I just met with a man who recently lost his wife. They had a long, successful, and enduring marriage but she contracted a debilitating disease that dominated their lives for nearly a decade as she deteriorated in physical condition. This meant that the man felt compelled, both by love and by necessity, to be the caretaker of his wife, including many essentials of life. Thus, his life was dominated by caretaking activity or worry about her welfare when it was required to leave the house for some reason. The wife had a fall at home that required a brief ER visit and then in hospice for a couple of days. Her death came somewhat as a surprise after the wife seemingly having gained some success in ambulation and general physical health. It came as a shock to him when he got a call at 4 AM that his wife had passed. It was one of those rare nights when he chose to go home and catch a few winks of sleep before he returned to the hospice care center where she had been for a couple of days.

I had seen the couple in therapy for nearly a year trying to help them come to terms with their respective challenges. Some of my work with them was to help them admit that this situation was simply “difficult,” and occasionally awful, but for the most part, they were surviving, if not thriving. When I met with the man, within a few days of her passing, he was in an understandably difficult state of mind. As is the essence of good therapy, I encouraged him to speak his “feelings,” reminding him that when a person expresses feelings in words, the words are approximate at best and sometimes paradoxical or even contradictory. Over the hour I had with this man, he said that he felt “guilty” about some of his feelings. He admitted that he felt relieved that his wife had died, but feeling this, thinking this, and speaking this seemed wrong. At the same time, within the same hour, he said that he “would give his left arm” if he could just have one more day of life with his wife.

I suggested that he felt the combination of grief and relief. Understandably, he said that he can’t have both of these feelings because they were contradictory: either he felt grief or relief. I suggested that, indeed, he felt both of these feelings. Then we talked about each of these “feelings,” reminding him that the words were approximate and paradoxical but both feelings were real. Furthermore, both of these feelings were love-based, however odd that sounds. He loved his wife, which led to his grief together with his wish that he could be with her one more day. He smiled when he even thought of being with his wife for one more day and talked about what he would do, what she would do, and what they might do together. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what these activities might be. I think that if I had just one last day with Deb, she would most certainly be in her greenhouse planting and watering, I would play a great game of basketball, and we would take a quick flight to Europe. This would be the love-part of the grieving process, namely have loving kind thoughts of the lost partner. Grief is always love-based, albeit the sad part of love. When we grieve, or feel sad in any case, we have lost something that we love. People who allow themselves to grieve the loss of a loved one began to have a forum of thinking and feeling that is essentially nostalgia, namely remembering the love that they had with their partners.

When I feel nostalgia, I feel a combination of joy and sorrow. Joy and sorrow are the two emotional ingredients of love: I feel joy when I have something that I love (or value); I feel sorrow when I lost this thing. If a person can allow him/herself to feel sadness when they are grieving, and allow this sadness to run a course, the sadness will end and be replaced with nostalgia. Think of something that you loved and lost, whether person, property, or idea. You might find yourself “emotional,” which means tearful. These tears are a combination of joy (of having had something) and sadness at having lost this something. This is the grieving part of “grief and relief.”

The relief part of losing someone (or something) that I love is, quite simply, self-love. This man was relieved that he didn’t have to be watching after his wife 24/7, take care of very personal matters in personal care, and otherwise spend time worrying about her welfare, often at his own detriment. One of the reasons the couple came to see me was the fact that they had fallen into irritation with each other, almost always having to do with the medically-based challenges the wife had. The man was relieved that he didn’t have to caretake and worry. He could rest. He could sleep. He could go for a walk. He could love himself in these ways. The relief part of the grief and relief program is that you can take care of yourself, whether that is indulging in some comfort food, playing Sudoku, or watching some program on TV, perhaps even something that you spouse didn’t like.

Understandably, the man felt “guilty” about having such feelings, but he didn’t actually feel guilty in the true sense of the term. He felt shame. Guilt, real guilt, is the feeling that I have done something that was hurtful or harmful to someone else. The emotion associated with guilt is sadness. I feel sad because of my behavior. The good thing about (real) guilt is that it runs a course the way all sadness runs a course, and it ends. When it ends, I am a better person because I see what I said or did and see the effects of my actions. Then, I can have a better knowledge of myself and improve myself in the future. In other words, guilt makes me a better person, if a bit humbler. What the man really felt when he said he felt “guilty,” was shame. Shame is not sadness-based. It is fear-based. Specifically, I am afraid of what I look like to other people and how they might think I’ll of me. Shame is never valuable. More importantly, shame is the feeling that there is something wrong with me, not just what I did. Shame always is fear-based and it always leads to hiding in some way. Shame does not make me a better person because I can’t improve myself if I am a bad person at my basis. So, while the man said that he felt guilty, he actually felt shame, which means it seemed that this feeling suggested that there was something wrong with him, and that if other people knew of his feelings of relief, they would think I’ll of him. Simply put, guilt is good for me and shame is bad for me. Guilt makes me look at what I did and improve, while shame makes me feel that there is something intrinsically bad about me, and I hide. I get a chance to improve with guilt. I get no such chance when I hide with shame.

Many people have these paradoxical feelings of grief and relief when someone has died, but it is often difficult for them to admit to both of these feelings because one seems normal and the other seems pathological or selfish. Other people who come to mind who have had the paradoxical feelings of grief and relief include:

• A man who was quite relieved that his sister had died, largely because he had received a series of verbal assaults from her over their years. In this case the relief was much larger than the grief although after he felt relief for a while, he began to find the grief that led him towards feeling nostalgia.
• A man who feels both grief and relief that his wife lived after an excruciating medical procedure that nearly killed her. As a result, the wife is yet quite incapacitated in daily life requiring a good bit of daily care. He is relieved that she is alive, but paradoxically, he is grieved that he has to continue to manage his medical condition. She also felt “guilty” for having these feelings, namely the feeling of grief that he was still alive. It was even harder for her to speak these paradoxical feelings than the man who lost his wife. Understandably, it seemed wrong that she was sort of disappointed that he didn’t die while being glad that he was alive.
• In another couple that I see the woman had a stroke, which then led to his being told to “get ready for long-term dementia care” because the doctor concluded that his wife wouldn’t recover. While both man and wife were retired professionals and had a modest income, the thought of pouring mega-dollars into long-term care scared her. He was scared of having to put their house up for sale to pay the cost of his wife’s care. He was relieved that that she would not only survive but also return to normal living, speaking, and living. Yet at the same time, he was disappointed (grieved) that his wife didn’t actually die. How odd is this? Did she wish that he would have died? Certainly not. She just was feeling such grief thinking of months or years of living with someone who was increasingly suffering dementia, that he would much rather have had good memories of their good marriage. Grief and relief can be complicated.
• I know of a man whose daughter died some time ago. She was always difficult to live with and watch as she floundered in life. Now that she has died, he is pretty stuck with the feelings of grief and relief, not being able to admit to both of these feelings. He wishes she were alive, and he is glad that he doesn’t have to put up with her difficulties that seemed never to end.

This has been a monologue about grief and relief with people dying or possibly dying together with the paradoxical feelings of grief and relief. There are many other examples that come to mind from my life or from the lives of people I have known that have essentially the same paradoxical feelings:

• A man who is glad that his house burned down. It had been a labor of love, a labor that was never done, a labor that was never finished. He had the odd feeling of relief of losing the house of his dreams because he could never seem to actually live in the house of his dreams.
• A couple who had gone through a number of IVF procedures trying to get pregnant, all without success, until they finally conceived and eventually gave birth to healthy twins. My work with them was to help them grieve these many losses, most of it before they successfully conceived, and then to feel the joy, the relief, of having twins after so much trial and tribulation.
• A man who has been in a stable but unsuccessful marriage for 30 years but had a crush on a woman who seemed to be the woman of his dreams for years but not able to find a way to end his marriage and marry his love. She found someone else in the meantime, which was grievous to him but he also saw that this woman was not the perfect woman at all. Rather, she became quite needy and dependent on her new relationship, which caused the new guy to be overwhelmed with her neediness. My friend was relieved that he didn’t marry her but also grieved that he hadn’t married her. It seemed odd to him that he could still love this woman, who now seemed quite inadequate as a partner, and be glad (relieved) that he wasn’t with her.
• On a personal note, I feel grief and relief that I didn’t marry the “love of my life” when I was 22. Rather, I chose a different path. I can look back at this mistake in my life and feel grief and relief. The grieving part of me is that I didn’t have a life with this woman. The relieving part of my life is that I have a very good life with my wife.

Consider the grief and relief in your life. Both grief and relief are love problems.