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Will A New Relationship Take Away The Pain?

Will A New Relationship Take Away The Pain? 

After one of my very first workshops a woman walked up to me and asked me the following question, “Will a new relationship make the pain go away?” She shared that her husband had died unexpectedly a few months before and that she was looking for a way out of the pain – and that finding someone new to love – sounded exciting and like it might work.

Over the years, I have been asked this same question so many times that I have lost count.  And not just from people who have lost their spouse or partner.  I’ve been asked this question by people who have experienced the death of a child or other family member…  And I get it.  It’s normal to wonder how to make the pain go away.  Unfortunately, a new relationship is not how the pain goes away.  Oh that it was that easy.  The bottom line is that jumping into a new relationship is only a diversion from doing the work of grieving and healing.  And unresolved grief pain will come back and bite you in the behind and contaminate your new relationship.

Walking Through The Pain  

Walking through the pain is how healing happens.  Because the pain of grief is not something that you can go over or under or around or run ahead of…  The only way to resolve this pain is to walk through it.  This is called Grief Work.  Grief Work refers to the tasks and processes that you must complete in order to resolve your grief.  In other words, grief work is the emotional and mental process of working through painful grief emotions, unwanted role and responsibility changes, and all the secondary loss and unwanted change brought about the death…  This is a process that is filled with many healing transitions and it’s also a part of the process of integration and acceptance of the death into every cell in your body and your ongoing life story.

Other Diversions

The pain will not go away if you self medicate with recreational/prescription drugs, alcohol, sex, food or excessive spending.  Prescription drugs are necessary and helpful in some cases.  However, drugs need to be taken as directed by a physician.  If you choose to numb your pain with drugs or alcohol to the point that you are not able to function, you need to understand that when you discontinue using, you will be starting your grief work at the point that you were at when you started using.  In other words, numbing the pain does not eliminate the need to do your grief work.  Relapsing is also possible for some people.

Back To A New Relationship 

Dating or a new relationship is not evidence that healing has taken place.  Because a new partner or multiple partners will not eliminate the pain of grief.  This is high risk behavior that many times results in sexual transmitted disease.  And the high from sex can be addicting, but only in the moment.  Your heart is broken.  You need to heal.  Additionally, a new relationship before you are ready, can leave you with more grief to deal with and work through if it doesn’t work out.

The Good News

If a new relationship is in your future, you will be healed and ready for it.   In fact, most have us have found that our new relationship happens when we are content and happy by ourself with ourselves.  Give yourself time to heal.  Get yourself through every holiday and special day and the anniversary of the death.  Every first.  Because you need to find out who you are on these days without your loved.  Waiting two years is even better.  That being said.  It’s not about how much time has gone by since the death – it’s about how much healing has happened.  Finding a therapist who specializes in grief and loss can be very helpful.

Check out What Normal Grief Is Not in our book, Grieving Forward: Death Happened, Now What? starting on page 39…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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