I remember once stumbling across a book called It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken. Though I never read it, the title came back to me years later after a situationship ended and I was left feeling, well, broken. The problem was there was technically no “breakup” to be found. Had we stayed up until dawn talking and texted incessantly? Yes. But we’d never left the talking stage, let alone become social-media-official. And yet here I was, feeling like a pit had opened where my heart should have been. It felt illegitimate, like I had no right to hurt this way when nothing had actually happened, so I didn’t think it was worth bothering my friends with my feelings. I knew what they would say: “Just get over him already.” Nevertheless, it all felt painfully real.
I know I’m not alone in mourning a relationship—or potential relationship, even—that didn’t go anywhere. And yet we tend to minimize this grief because other people don’t seem to understand. After a divorce, soothing platitudes are plentiful; when a crush or short-term fling becomes a failure to launch, there’s less support to be had no matter how devastated you might feel. And it’s common enough that there’s a name for this phenomenon: disenfranchised grief.
“We have still formed a significant attachment which gives us feelings of connection,” says grief psychologist Bêne Otto, who has dedicated her practice to normalizing the grieving experience and helping society become more grief-literate. “When this is lost, we grieve the hopes that we had for the relationship; we grieve the path untraveled. This is incredibly painful.”
“I was desperate to talk about it. No one bothered to ask how I felt. No one knew what to say.”
So why is it called disenfranchised grief? “Grief becomes disenfranchised when the people around the griever deny them the right to grieve by failing to acknowledge the loss or by invalidating the grief,” Otto explains. People can experience disenfranchised grief for a number of reasons—the loss of a pet, the death of someone you hadn't been close to for some time, the ending of a friendship. And yes, failed relationships. The grief is real, regardless if people around you behave like it’s not.
“When people do not recognize your grief or invalidate and minimize your experience, they likely won’t understand your need for support,” Otto says.
Katie, 35, finds this all too relatable. After being rejected by a potential romantic partner, she felt like she had to go through the grief of getting over her crush completely alone: “The friends I told were supportive but brushed it aside, saying, ‘Let’s move on to my problems now because there’s nothing we can do about yours.’”
Luyanda, 19, experienced something similar. “When [my crush and I] stopped talking, I was hurt,” she says. “But it was hard to voice that because we were never official, and I felt like I would seem crazy or clingy. I was desperate to talk about it. No one bothered to ask how I felt. No one knew what to say. It made me feel terrible about bringing him up again.”
Courtney, 22, had a potential relationship end early due to bad timing and distance. “When I realized that it wasn’t going to work out, it hit like a ton of bricks,” she tells me. “You grieve even though it’s not something that came to fruition. A lot of people don’t understand that you can grieve things that you hoped would be.”
“People I thought were my best friends were like, ‘The two of you didn’t even date, why are you so upset?’
Owethu, 20, describes the isolation of going through disenfranchised grief as being the worst part. “I was left devastated for months,” Owethu says, after it became clear a prospective romance wasn’t going to happen. “People I thought were my best friends were like, ‘The two of you didn’t even date, why are you so upset?’ I felt very isolated because I disregarded my own hurt. The time and love that I had invested was still there. It was okay for me to mourn the loss of what could have been.”
So what can someone do to support themselves through disenfranchised grief in the absence of meaningful help from friends and family? Otto has some suggestions. “When faced with pain, we tend to minimize it for the comfort of the people around us,” she says. “Grief is a natural response to loss, and there is no right or wrong way to grieve. Give yourself permission to face your loss, feel the pain, and make space for grief.”
In terms of timing, Otto says it’s vital to go at your own pace. “You may feel pressure from others to ‘get over’ your grief as quickly as possible so as to ‘move on,’ but the reality very often does not work this way,” Otto says. “Be patient with yourself, take your time, and allow your grief to unfold and be expressed naturally.”
And don’t be afraid to seek help from a professional, like a grief-literate therapist, if your usual support system leaves something to be desired. “Ensure that you find a therapist who understands the losses and grief associated with unrealized relationships, who won’t trivialize your experience or pathologize your grief experience and who will not rush you,” Otto says.
Disenfranchised grief in relationships is an incredibly common occurrence, yet most of us who go through it feel alone and unjustified in seeking support from others. It’s time to cut ourselves a bit of slack. As Otto says, “Your thoughts, feelings, and experiences are real, valid, and normal. Allow them to be as they are, without judgment or criticism.”
Tayla Blaire is a lifestyle journalist based in South Africa.