“The love of a half dead heart will keep you half alive”
― Munia Khan
6:12am- a London morning…white skies, but I know it will brighten up, it’s just a question of holding on until it does… and thoughts that seem to be with me during the night and a scrap of them remains just enough to help me retrieve my way back down the dream like path so that I can write “remembering” what I was “thinking” about last night in my slumber….
For some days I have this idea about anticipatory grief and couples. I know it might seem a strange combination of concepts, but bear with me… first thing’s first… anticipatory grief is a term that describes the grieving reaction and process before the loss has actually occurred. It is used in reference to anticipated loses such as a terminal illness, high suicide lethality, high-risk lifestyle or gang involvement, or from non-death-related losses such as scheduled mastectomy, pending divorce, company downsizing or war. It was first coined by Lindmann (1944) after observing couple dynamics during WWII. Being constantly under the threat of losing their husbands, the soldiers’ wives went through all the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) even before having confirmation of their passing. Still, trying to safeguard themselves against the impact of a sudden wartime death notice, the wives ended up disengaging from their husbands even in the cases when they returned home safely.
This got me thinking about the course of relationships in general and I was wondering if there isn’t a link between anticipatory grief and the way people live the end of a relationship through separation or divorce. I believe it would be a different experience than that lived in the cases of cancer, for example, where, in some brief instances, there if a chance of being able to share precious, meaningful moments that reaffirm the previously existing bond. I am referring to anticipatory grief like in the cases of dementia where a person is still alive, but unreachable in the parts of him or her that gave them their sense of identity and belonging to the persons or groups that are already grieving their irrevocable change. I am referring to suffering the loss of a person (in the role that we knew them) and/ or a relationship while they are still there, sometimes even sharing the same space, but not sharing what made them be (and feel) “alive” and meaningful.
Maybe instinctively we protect ourselves from anticipatory grief when we are in a relationship that doesn’t work anymore, but we are still carrying it through. Maybe denial is the shield that protects us from contemplating supposed unbearable solitude, maybe we are so angry at the other or fate or life that we can’t take a step to the side, mourn the loss and move on; maybe we are still negotiating with a partner that truly doesn’t give us what we need (and while we are busy bargaining we aren’t doing much giving either.) Maybe all we can do for now is to fight off the depressing state often accompanying the loss because that might shut us down for a while and that’s not something we think we can afford because we need to function in other areas of our lives- job, parenthood, extended family, personal projects, etc.
Maybe if one of the partners keeps saying (sometimes even without meaning it, sometimes just a product of momentary rage) that they want out and the other begins his anticipatory grieving then a disengagement occurs like in the case of Lindmann’s WWII wives. And this closes the path for those seemingly endless negotiations and reajustations that sometimes may lead to a reconciliation and a new, more functional couple’s dynamic. Leaving just two individuals that could have had a future together, but that have dug so deep and wide the chasm between them that it may be difficult to ever bridge and cross it.
Maybe living out some of the grief before the actual “death” of our relationship helps us in the long while to mourn more effectively and move on. What if a relationship doesn’t terminate after a shocking emotional blitz attack where you are left dumbfounded by a reality that you seem to just be a victim of ? What if the end and the grief is precluded by one of those seemingly endless Shakespearean dialogues when if the dagger comes and takes away the life and future you envisioned, at least you know why and how and who and when… And maybe that can make it easier…
Well, I believe that as always each and every individual needs something else, or maybe something similar, but with their own twist… The magic of couple’s counselling consists in helping to sort out through the situations that bring people in the room and to decide what they want to keep and what to let go from the relationship.
