When we hear the word loss, most of us think about death. These days, chances are we will have to face loss in love at some stage during our life, usually through a break-up or divorce. Sadly, we don’t really consider this reality when pouring our hearts out in our vows which can leave us brutally unprepared for the reality when it comes. Understanding the complexities and nuances of loss can help you come to acceptance with your emotional state, help you move through your grief and inform you and your loved ones how to re-build your life afterwards. There are 3 types of loss to break down to better understand our experience in relationship.
Primary Loss – This is the loss of the relationship and person. Whether it be by death or separation, you no longer have them in your life. The primary loss is the most obvious one to understand. People often try to console us based on this loss rather than the myriad of other losses that lie beneath the surface.
Secondary Loss – These are all of the things that were attached to the person that you lost. This can include but is not limited to: loss of identity (as a wife or married person), loss of security (financial, emotional, psychological), loss of sense of family (breakdown, dysfunction), loss of imagined futures and dreams (growing old together, family holidays, opening a new business, raising grandchildren), loss of faith or meaning, loss of hope (in love), loss of confidence, loss of friends connected to the marriage or partner, loss of routine and traditions, loss of a best friend or primary support person.
Depending on each person’s world view and beliefs, some of these secondary losses can be crippling. If a woman has built her identity around being a wife, mother, care-taker, perfect home-maker and suddenly finds out her husband wants a divorce this can destroy her. It is not just the divorce that is painful; this will be rattling to the core of her existence as it destabilizes the foundation that she built her identity on. On the flip side, if a man has built his identity purely based on their ability to acquire money, status and achievements, a job loss can be just as soul destroying.
Ambiguous Loss – This is a loss experienced under a few circumstances. Perhaps the person you are grieving is still living, just not with you. There may have been a profound change or disappearance in the dynamic. In terms of relationships, it can feel like there is no emotional connection anymore but you still live with the person, do life or parent duties and operate day-to-day as a family unit. Often in this case there is very little to no intimacy experienced anymore. Ambiguous loss can also be a painful pendulum that oscillates between hoping to return to “before/normal” and a sense of doom that that ship has sailed.
People often have expectations around how long it should take to “get over it” without really understanding the nature of the loss and what it means to the individual. If a loss is connected to your sense of identity, it will be much deeper and take longer to heal. Yet if you can identify how it has impacted your identity, after the grieving process, you will have the knowledge to re-construct who you are and step into an empowered new version of yourself, and that is the way to heal.
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