Grief and Polyamory: Navigating Loss, Change, and Relationship Shifts
Grief is challenging; it can bring up old frustrations and vulnerabilities. Grief that stems from the loss of loved ones can involve hard conversations and spending time with family members who may not know or understand your relationships or relationship structure. Besides the feelings that the loss itself brings up, there can be complicated dynamics and conversations. Questions may come up that are difficult to answer: can I bring multiple partners to the funeral? If that feels unsafe, how can I decide who to bring? Funerals or memorial services may not be the best time to tell your family members that you are polyamorous so how do you navigate even the most basic tasks like attending a memorial service? These questions don’t have easy answers, and having to navigate them while grieving can feel overwhelming and isolating.
How Grief Can Shift Values and Relationship Needs in Polyamory
Grief is a natural human experience but it can make you feel deeply uprooted and uncomfortable with your life. It is common to make huge life changes or be focused on goals that didn’t seem important before; grief may reorient your priorities. You may find yourself needing to know what childrearing would look like for you and your partners, or feel like you need commitments or autonomy that have not been important to you before. As life moves forward, your partners may have less patience or may become less attuned to how tender you still feel — sometimes without realizing it. This may feel like a betrayal if you are still in the depths of grief. Grief is hard for some people to witness so one of your partners may have pulled away without consciously realizing it. You may have found yourself relying heavily on the partner who has been introduced to your family leaving your other partner(s) feeling snubbed or left out of your grief experience.
Working through these complexities can bring you and your partners closer and increase the potential for vulnerability in your relationships. It can also change you in a way that emphasizes the incompatibilities with your partner and leads you to change or end the relationship. Neither of these options is better than the other. There is even a term for these experiences: secondary losses. However, figuring out how you or your relationships have changed due to grief can be confusing and complicated. Below is a breakdown of the steps you could work through in session (individual, couples or group) to help navigate the unique challenges of navigating grief and loss while polyamorous.
In therapy (individual, couples, or polycule sessions), we often explore grief and relationship shifts through themes like the following:
- Processing emotions related to initial grief event
- Recognizing any shifts in values or goals due to grief event
- Understanding any changes or shifts that are necessary to uphold new values
- Facing consequences of grief in relationships (both positive and negative)
- Communicate feelings, values, and changes with partners
- Collaborate with partners to implement changes and shifts
This is not to be taken as a step-by-step guide since there will be many moments of repeating steps or moving back to the beginning as grief is further processed. However, this structure can give some insight into how emotions can be processed to be able to take actionable steps in your relationships. As you gain skills to recognize your own emotions around your grief experience, you become more able to listen to how your grief has affected your partners. This then gives you and your partners the opportunity to recognize how the needs and goals for your relationship may have changed, which in turn gives you the opportunity to make those changes.
Grief can shut people down and close them off from their loved ones. It can also be a great teacher and motivator for deep and lasting change. By working through your experience in session with or without your partners, you will gain skills to not only recognize your emotional experience but begin to understand how this experience has shifted your values and beliefs. Even a small shift in values or goals can have a huge impact on your relationships. Perhaps you want to dedicate more time to creative pursuits, which would affect the time you have to spend with your partners. Perhaps you learned that you no longer want to live alone and need to have conversations with your partners about shifting the living dynamics. Perhaps you want to travel more and need to renegotiate coparenting children or pets. Perhaps you decided that you don’t want kids and need to rethink being nesting partners with someone who knows that they will want to have kids. What feels different about your needs, priorities, or sense of safety since your loss?
In my work, I focus on collaboration, consent, and compassion, creating space to explore grief and relationship changes without pressure to rush clarity or resolution.
These types of changes can bring up difficult feelings and lead to conflict with partners. In session, I support clients in remaining compassionate with themselves and their partners while balancing conflicting goals or values. Navigating the deep changes of grief with multiple partners is understandably complicated, but with the right support, it’s possible to become clearer about your own needs and goals while remaining open and collaborative in your relationships.
If you are navigating grief within a polyamorous relationship or polycule and are looking for a therapy space that understands non-monogamy without requiring explanation, you’re welcome to reach out for a consultation.
Grief is never easy, but you don’t have to navigate it alone. If you are navigating grief within a polyamorous relationship or polycule and are looking for a therapy space that understands non-monogamy without requiring explanation, you’re welcome to reach out to Annarose for a consultation.