Lessons in Losing Lovers & Friends

Leave shame and blame behind. Make space for grace.

I’ve had the whole of my life so far to think about loss. I’ve had enough of it. My losses weren’t particularly extraordinary, but don’t let that fool you into thinking the grief was any less significant. The ordinariness of grief might be one of the most painful parts — how everyone just accepts that this is how it’s sometimes going to be, and we’re left figuring out how to get on with our lives when it feels like they’ve come grinding to a halt.

I was not a child who thrived with change. By the time I reached adulthood, all I wanted was a sense of security. I had said goodbye too many times — to places, to people I loved, and to any sense of who I was or what I wanted.

When I say I’ve gotten so much better at letting go, I don’t mean that I let go easily now. I don’t. Everything in me still wants to hold on. I’ve just started shifting toward surrender and giving up the illusion that I could ever convince someone to stay who wants to leave. And I’ve started asking myself why the hell I would want that anyway.

There are always reasons to want to hold on, and love sits at the center of them. Attachment, affection, companionship, security, shared memories, and dreams of the future are all factors. But love is the one that makes it the hardest to let go. I’ve just had to learn to love myself enough to do it anyway.

My biggest lessons in losing lovers actually came from losing friends. I’ve lost two people in my life that I considered my closest friends. I grieved the first loss for 10 years of my life. I just couldn’t get over it.

I didn’t know how to reconcile letting someone get that close and then being forced to let them go. It was my first lesson in ghosting, too — years before social media and texting came along with the handy block feature. However lonely ghosting is now, imagine handwritten letters going out and never coming back, increasingly desperate messages left on answering machines, and the desolation of never having any clue what happened. There was no fight, no falling out. Just silence.

By the time I got divorced, I already knew I could survive the worst thing. It had already happened years before. Getting divorced wasn’t easy, but I’d had practice in losing what I had once wanted. I was familiar with the process. It took me so long to make the decision to file for divorce that I had experienced all my grief within the marriage. I was done grieving it before I even walked away.

Years later, I would lose another friend — the friend I’d had for longer than any other. This was my ride or die — the person who knew where all the bodies were buried, the one who would go dispose of my sex toys in the event of my untimely demise, and the person who would be responsible for one day unplugging my life support if necessary. Come to think of it, she might still be up for that last one.

This time, there was a falling out. We’d reached an impasse where both of us felt like we were doing the best thing for ourselves while resenting the other person’s inability to understand it. I’d have said this was the one relationship I would never lose. I don’t say things like that anymore.

By the time I made it to the most recent loss, I had survived so much already. Again, not one of them was extraordinary in the grand scheme of things. I had gotten used to loss — even if I’d never been any good at it.

I would even say that I had gotten so used to loss that I spent half of my last relationship fearing it. I’ve adapted to losing so well that I didn’t know how to do anything else. I know I held on tighter because I was so sure a loss was coming. I wasn’t wrong.

I knew that loss was coming in the way you know a storm is coming even before it arrives.

There was a change in the air that didn’t portend good things. I had been there before. I knew what I was facing.

But everything circles back to love. I couldn’t let go even though I knew what was coming. I could do little more than brace for impact and hope I had the wherewithal to withstand it.

Months later, I have discovered this curious sense of peace. I don’t love any less, and I don’t find letting go any easier. I just know that I have lost people in my life I felt I could not lose — and survived it all the same. I can survive this, too. These are the lessons in losing lovers and friends.

We cannot love anyone enough to keep them.

I still wish I’d kept the friendships, but in the end, it wasn’t my call to make. I’ve also had months to reconcile myself to the fact that loving someone with my whole heart will never be enough to convince them to love me with theirs. We can’t love anyone enough to keep them.

Sometimes, the most loving thing we can do — for ourselves and for the people we love — is to accept how they feel and move on.

We can do hard things.

Glennon Doyle said this, and it’s true. We are capable of more than we know. Sometimes, we have to do more than feel our way through them. It can help to talk ourselves through them, too — to remind ourselves that we are stronger and braver than we could ever imagine.

The only way out is through.

There is no shortcut to avoid the pain of loss. This may come as a surprise to everyone who thinks finding a new friend or partner will solve the problem. All it does is prolong the pain and prevent healing. We have to go through the full process of grief, and no denial or distraction will let us bypass this experience. We need to feel our feelings as long as it takes to get to the other side of them (and there is another side).

We need to abandon hope.

That sounds bleak, but there is wisdom in accepting what is rather than what we want to be. Hoping someone will come back or that things will change in the future could keep us going, but it also gets in the way of letting go, healing, and moving on. We can’t afford to nurture a fantasy that could derail the progress we’ve made in our recovery.

This doesn’t mean we abandon hope of love or friendship or anything else. We can hope for new relationships and experiences without desperately trying to hold onto what’s gone. Learning to live fully in the present can allow us to be hopeful without deciding we’ll only be happy under certain circumstances. We learn to be happy now rather than saving it for later.

We can get help.

Struggling with loss is a normal part of the human experience. That doesn’t mean we don’t need help getting through it. Seeking professional help is the single best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Therapy has helped me feel my feelings, talk through my experiences, and make it to the other side of that initial terrible grief. We don’t have to do this alone, and our friends and family can only do so much to help us through it.

We can make peace with the memories.

I can look at photos without feeling the full weight of grief, even though there are still people I’ve lost that I miss. I’ve done the work to get to this point. I’m making peace with my life. I’ve even made peace with my poor choices along the way. I’ve made space for grace — for myself and others. I accept what’s happened, and I take responsibility for my part in it. I don’t need to feel shame or place blame. I only need to surrender to what’s happened and take responsibility for my choices moving forward.

We can start choosing ourselves.

I wish this part was easier. My rational, practical brain kept telling me that it’s foolish to love someone who doesn’t love me. Tell that to my wild heart. It wants what it wants, and it is unrelenting. I knew I could not love enough to make him love me. I knew I could not dream enough to make him want to share those dreams. But all the knowledge in the world crashed against a heart that just wanted to love as much as it could for as long as it could.

Love is often unreasonable. This is why we have to learn to make intentional choices to serve our best interests — even when we feel love. There’s a point where we learn to love ourselves enough not to make decisions that harm us. Grief and loss might feel like harm, but they are actually healing. There are times in our lives where we simply have to choose ourselves.

By the way, those times in our lives are now and always.

I’m not so foolish as to think that the next loss won’t be a struggle. Whatever it will be, I’ll probably try to hold on first. It’s instinctive when we feel like we’re going to lose something. I’ll feel my way through that impulse, too.

Growth is a process, and grief is a practice — but practice makes progress.

We’re not supposed to be good at things when we’re practicing them. We’re just supposed to be improving, and no amount of pushing ourselves will make it happen any faster.

Today, I woke up with lovers and friends on my mind. All those losses add up, but they don’t make me less. I have loved fiercely, and I have grieved the same. I’m learning that I don’t need to hold on so tightly.

What’s meant to stay won’t leave. What’s meant to go won’t ever stay. I am braver and stronger than I ever imagined.

So are you.