There’s something both comforting and haunting about seeing someone who isn’t prone to crying start to sob in front of you.
It’s a sign they’re comfortable enough in your relationship to be vulnerable – but also that something is so wrong, their emotional wall has broken down. In this case, my partner had just found out that his estranged wife had taken her own life.
I’d first started dating Mitchell* just a few months prior. After meeting on Tinder, I had my first ever ‘traditional’ dinner date with him and it wasn’t long before I was heading over to his place every evening after work.
He was attentive and caring, finding my Spotify playlists to play whenever I was over, buying my favourite foods, preparing coffee in the morning when I had an early shift. Before long, I was in a blissful bubble of love.
He’d mentioned his wife was apparently struggling to move on after their break-up and he’d sometimes look troubled when scrolling through his phone before mentioning that she’d been in touch. I assumed that, eventually, she would be out of his life. I never thought it would be quite like this.
In the hours following the news of her death, I realised I was completely out of my depth. I hadn’t really experienced death before – I’d never been to a funeral. Now here it was, right in front of me, and it was about to consume my relationship.
I listened as Mitchell asked rhetorical questions about whether she’d been in pain, or whether he could have done more. As much as I tried to be reassuring, nothing could soothe him.
We talked for hours, night after night – in much the same way as we did when we were first dating – while we made preparations to travel abroad and meet with the coroner. I could hear how full of love their relationship had been. He told me a lot about their time together, how their relationship had blossomed and how much he had supported her, never seeing it as a sacrifice but a chance to see her do better.
Often I could feel myself falling further in love with him. At other times, it was excruciating to hear intimate details about their marriage and I had selfish thoughts like: ‘I hate that our relationship is probably going to end because of her’.
I started resenting her. How dare she deal him this life-long blow by leaving the world like this? Hadn’t she known this would take our relationship to an impossible place? Why couldn’t she have taken the help she was offered?
One night, after days of bottling my feelings up, I lashed out, having a go at no one in particular. I felt terrible afterwards; this was the last thing Mitchell needed. I was human, though, and the anger certainly wasn’t constant. Mostly, I felt nothing but pain and sadness for his wife.
We had to travel abroad for the cremation. I didn’t know what to expect or what I’d be exposed to, and I was terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing.
In the end, all I had to do was be there. Mitchell spent one night sobbing in my arms but from then on, he took action. He made calls, got in touch with family members and contacted a grief therapist.
One night, I overheard him on the phone to one of his wife’s family members. She was a mess and he was reassuring her, reminding her of happy memories to hold on to.
He told her that he would take care of all the paperwork. He was a rock when nobody else could be. He had assured me I could walk away if I needed to – instead, I fell in love with him more and more each day.
I had witnessed the love he was capable of giving to a person and it gave me hope about what our relationship had the potential to be. Yet I also feared we might not be able to withstand what had happened. How could he not look at me and associate me with all of the trauma from the worst time of his life?
As messed up as it felt, we tried to make parts of the trip a holiday – especially as it had cost so much to travel to the other side of the world – and went to restaurants, beaches, tourist destinations. Sometimes I would feel like we were on holiday, then he would mention her name and reality would come crashing back.
Back home, we tentatively got back into an ordinary routine but our relationship had lost the spark. We sometimes went out, but it felt forced. Sometimes we laughed but immediately afterwards we would sit in painful, awkward silence.
I struggled with the trauma and started to have emotional outbursts, which Mitchell found hard to cope with. He became more emotionally distant and when we did talk it was about whether the cats had been fed, or the rent paid.
Looking back at photos I’d taken on a recent night out I focused on him and could see he wasn’t ‘there’ – he was present in body only. Six months after his wife had died, we broke up.
Part of me was heartbroken but another part felt strangely relieved. Had we stayed together, there would have been a long road to recovery for us both – and our relationship would always be damaged by what had happened, permanently weighted down by the trauma.
Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if someone other than his wife had died – a parent or a friend. Maybe the emotional blow wouldn’t have been so intense and we could have salvaged things, but everything was just too intertwined. Mitchell admitted he had been lonely and missing his wife when we met and those feelings became tangled up with his love for me.
For my part, I couldn’t expect Mitchell to go from grief to the happy place we’d been in before the tragedy.
Mitchell and I don’t talk anymore but I hope he remembers the good times we had. I feel like people come into your life for a reason and maybe I was simply meant to be the person who helped Mitchell through his grief.
He taught me which qualities I truly want from my partner: resilience, altruism, compassion. The strength to show vulnerability. I also finally feel like I understand what I need to love and be loved in return. In previous relationships, I had always been blind to what I thought I needed, used to accepting behaviour that I later realised wasn’t good enough.
Sometimes, being truly in love with someone means that you have to accept you can’t be in a relationship with them.
All you can do is be part of their lives for as long as life will let you, then move on.
*Names have been changed
Last week in Love, Or Something Thing Like It: As an asexual, the search for true love is a game I don’t understand
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Love, Or Something Like It is a new series for Metro.co.uk, covering everything from mating and dating to lust and loss, to find out what love is and how to find it in the present day.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/04/helped-boyfriend-grieve-wife-11987265/
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