an ode to patience
from someone who’s extremely impatient but trying really hard, ok?
When I tell you to practice patience with your grief, what comes up for you? What about if I add, “this is a complicated process that takes time, and you can’t rush it?” Do you feel an urge to hit me with your car? That’s ok. This is a safe space.
And even though I, too, have feelings of rage coursing through my veins when someone tells me to “be patient,” I have to take a step back and get to the root of what patience means.
For me, patience means, first and foremost, acknowledging the loss. And this is something that can invoke a lot of fear. Because if we acknowledge the loss, does this mean we’re accepting it as truth? That we’re succumbing to the universe’s “plan” for us, despite our best efforts to control things?
For me, patience means admitting that what I’m doing isn’t working. I can try to rush this process along, go to therapy, etc. but none of that matters if I refuse to confront the feelings for longer than 5-10 minutes.
For me, patience means accepting the fact that I don’t have the control over my life that I thought I had. When I got the phone call that my dad died, I remember repeating over and over again (between the sobs), “I’m defeated. I’m defeated.” It’s been nearly 10 years, and I don’t know if I can better articulate what I meant by that beyond feeling like I lost out on something I had poured all of my energy into.
For me, patience means sitting in pain and discomfort. Our biological response to pain and discomfort is not to sit in it - that doesn’t contribute well to our survival. Rather, we try to push it to the sides or rush the process so that we can survive.
how does this play out in your relationship?
I’m so glad you asked!
All of these heavy emotions are amplified when you’re in a relationship (and amplified 10-fold when you have kids, but that’s for another post). The stakes feel higher, and that puts a lot of pressure on you to show up as the most present, focused version of yourself. There doesn’t seem to be anything more detrimental to patience than pressure, does there?
Here are some things you should know when it comes to impatience, grief, and your relationship:
The pressure we feel to rush through our grief will eventually create resentment for your partner.
The idea of showing up with so much negative emotion (sadness, anger, disappointment, etc.) in our relationship does not make us feel good. We feel guilty for exposing our partner to our pain and trauma, and because of this, we try to rush through our grief or our pain so that things can resume as they were. For the sake of our relationship. For the sake of our partner. But I highly doubt this was an explicit request of your partner. In fact, I feel confident that your partner doesn’t want you to push away any part of your experience for their sake. And yet, in spite of this being an assumption, you convince yourself that this is necessary. And you become resentful of your partner.
Your partner doesn’t need you to be “done” grieving. They need a healed version of you.
Read that again. Is it difficult for your partner to see you in this level of pain? Of course. Does this mean that they shouldn’t see you this way? No. And this requires both of you getting comfortable with the idea of not being your best, happiest version of yourself. Maybe it’s an unfamiliar place for you; the idea of staying in an unfamiliar (and unpleasant) place for any extended period of time doesn’t sound appealing, so the pressure to “finish” grieving sounds ideal. For you AND your partner! But you’re going to need to put some trust and faith into your partner right now and tell yourself that they are fully capable of seeing you in pain. It makes them sad, and that’s ok. They’re sad because they love you, not because what you’re doing is harming them.
Openly communicating what this experience is like for you is going to improve the communication between you and your partner down the line.
This is such an important piece of information that translates to so many other parts of your relationship: just because you’re having a big emotional reaction to something doesn’t mean that your partner understands the details. It doesn’t need to be this grand, sit-down discussion where you outline every aspect and detail of this experience. Sharing with your partner can look like, “I know I said I wanted to go out for dinner tonight, but I feel paralyzed by my sadness right now.”
One of the most humbling parts of grief is the realization that you are completely powerless. You have no say in how quickly the process will be over. So if being impatient and hurrying the process feels like what you must do for the sake of your relationship and your partner’s joy, know that nothing could be further from the truth. Rushing will not help soothe your heartbreak. But allowing your partner to participate in your heartbreak will.