Broken Promises

Dear Coach Fabulous

I am wracked between sympathy and self-pity... some say selfishness. I was supposed to be getting married on 23rd December.

To cut a long story short, his father, aged 81, has been in and out of hospital for the last 30 years. In September I got a gut instinct that something was going to happen and talked it over with my fiancée. He gave me a huge bear hug and said that, no matter what, he promised he would be at my side at the wedding.

On 28th October, his dad was admitted to hospital with breathing problems. That night a cousin of my fiancée’s phoned him and asked 'what about the wedding?' to which my fiancée said 'cancelled’. On 5th November his dad passed away.

I have been left to phone/write letters/pay off deposits/loss adjustor/solicitor for the wedding on my own, whilst he, understandably, with brothers and cousins has dealt with his father's death. I was asked to cater for the family do after the funeral, and quite a few others I was asked to do along the way.

Now I am told that there is to be a big 'family' Christmas to which I am not invited ... as apparently I am not family. Yet I still have a date, 23rd December, to try and get through on my own. My fiancée just tells me to stop brooding and get over it. I can't – I hurt. Am I really being selfish?

Confused


Dear Confused

The short answer is no, you are not being selfish. An enormously important and symbolic day for you and your partner is now on hold, despite earlier assurances that it would go ahead, no matter what. But it’s not even really about the day, is it? It’s a step into a deeper level of commitment within your relationship that has now been thrown into limbo. While you’re struggling to deal with your own disappointment and confusion about what this might mean for your future together, you’re busy supporting everyone else, and there seems to be precious little recognition of how much you’ve had to cope with. To top it off, being excluded from the family Christmas celebration must seem like adding insult to injury.

What is so difficult about the circumstances you’re faced with is that you’re dealing with a partner and a family who are grieving. People express grief in so many different ways and some of them are far more intense and difficult to navigate than you may have expected. Often those who are grieving can become very angry or difficult to deal with and generally even those who are normally very thoughtful people can find bereavement so all-consuming that they can’t see beyond their own pain to notice what is going on with anyone else.

Also, the death of a loved one – even when expected – still takes us by surprise in ways we cannot have comprehended. Your partner may have thought that his father’s long illness would have prepared him for the inevitable, but having to face his death in reality – and all the emotions that that raises – will still have come as an enormous shock, from which he is no doubt still reeling. That may go some way to helping you understand why he could have said to you beforehand, quite logically, that the wedding would go ahead regardless, but once he had become enmeshed in grief then his feelings changed about what was appropriate.

I feel for you tremendously, because you’re going through your own grieving process about the cancellation of your wedding and yet it’s as though you’re not even allowed to express how you feel, because everyone else’s grief is taking precedence. I imagine that the comments about ‘selfishness’ are coming from the family, who cannot currently see beyond their own experience of pain, and they are in effect invalidating your feelings. Even though you might logically comprehend why they seem incapable of understanding your disappointment, that doesn’t stop the further feelings of isolation and hurt caused by their failure to recognise that you have your own, valid grief. The one person you would have expected to be supportive – your partner – is so lost in his own pain that he’s just telling you to get on with it as though it were no big deal. The most important thing for you to remember right now is that his unsupportive behaviour is probably more a reflection of his grieving process than a true indication of how he feels about you and your relationship.

You have a tricky road to travel in the coming months, as you try to juggle your own feelings with his grief and presumably unintentional insensitivity. I’m not saying you can’t ask for his support, but I do think that you probably can’t expect a lot in the way of understanding from him for the minute, as the grief is still very fresh. If it continues this way in the long run, then you will need to face up to whether you want to be in a relationship (and a family) where your feelings are not considered valid, but hopefully this is temporary glitch.

If you can’t be honest about how you feel and get support at home, then make sure you are able to talk deeply about your very real disappointment and pain with a close and trusted friend, who will give you the support and validation you need. It’s not selfish to be sad about losing out on a wedding you’d obviously planned for some time or to be feeling let down by a partner who can’t or won’t see that you’re suffering too in your own way.

Then, of course, there’s the wedding date to be faced. For this, firstly make sure that you’ve had a good chance to unload about how you feel with a good friend. None of your feelings are unacceptable, selfish or wrong – they’re just normal under the circumstances, but they’ve been shoved aside in favour of everyone else’s grief over the loss of your partner’s father and you’ve been made to feel that it’s not OK to have them. When you’re feeling a bit less emotionally strained, talk to your partner about how you’d like to take that day to do something special together. Remind him how much you love him and that your wedding date is always going to be special to you, whether there’s a ceremony or not, so you’d like to honour that in some way. Try to find a way to mark the day with some time to yourselves, perhaps get away if you can, to reconnect more deeply. You might even want to consider doing a little something that honours his father too, so that you’re drawing more closely together in this period of grieving.

At some point you will quite reasonably want to know when you’ll be setting a new date for the wedding, but now may not be the time. While the grieving in the family is still so intense, you’re being called upon to be the strong one, even though that may feel terribly hard to handle. Pick your moment, too, to have a discussion about the family Christmas. It’s not only hurtful to be excluded in that way, but this would have been your first Christmas together as a married couple, so to be separated from your partner over the festive season will be even harder to handle. Again, when you’ve had a chance to talk to a supportive friend about your feelings, try raising it gently with your partner about how much you would like to spend Christmas together and see if you can create a compromise that honours your relationship and his need to be with his family.

You’ve coped amazingly well so far, so don’t undermine yourself by thinking that you’re selfish for feeling the way that you do. Anyone would be disappointed and hurt under the circumstances and just because someone else is grieving, it doesn’t mean that your feelings don’t count. Find support where you can with your own friends and family in the meantime and work gently with your partner to start building your future together again.


Coach Fabulous

If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email CoachFabulousCo@aol.com and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2006 Alison Porter