The Pain of Ending a Relationship

There is one kind of pain for which nobody has yet found a cure—the pain that comes from the ending of a relationship. The relationship could be a marriage or a deep friendship. Such a relationship may come to a sudden end; or it may simply fade away slowly as people and circumstances change. You may be the one to "break it off', with a short note or brief phone call. Or you may be on the receiving end. But however it ended and whoever decided to end it, the pain is equally hard to bear and it requires the same time for grief.

Although there is no cure for grief, we cannot help looking for one, to ease the pain and to make us forget our tears. We keep ourselves busy with work; we try to plunge ourselves in our hobbies. Perhaps we start to drink more than we should to "drown our sorrows", or we follow the conventional advice and join a club or society. But these things cannot cure it. Moreover, we are always in a hurry to get rid of our grief. We feel that we should try to convince ourselves as we bite on the pillow, that we are much too old to be crying. Some people bury their grief deep inside themselves. Others seek relief by pouring their hearts out to their friends, or to anyone else who can offer a sympathetic shoulder to cry on.

It is not easy to explain why we adopt this attitude to emotional pain, when we would never expect anyone to overcome physical pain simply by an effort of will power. Part of the answer must lie in the nature of grief itself.

The important thing to admit about grief, then, is that it will take its time. By trying to convince ourselves that it ought to be over sooner, we create an additional tension which can only make things worse. How much time is needed will vary from person to person, but psychiatrists have a rule of thumb: grief will last as long as the original relationship lasted. The sad thing is that, when the breakdown occurs, we can only stumble forward over the stones beneath our feet. It is dark ahead, and we will fall painfully many times before we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.