For couples who have experienced the death of a child, the weight of individual grief can be complicated and even made heavier by the realization that each parent grieves differently. Not all couples grieve differently, but many do across age, gender and cultural lines.

The Biggest Myth about Couples and Child Loss

There is a pervasive and insidious myth that 90% of all bereaved parents’ marriages ended in divorce. This myth was based on a game of statistical telephone played between the behavioral health field and media and probably further perpetuated by movies and tv shows through the years. 

The most recent time this phenomenon was studied, in 2006, the divorce rate among bereaved couples was found to be closer to 16%. Even though we’ve debunked this myth, it doesn’t mean grief isn’t putting a lot of strain on your marriage. Grief is putting a lot of strain on everything, I know. Your grieving styles may be causing some of the strain: not the styles themselves, but the stories you each have about what those styles mean. 

Grieving Styles

Drs. Kenneth J. Doka and Terry Martin studied the ways in which people grieve and gave us this language to help us better understand each other. From their book Grieving Beyond Gender: 

Intuitive Grievers: tend to process and show their grief through connecting with and talking about their emotions and is often experienced as tidal waves of emotion

Instrumental Grievers: tend to process and show their grief through connecting with tasks, experiencing physical symptoms of grief, thinking about their loss and directing their grief toward ‘doing’ and ‘activity’

Blended Grievers: may move between intuitive and instrumental ways of grieving

It’s important to remember that our grieving styles may shift and change over time. Early in loss one person may need to connect with others and process emotions in relationship with others and later in loss may find their grief turn outward to tasks and meaningful activities. 

How Grieving Styles Can Impact Physical Intimacy

Grieving styles may also extend to physical intimacy, with some grievers feeling a surge of desire for physical closeness with their partner while others experience the loss of desire for physical intimacy. Both reactions are normal and yet, can bring additional complexity and challenge for couples. Normalizing our grieving styles and our changing needs and talking about them can be helpful. 

Common stories we might have about our partner’s grieving style 

The Instrumental griever’s grief could be thought of as an iceberg: you only see a small portion as the rest is out of sight. But it is there. And conversely, the intuitive griever’s grief is fully visible. 

Story One: My partner just isn’t dealing with the loss

Story Two: My partner’s emotions are so overwhelming that I feel helpless and hopeless and like a failure because nothing I do helps

Story Three: My partner didn’t care about our child as much as I did; they seem cold and distant

Story Four: My partner is just giving up and doesn’t care about our life or me anymore

A Case Study 

Important note: The following is a fictional case study, based on many different clients with whom I’ve worked over the years and does not contain any identifying details from any one client’s story. 

Ted and Leslie experienced the death of their 12 year old son, Ryan, in a drowning accident six months ago. In the early days and weeks after Ryan died, Ted was on the phone informing everyone who needed to know about Ryan’s death, making funeral arrangements, googling drowning accidents, thinking about what he could have done differently. He often lay awake at night and slept in spurts throughout the day. Often he would cry in the shower or alone in his car in the garage. He experienced back pain and chest pains out of nowhere and after having tests done by his PCP which found nothing abnormal, his Dr. talked with him about grief counseling. 

Leslie, on the other hand, couldn’t get out of bed in the early days and weeks after her son died. She couldn’t stop crying and if she did experience a moment of joy or peace, she judged herself harshly for it. She felt a deep need to connect with close friends and family in her grief. At first she was grateful for Ted’s ability to “stay strong” and take care of all the details around communicating their loss and planning for the funeral. But after the memorial and after all the family and friends went home, Leslie started to feel angry with her husband. How could he just get up and go to work or the gym? How could he pressure her to get out of bed when she was barely surviving. Why wasn’t he more upset? 

For his part, Ted felt intimidated by his wife’s grief: it was overwhelming. He didn’t know how to reach her in her grief and he felt a responsibility to keep his emotions “in check” so he could be there for Leslie. They both end up feeling so alone. In this fictional case study, Ted can probably be classified as an instrumental griever and Leslie as an intuitive griever. 

It’s tempting to say that intuitive grieving is the “right way” or the “healthy way” and instrumental grieving is maladaptive/unhealthy. But in reality, what is unhealthy are the stories we create about each others’ grieving and the things we leave uncommunicated about our grief. 

Leslie’s story about Ted might be that he didn’t care about their son as much as she did or that he is just emotionally cold. Ted’s story might be that he doesn’t know how to verbalize his emotions or that he feels his wife has just given up on living and he’s helpless to do anything for her. If they each buy into these stories about the others’ grief, they might start to react in increasingly unhelpful and unhealthy ways. Leslie might snap at Ted in her anger and belief that he doesn’t care enough. For Ted, the anger is coming out of nowhere and he’s taken aback. Ted might snap at Leslie out of the belief that she should be doing more to “feel better” which might leave her feeling unsupported and unseen in her grief. 

The reality is that both parents are doing the very best they can to process something TOO big and TOO terrible. The reality is that they both loved their son while he was alive and will continue to love him for the rest of their lives. They both have to find a way to create a new relationship with Ryan and a new relationship with each other. 

A Note About Anger

It’s normal and understandable that you might become angry with your partner and that doesn’t mean the relationship is failing. Anger is often fueled by hurt due to misunderstanding or to feeling misunderstood. 

Making Connections and Taking the Next Step

If you are already making connections about you and your partner’s grieving styles and the stories you might have created about each other’s grief, I’m so glad. Take a few minutes now before moving on to the next section of this post and write down some of the stories you have about each other’s grief. How have these stories impacted your feelings toward your partner? Your behavior toward your partner? 

If you notice that you and your partner are feeling stuck in your ability to understand or communicate about your grieving styles, this might be a good time to reach out to a grief-informed couple’s counselor. A professional couple’s counselor is trained to create the safety needed for couples to connect in their grief.