusual for concerns about health, death or the possibility of losing other important people to increase following a loss. Clinical literature on grief also describes this heightened sensitivity to loss and health as one of the possible experiences following a significant death.

Loneliness is not just about being alone

The loss of a partner can bring with it a very particular form of loneliness during the grieving process.

It does not necessarily depend on the number of people around us. One may have a supportive family, helpful friends and loving children, and yet still feel deeply alone. This is because the person who is missing occupied a specific place in one’s life. Others may offer comfort, but they cannot simply replace that relationship.

Then there is a loneliness linked to the experience itself. After a few weeks or months, those around us may gradually return to their own lives. For those who have lost a partner, however, many of the consequences of the loss may only be becoming apparent at that very moment.

Others see a person who is slowly starting to do certain things again. The bereaved, however, may still feel the full force of everything that has changed.

Relief can also be part of the grieving process

Then there is an emotion that is spoken of much less: relief.

It can arise particularly when death follows a long illness, a period of intense suffering, or months and years of caregiving. One might feel relief because one’s partner is no longer suffering. Or because a period has come to an end in which every day was marked by treatments, appointments, emergencies, fear and constant vigilance.

This feeling can immediately trigger a sense of guilt: ‘If I loved them, how can I feel relieved?’

But the two experiences are not mutually exclusive.

One can deeply wish that a person were still alive and, at the same time, feel relieved that their suffering has ended. In clinical literature on grief, relief and guilt are in fact described as among the many emotions that can coexist following a loss.

Relief does not measure how much we loved someone. It reflects one aspect of the situation we have been through.

When our view of ourselves changes too

The death of a partner is not just about what we have lost outside ourselves. It can also call into question part of our identity.

For years, we may have been ‘us’. A couple.

Two people who made decisions together, were invited out together, and made plans together.

After their death, a question may arise that is difficult to put into words: ‘Who am I now?’

There’s no need to find an answer straight away.

Identity isn’t simply rebuilt by replacing what has been lost. It can take time to understand which parts of one’s life remain, which change, and which may eventually take on new forms.

This is another reason why grief can be seen not merely as a series of emotions to be worked through, but as a broader process of reorganising one’s life following a loss.

Emotions do not occur in any particular order

Contemporary understandings of grief have largely moved beyond the idea that everyone must go through a universal sequence of stages. People’s journeys are much more varied and depend on the individual, the relationship, the circumstances of the death, the resources available and many other factors.

You might feel anger today and nostalgia tomorrow. You might feel relatively calm in the morning and deeply sad in the evening. This does not necessarily mean you are taking a step backwards. Grief is not a straight line.

When we experience something painful, it is understandable to immediately seek a way to make it stop, but not all the emotions that accompany grief are problems to be eliminated. Sometimes they simply need to be acknowledged first and foremost.

Putting a name to what we’re feeling can help us distinguish between experiences that initially seemed to form a single, indistinct mass.

• “I miss them.”
• “I’m angry.”
• “I’m scared.”
• “I feel guilty.”
• “I managed to feel OK for a few hours today.”

There’s no need to immediately turn each of these sentences into something else. An important principle in contemporary grief work is precisely to create space for grief and emotional complexity without automatically trying to erase or correct them.

When it may be helpful to seek help

Experiencing intense emotions following the death of a partner does not automatically mean you have a psychological problem.

Grief can be very painful without necessarily being an illness.

However, there are situations in which it may be helpful to seek professional help.

For example, when the distress seems almost unbearable over time, when it becomes very difficult to take care of one’s basic daily needs, when anxiety, guilt or rumination become pervasive, or when thoughts of death arise or there is a feeling of being unable to keep oneself safe.

Asking for help does not mean that there is a specific timeframe within which you should have ‘got over’ your grief.

It means recognising that, at that moment, it may be helpful not to face what is happening on your own.

On inLutto.it, you’ll also find a guide dedicated to counselling and psychotherapy during bereavement, to help you better understand when it might be helpful to seek professional help and what forms of support may be available.

Learning to live with a presence that has become an absence

Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of losing a partner is precisely this: the person is no longer physically present, but the relationship does not disappear at the same time.

Memories, habits, words, places, objects, ways of thinking and parts of ourselves that were shaped within that relationship remain.

The process of grieving does not necessarily involve erasing this bond.

Rather, over time and in ways that differ for each individual, it involves coming to terms with a reality in which that person is no longer physically present and, at the same time, continues to have a place in one’s own story.

This is also why emotions can be so numerous and contradictory.

They do not merely recount a death.

They tell the story of a bond, its absence, and the difficult process through which life slowly seeks a new way of organising itself around what has happened.