My husband just speaks and I want to put my fingers in my ears

[ilovetoloveyoubaby]

First off, I respect people's right to voicing their opinion but sometimes I wonder why people voice certain opinions.

I've just had a conversation that turned into a rather heated debate around people grieving.

His words were "people grieve for far too long for people"

I countered with the fact that I think it's a ridiculous statement and you cannot put a time limit on someone's grief. He conceded that grieving for a child is different but other wise people need to pull their socks up and get on with life. I'm now sitting watching television wondering what and who I married.

AIBU to think what he said is just plain strange and horrible.

How would he know if he has never lost someone he really loves?

I've lost three grandparents and one of them I didn't really feel any grief for. I don't think that makes me less of a person.

I do think it makes him childish to not have considered that he might feel differently.

Before I read this I had just got very choked over the fact my gorgeous cousin who died at 24 has been dead for nearly 20 years. Still not over it, I will never be.

Badders

I always think of the grieving process in terms of my auntie's head. She was in a bad car accident about 40 years ago, was thrown out of the car through the windscreen and then came back in through it. Still to this day, she will feel an itch in her head, scratch it and come away with a tiny tiny shard of windscreen glass that's been working its way to the surface, in its own good time. Grieving is like allowing all those shards to work their way out and they can't be hurried!

I'm also inexperienced with grief. My parents are both alive but i dread losing them as we're very close.

I think he's upset me more than anything else as I see grief as a very personal thing that needs gentle and caring support rather than briskly being told to get on with it.

Badders I hope you're ok. I can tell you that he wouldn't see you as a joke. I think he possibly wouldn't understand it and this is what makes me most upset. I can understand that your grief is still raw and painful so why can't he?

Does anyone else know someone like him? He is quite stoical but I feel this takes the biscuit

biscuitmillionaire What a lovely piece of writing, thanks for sharing

The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another's heart.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

I lost my mother last year. That quote gives me comfort. It is equally true in the grandparents thread I posted earlier today..

You can't put a time on love. grieving is a part of loving IMO

He was chatting to his wife though? Not telling someone to get a grip and stop grieving.

I think you're being a bit harsh op.

biscuitmillionaire That's a beautiful piece of writing. How poignant and sad

Ive lost a parent in a horrible circumstance. I have my personal opinion about grief, I will always grieve for close loved ones who have passed away. But I think there has to be a point where you need to cope with your grief in order to carry on.

However if I lost one of my children I'm not entirely sure how I would reach that point. My heart goes out to anyone who has lost a child.

What I don't understand is public grief, like Princess Diana. I don't think it's healthy to get too worked up over people you've never met. Because I'm not sure it's building emotional resistance.

But then I can appear quite cold hearted and a bit emotionless but that's because I do my best to forget and look forward.

I think he should wind his neck in if he's never had a major bereavement.
People grieve as long as they grieve. It's not like you're really given a choice in the matter. Views like his imply that people who are grieving are being self-indulgent.
Reminds me of a women I worked with. A colleague of ours lost her brother suddenly and tragically. She was off work for a while, came back but it was too soon so stayed off a while longer. This woman said to me "X really milked it when her brother died, didn't she".
Poisonous cunt that she was.

Grief intensity and duration varies from person to person.

Emotional responses to all kinds of trauma varies. It depends upon all past experiences and (that awful word) resilience.

But he wasn't saying it to a grieving person. He was saying it to his wife.

Some people are disabled by their grief for such a long time. Others for a relative short time. I am not saying one way is better than the other.

Some grieve in ways that seem unusual to me. More public. More open than seems the right way for me. Longer. But I'd never say that to them as I am not experiencing their grief. I do not know that depth of feeling. It is theirs and personal.

Whether society as a whole or companies as employers or coworkers as individuals should continue to support those who are grieving so very deeply is a question for an ethical debate. How much paid time off should there be? How much of the slack do others have to pick up? How long can a person remain consumed by grief and society hold them up for?

But I think it is unreasonable to judge your dp on a single comment

And my friend lost her brother in truly awful circumstances twenty years ago. Her life has gone on but she's still grieving and in pain, and she always will be.
Anyone that rolls their eyes when she posts on social media on the anniversary, and his birthday, is utterly lacking in empathy.

I think I probably agree with your dh.

I've just spent two days with DMIL, to help her through her brother's dying. She is now the last of her generation, the oldest person in her family history, and she has only two direct blood relatives left alive, and she won't move closer to them.

It's not always cut and dried. She is old, and her memory is failing, so a big move would be or might be even more difficult than staying put with her memories close by. I don't have an answer, but I have agonised over it, for hundreds of hours.

I think that when someone expresses a cold hearted lack of empathy or pity for others, it is often the case that they have experienced this themselves, have been on the receiving end of it in their own hour of need, whatever that was. It still hurts that compassion and understanding were denied to them, so they resent it being freely offered to others. They are often entirely unaware of this splinter of buried hurt taking root and nourishing the corruption of their feelings. Their alienation protects them and they grow comfortable with it.
Or maybe your husband is uncomfortable engaging fully with painful, challenging feelings of any kind, and thus denies them.

I think there are very ways in which grief manifests. My dh recently lost his dgf, one of the only constants in his life, he was utterly bereft. But after a while, he started getting angry and unreasonable and sank into a depression of sorts. He has dealt with a lot of loss, without actually ever dealing with it and it took this particular loss to compound all of the hurt and grief. He was sinking and I couldn't help him, he was actively pushing me away.

It took me saying "you have become someone else, you are not behaving like the man i married and I'm worried about your mental health, we need to deal with your hurt and grief" before he realised how deep he'd gone. I felt terrible saying it to him, it broke my heart because it really shocked him, but it did shock him into some action and he's returning to himself slowly but surely and he's on a list for some grief counselling. It's been like a fog has lifted from him.

I would find it very difficult to listen to him say things like that tbh
My grief is my own, it's mine. I don't expect anyone else to feel it
But I do expect people to understand that I will never be "over" my dads death
Ever
I have 2 kids, a dh, a job...I don't lie in bed all day crying
I carry on - as dad would have wanted me to
But I can tell your dh that sometimes - like on my sons 13th birthday last month - the sadness and loss simply overwhelmes me
I think it always will

And sorry to all those on here who have lost loved ones

Talk to him, let him see that you were confused and upset by this statement and suggest that you discuss it further and see if he will try and see things from another point of view. I remember early in my marriage my husband saying something about same-sex couples raising children that appalled and disturbed me but we talked about it and I realised that he just did not have experience of this and was reacting against something unknown, and that he was certainly not homophobic (I knew this anyway). He in his turn realised why I was so upset and immediately started to work through his reaction and change his mind. It was such an important conversation for us and has strengthened our marriage and the way we deal with disagreements.

I think DH is along the same line, mainly because this the way he has been brought up and how he sees life. One of the things he told me quite quickly after I met him was that he wasn't expecting his parents to live very old, they had a hard life and that's how things are. Very 'clinical' outlook in some ways.
I think he would struggle to understand why someone would grieve for a very long time because that's not how he sees life. It's more of a death is part of life and it's normal type of things so why make a big fuss about it?
He isn't uncaring though and would accept that people react differently.
I'm not sure he would understand iyswim.

I sort of agree with your DH. Not that people grieve for too lng but that some people enjoy the drama of wallowing in grief for too long and expect everone to make allowances for them or treat them with kid gloves for months.

DH would be more of your view and he would be treating people with kid gloves and making excuses for them for months.

He still has both parents, I have neither. I lved my parents to bits but I dealt with their deaths much better than I expectd to. My view is you just have to get on with it, it isn't easy but life goes on and each day starts and ends and you have to live it- good or tough. I found comfort in normaility.

I think if you have not experienced grief it is hard to understand how others feel.

My mother used to be a bereavement counsellor. One of her clients had lost her heavily pregnant adult daughter in a horrid accident. About three weeks after she died she had a call from a friend who asked how she was. She replied that she was having a bad day, why? she was asked. Because of my daughter. "Oh, I thought you would be over that by now" her friend replied.

People can be heartless and do not think about others feelings. My mother still misses her father who died 60 years ago, she grieves in her own way and remembers his Birthday.

everything are we married to the same man? My DH is so clinical about death that it unnerves me. But as I've said, I don't think he has truly experienced grief.

Perhaps I feel a bit embarrassed that he could say something which I think is callous. I'm not sure but it's definitely upset me

blueberry if someone said that to me after the death of anyone close to me (never mind my heavily pregnant daughter) then the friendship would be terminated there and then.

My mums sister said "we just had to get over it" the day after mum got home from hospital and 5 days after we watched my dad die in front of us.
I don't speak to her anymore.