@KatMansfield6
Has anyone here actually suffered a significant bereavement?
You.don’t.get.over.it. You learn to live with it and life grows around it but the experience and the love and grief doesn’t just go away, it’s part of who you are. Someone who loves you completely would accept that. There is no acceptable time to grieve for or acceptable response to loss. That said, OPs response to her loss is completely normal. 20 years is simply not that long when dealing with bereavement.
I work with bereaved people and this has really opened my eyes to the attitudes they must come into contact with daily. It is shocking really.
And just because OPs loss is part of who she is doesn’t mean she is incapable of living life now, or of loving someone else. In my experience people are capable of loving and honouring and remembering someone they have lost, and loving someone new.
Thank you for this. It's good to hear from a professional, who has experience of meeting lots of people in a similar position to me. Fortunately, as I said upthread, the attitudes represented here aren't what I've generally seen IRL. Many of them I've only seen once, in a gf who was verbally abusive towards me, about this and other subjects. We weren't together long.
PPs seem intent on telling me how I feel, and then when I explain that that's not the case, quizzing me on why I bothered asking if I'm not going to listen to what they're telling me. Totally missing the point that a) I don't have to smile and nod when they get it wrong, and b) I asked how they would feel given my behaviour, and not how they think I feel. The inaccurate armchair psychologists are rife, here.
There also seems to be an opinion on some posts throughout the thread that this is screwing my life and my relationships up; it isn't. Subsequent partners over 20 years have generally been kind, curious, and understanding. They've wanted me to be open about my feelings about L, and have understood, as you say, that it doesn't just 'go away'. According to PPs, this is because I've been indulged in my unhealthy way of thinking; I think it was just adults being adult.
I posted to get an understanding of why a couple of people IRL haven't 'got it', and I have gained that understanding. The thread has helped me to understand that the 'not getting it' mindset comes mostly from people who jump to conclusions about how I feel, and think I'm being rude if I correct them. I think, in real life, emotionally literate people simply filter these types out of their lives, so I've not really had much to do with them.
I hope that's the case for the bereaved people you work with, and for the most part, I'm sure it is.
For me, I think hearing your professional and experienced view on this concludes the thread. There have been a few others here who have understood or been in a similar position, but I think that might be enough for me of listening to other PPs tell me how I feel, in a negative, critical way, about something close to my heart. Being told by a professional that what I feel is normal nixes all the negativity here, and most of the previous posts. I hope that no bereaved people have the misfortune to come into a relationship with many of the attitudes here, or that PPs might feel differently if they actually met someone in my position.
Thank you again, @KatMansfield6. I really appreciate your post. And thank you all for posting. Even if we have disagreed, it has helped me to reach the understanding I was looking for when I posted.