When we lose someone we love, we expect to grieve that person but why would you grieve for someone who has hurt you or caused you untold misery?

When you’ve lived with an alcoholic, life is never normal and you learn to live in a state of anxiety. Will he/she have a drink, will he/she be in a good mood, what will put them in a bad mood? For most of us, it wasn’t always like that and it wasn’t like that every day. So when you move on to the next stage of your life don’t be surprised if you feel a sense of loss.

You were with a person for a good reason and it’s possible that maybe you still love them, but you almost certainly loved them once. It’s not surprising that when the relationship ends you experience a form of grieving.

You have to ask yourself why did you love that person and what was it about them that kept you in that relationship. If life had been bad all the time you wouldn’t have stayed,but stayed you did. So when you leave the alcoholic and move on, you expect life to get better immediately and certainly many things do change for the better.

I was downloading some old videos from my camera and putting them on my hard drive. There were so many of them and most of them were of my grandchildren but of course there were some of my partner and me in happier times. The pain of seeing us together doing the usual silly things that people do and the realisation that I had no idea at that time how my life would turn out, was unexpected. Why was I sad? Am I grieving the loss of my ‘good’ husband, the loss of a stable relationship or the loss of a life that I wanted but was never meant to be? If you too are grieving, accept it for what it is. If we don’t see the dark side, we can’t appreciate the light. By acknowledging that there were good times in the relationship will put you on the path to acceptance and forgiveness. Sometimes the grieving can take a little longer than expected, so just be patient, you will work through it.