How Grief Affects Your Relationships

by Raven Evans
Unbeknownst to many folk, grief is the common factor in most relationship issues that couples face on a regular basis. However, grief has a silver lining. God created grief with good intentions; he wanted us to feel it and overcome it. The problem with this unbearable sadness is that many stay stuck on the wrong side of it, never healing from the initial effects.
 
Grief is our natural reaction to loss and as humans, loss is inevitable. It starts when we leave the birth canal and enter into a world of unfamiliarity; the environment around us is no longer the comfortable womb that we have been in for the past nine months. We must now adapt to new sounds, voices, images, feelings, and surroundings. All humans go through this process and it is not an uncommon experience; even as infants, we grieve over our losses. Grief encourages us to understand and overcome our emotions in a healthy way by helping us adjust to the constant changes in environment, which life always brings; it helps us to evolve as God intended.
Most of us are not still upset over what happened at birth, but we are still grieving over our traumatic childhood experiences, especially when it comes to how we interact with others. These past events are affecting our ability to have healthy and stable relationships in the present. The seeds of rejection, disappointment, and negative emotions, which are often planted in childhood, come to fruition during our adult life. These seeds lead to insecurity, instability, and emotional distress during our daily lives.
You are probably still grieving over each failed relationship from your early days and the pattern that has emerged in your daily interactions is a byproduct of that grief. You may be finding it difficult to have lasting romantic relationships. Your soul is still comparing your previous relationships to your current one or the one that you are actively pursuing. Therefore, you may be experiencing subconscious feelings of being dropped or rejected, feelings of panic, and fears of being heartbroken. These negative expectations cause you to react poorly, which in turn will hinder your ability to have a healthy and fruitful relationship.
You may find yourself wondering where your downfall began. Was it the childhood boyfriend or girlfriend that moved away for good? Was it a really bad break up from the “puppy love” you fell in during junior high? You need to process these feelings in your adult life no matter how minor they may seem to your current state of mind.

• Open your journal and begin writing your feelings, reliving your past moments, and letting yourself experience the situation one more time.
• Look for patterns in your failed relationships.
• Think about how you felt when they left you, disappointed you, or broke up with you.

What did you do about those feelings? Did you ever work through them or did you just forget them, push them aside, and move on to the next relationship?
When you don’t deal with the emotions attached to each situation, you allow toxicities to take over your soul. 
After writing it out, ask God for help to heal the broken areas of your heart. Ask God to fix the wound that grief has left upon your soul. It is not going to be easy reliving your past experiences, but it will be highly beneficial to the health of your current or future relationships. Unhealed grief can cause further trauma in your life. Don’t miss out on a beautiful relationship that God wants to bless you with by keeping grief alive in your heart! Ask Him for help and you will recover!