Tell Me About It: Mourning a love's end

Question: How much time is appropriate to mourn the end of a serious relationship? I had been with my live-in boyfriend for six years when we broke up this summer. Friends were there for me at first, but they have quickly started encouraging me to move on and seem impatient when I say I'm still adjusting.

This is the person I thought I was going to marry! Doesn't that warrant a pretty substantial goodbye period?

Answer: There's no universal "goodbye period" that's right for everyone, and that does mean you can recover at your own pace. It's a big loss.

But that also means your friends can nurse your wounds at their pace, too. With a lot of friends, there's a statute of limitations on talking about it as if it just happened.

For those in the midst of a long recovery, that usually means reaching a point when you have to process most of your stuff on your time, and bring friends in only when you really need their help.

This isn't to say your friends are letting you down or failing to acknowledge the complexity of your grief; whether they're shirking or you're wallowing (or both, or neither) is impossible to say from your letter. Accept their limitations, and try framing your grief as a kind of emotional homework, where you ask for help only when you're stuck.

It may be, too, that you're asking your friends for help they're not trained to give. If you find you're not progressing, then please consider getting professional help, be it therapy, a grief support group, a depression screening - whatever your circumstances suggest.