Every Duel Is A Test Of Our Maturity

We are used to hearing about grief as the time needed to emotionally recover from the loss of a loved one. The most common thing is to treat it from that point of view, but we are not aware that we live daily griefs, which are perhaps less shocking but more frequent. In this way, we grow and mature by facing different losses and integrating the feelings that they produce in our life history.

This time I want to refer to another type of grief and it is the  grief that we experience when we end a relationship. The process that two people go through when after a while they end what had been their relationship. In this process, in which we can feel helpless, defenseless or unwilling to move on, it bears similarities with other griefs, such as the death of a loved one.

Phases of relational grief

It is obvious that each person experiences relational grief in their own way, in a certain way, and that it is not lived the same, when it is one who makes the decision, when it is a mutual decision or when it has been because of a betrayal. But in general we can talk about different phases that we go through with greater or lesser intensity:

• When this break occurs, the first thing our emotions do is generate a shield of protection against pain, and there is no better way to do that than by denying what has happened. Not accepting that this is happening and thinking that there is something that does not add up. Encapsulation does not allow you to perceive reality objectively.

• As we begin to be aware of what happened, the shield begins to give way to battle, an internal battle of its own, made of anger and anger. What did not fit before, now begins to be inexplicable and therefore the questions of “What did I do wrong?”, “How could he have done this to me?”, “Perhaps I have made a mistake in my choice”, and so on.

• At this moment you begin to assimilate your reasoning and yearn for the idealized being, more than for the partner, and the realistic sadness associated with the breakup begins. The internal battle is over, there is nothing to fight against. The feeling of emotional pain will be stronger than in any other phase, but it will only be to give way to the next phase.

• After sadness, life begins to take on a natural meaning again. The other person exists and you are aware of it, but you do not suffer for it. It is an objective truth that you know is immutable and that it is not a problem. You start to remember the people who love you, because thanks to this, they have made you know more than you ever expected. You assume that the situation is probably the best and you are prepared for the last phase.

• It is at this time when the best comes, the most functional. It is at the moment that you look back and there is only learning. A cluster of situations that you have lived together and that have endowed you with a new self, with new qualities. Suddenly you are aware that what happened is not destructive, that you are a wiser person, and that you wish only good things from the other person, because he is not the enemy, but a companion during a journey of life’s journey.

Learning is the ultimate goal of grief

In the end, this is still a path in which we have to learn and live what is posed to us, no matter how hard, in the best possible way. Everything has two faces, and at least one is good. In this excerpt from the book “Men Without Women”, Murakami perfectly describes the last phase of this duel: