Grief Work and Marriage
When a relationship passes the high of the endorphins of its new love energy, the bliss of feeling in love settles down, and you become two individuals trying to have a relationship, other layers of your being start to surface. Sometimes you may have anxiety where you didn’t as a single person. Or perhaps you have more fear than usual, perhaps anger, or even perhaps sadness. And maybe you don’t know why.
Perhaps you don’t know what you’re feeling, but you know you’re feeling something, and those energies and feelings are making it harder and harder to connect to your partner and feel close. Usually this is a sign that deeper grief work is needed. Often times repressed grief can cause all kinds of others issues. It can keep you from getting close to someone, and it can keep you from staying close to someone you already love.
Really deep grief that stems from childhood will often show up in an adult as anger, and can either be redirected as heightened sexual needs and cravings, and can also shift and alternate to sexual repression and Anorexia. Being an adult survivor of childhood trauma myself, I can speak from experience.
If you recognize yourself as someone who is a survivor and is trying to “make it” in your marriage, perhaps doing deeper Grief and Soul Work is your answer. Grief Work IS Soul Work! How is Grief Work soul work? Because if you are in need of Grief Work, your entire Being is impacted from a major tragedy or from years of feeling neglected, rejected and perhaps abused from the past. This is not something to run away from or avoid. This is something to run towards. In healing your past, you get to experience a new you in the present, with a greater capacity to receive love, give love, and be more of the true you you’ve always wanted to be.
When you’re in a marriage, and one partner needs to do grief work, and the other does not, it can create a huge tamper in the relationship. One or both of you must be willing to make sacrifices, compromises, and have patience to hold space for the other to do their healing work. Forgiveness of yourself, forgiveness of your partner and understanding is crucial to allow the healing to take place. You both may be working on different aspects of your being and psyche during this time. However, it doesn’t mean a relationship needs to split. It just means you’re going through a different journey, although traveling along side each other on the road.
As issues, feelings, and concerns show up, this is an opportunity to talk about them and give each other the space to share what is going on for each of you during this transition phase. Many couples don’t have the tools to work through these bigger issues and assume the compatibility is off. Many times, they assume the need to look outside the marriage for answers and some even look for love elsewhere. When one of the two of you is going through a big process, such as grief, looking for love elsewhere will only damage the foundation you have built together.
During the phase of going through Grief is the perfect time to strengthen your love with your partner by showing them how much you care. When you show them how you want only their happiness, joy and freedom for your partner, you are showing them how much you love them and the depth of your commitment. This alone is the key to helping your partner truly heal at his or her core, and ultimately get through the grief, pulling all the way through to the other side where you can finally walk away from the grief and fully embrace your partner deep into your arms!
When you get through Grief Work, and the Healing of your Soul, you will come to the other side in celebration, joy and bliss - and feel the deepest love for yourself, and for others, and especially your beloved husband or wife!
So when your partner has a huge journey to go on and do grief work, I say, “Don’t Run, But Stay!” It will be so worth the wait.
If you know someone who is struggling in their relationship and you feel needs to do deep Grief and Soul Work, pass them along this message, and I’ll be glad to help! If it’s you, how much longer can you wait? And do you love your partner enough to want to heal and come through to the other side! The real you is waiting, and loves you very very much!