The Grief of Love

Samantha Smithstein, Psy. D.

We fall in love. And we do so in the face of inevitable loss and aloneness.

It is such an act of optimism and perhaps even denial to fall in love. We know, on a deep level, that all relationships end in one way or another. Grief and loss will happen—whether through heartbreak or death, eventually, it will come. Loneliness will happen—regardless of how intimately connected we are to our beloved, we know, and are reminded regularly, that on an existential level that ultimately we are all fundamentally alone.

Yet most of us choose love anyway. Knowing that our hearts will be broken and we will go through times when we feel empty, alone, and lonely, we still chose to partner and to love; to invest our hearts and minds and time and bodies with another.

This creates such a profound experience of paradox. We experience the joy, pleasure, nourishment, healing, and support of love; while at the same time, we are always aware of the temporal quality - people change, they betray us, they get sick and/or die. Even when times are good, there are times when we feel estranged from them, or in conflict, and we become aware of the deeper truth of life: people can walk beside us through life, but the walk is fundamentally ours and ours alone. In the midst of connectedness, we feel lonely. In the midst of the joy, we are anxious. We feel the existential loneliness of life.

So, the whole time we are in the joy and companionship of love, we are knowing about and experiencing the fundamental aloneness and emptiness of our existence. We may try our best to get the other person (or other people, or activities, or things) to fill that void, but ultimately they cannot.

Additionally, the whole time we are resting in the permanence and depth of love, we are simultaneously grieving its inevitable end. Even as we commit to spending our life with someone in marriage - an act of “forever” - we acknowledge that even if we stay together death will part us. We feel we will love and be with this person forever even as we know there is no such thing.

It is worth noting that in order to be able to tolerate the separateness, aloneness, and loss in an intimate relationship, one must have first had a healthy experience of attachment, merging, and love. A child must have a foundational experience of attachment, immersion, trust, and love, in order to desire and fulfill a healthy separation that takes that love with them. The fullness within the emptiness. Every subsequent loving relationship must also be built on this foundation so that the person can rest in the beauty and gift of the love to be able to hold the inevitable insecurity, loss, and grief of the human bonding experience.

We also must be able to blossom in the experience of being alone. We cannot fear aloneness or emptiness, we cannot wish or hope or long for another person (or thing, or activity) to take that away. That experience is fundamental to being human, and tasking another with getting rid of that feeling will inevitably fail us. We must fundamentally know, through meditation or other similar practices, that when we are alone inside of ourselves we have all we truly need.

Ultimately, the goal is to be able to hold both, as both are true but also both are essential for a full and healthy, rich experience of a loving connection. There is a cherishing and joy that can only be experienced in the temporary. The inevitable heartbreak and loneliness that run alongside love exquisitely highlight and bring gratitude for every experience of connection with that person. We feel stability and trust and permanence even as we are aware of the temporal nature of it. We feel true joy and appreciation in our grief; companionship in our aloneness.

Originally posted on Psychology Today.