Whatever “too long” means to you. What eventually helped to lessen the pain?
My dog’s death. I had to put him down over 14 years ago. And while the first 6 years was honestly tough to hard in that process, after that point, it steadily got easier to accept. I don’t ever plan to replace him, though.
Losing relationships, even the bad ones. It’s been 3 years since I had actually been with someone. But I think what really just kept stinging me and making me reluctant to try again was that the last three relationships I had been in, I was really pouring into what I thought was my best in resources, time and effort. Yet they ultimately weren’t enough because of both circumstances out of my control and not really knowing someone’s true colors until after the fact just ruined it all.
The thing with “lessening the pain” is that there isn’t one key solution that is applicable to everyone’s problems. Some people simply just - got over it, however they did. Others, leaned on hobbies, inspiration and influence. People with different approaches and handling.
My dorm neighbour and friend killed himself while on an internship in another country. We were something like friends for like 2 years. We had some really good moments but I didn’t even know his last name.
When LLMs first became big, my mom gave me ChatGpt premium and I fed it his discord messages to behave like him as a custom GPT. I balled like a baby. My gf was very confused, as he had died 3 years prior and I had barely mentioned it.
I honestly wish I had been at his funeral, but I didn’t know any of his family or friends.
My marriage. In all my past relationships, it usually takes me about as long as the relationship lasted to get my feet back under me, but in this case, that time would be 10 years, so I really hope it won’t take that long. I’m on year 4 now. I read somewhere that men take longer to get over romantic relationships, because usually their romantic partner is also their best friend, and mine was no exception. We broke up because we shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place. I was in active alcoholism, and despite us both knowing that I wanted children, and she absolutely did not, we plowed ahead regardless. It seems stupid, but we truly loved each other. Heck, I guess we still love each other, we just have acknowledged that we’re not compatible in a way that severely limits our long term goals. It sucks. Logically, I should be able to just get right back on with dating, but it hasn’t been so easy.
There’s been multiple things standing in the way. First and foremost, some childhood trauma that had been trying to resurface for as long as I was an active alcoholic. Add that into a severely dysfunctional family dynamic, and you get a big ol’ mess that I’m only now starting to emerge from. I’m back to browsing tinder, and even though I do fine with matches, I just haven’t the energy to message anybody. Like, I just assume that they’re going to waste my time, and so I just sit by myself instead. I’m trying to become the person that would attract my ideal partner, so I’ve been putting extra time in at the gym, and have refocused on some hobbies of mine, like writing, and performing stand-up comedy. But even those seem like a chore sometimes.
Why does grief need a time-limit? What’s something you were grateful for for “too long”?
Grief doesn’t need a time limit, but if you wanted to stop grieving and you couldn’t, then I would say that you were grieving too long in the end.
I think it depends on the nature of the thing you grieved. I’m still grieving the loss of my mother in 2010. It doesn’t hit me that often but sometimes I still cry. Now, grieving something like the loss of youth or an image of yourself is different. I grieved the loss of my hair but then I got over it.
I’m going to interpret “too long” as “longer than I expected”. To that I world say the sudden loss of a college friend that I, to be honest, failed to keep in contact with. Still miss that guy.
I take some comfort in that by the time he died, he had turned from being an outcast and victim of bullying to having three wonderful children with a beautiful and loving wife.
Everything. My brain holds onto grief like a dog holds onto a squeaky toy.
I had a formative falling out with a former friend years ago. We used to love bomb each other, and I just couldn’t bear to get rid of them.
Recently did a bonfire ritual and burned aaaalll of that away. It was cathartic and felt like a good close to that long chapter.
My friend-breakups have been a thousand times more devastating than any romantic breakup.
Estrogen, relationship with many hugs
Subway changing the way they cut their subs.
It’s been more than 20 years, I’m still not over it.
Definitely loss of relationships. Not romantic, but friends and family drifting apart. Wondering how they are, dwelling, trying to figure out where things went wrong.
It’s not really grief. Thankfully in my young life, I’ve yet not lost anyone, close to me, beyond my own decisions. But it takes me seconds to let go of people without ever expressing how much they mean to me. Then it takes me years or forever to let go of the thoughts.
The Pokémon tcg. I periodically get interested in new cards they put out, and then I remember that playing pokemon that need to evolve hasn’t been competitively viable for 13 years. I like the gatcha app they put out though
I feel the same way about Yu-Gi-Oh.last 10+ years have been awful. The cost to play competitive is to high and there’s just to many damn mechanics.
And I’d love to play other card games but nobody I play with wants to play anything other than MTG
