Background: Eleven years ago, I was engaged. We set a date. I got a dress. We made plans. And then my fiancé died.
I’ve written about it on here before in more detail, but somehow it feels like someone is both punching you in the heart and trying to yank your guts out of your mouth. It is awful. I would not wish it on anyone.
And today is the 10th anniversary of the date we had set. 15th December 2015.
I woke up this morning, read some of the comments on a post about him, and cried. I thought about him, and cried. It hurts red raw again and I don’t know how to make it stop. I have to go out for dinner with my in-laws in two hours, and soon I have to start getting ready to go. We’re going to look at mementos and old photos and tell stories. It’s meant to be fun.
Frankly, I feel more like vomiting.
I’m exhausted. I don’t know why. Every part of my body feels like it weighs a ton. All I want to do is go to bed and cry but I have to go, and I can’t cry there because I’ll ruin my makeup and upset my in-laws, as well as causing ANOTHER scene.
I’m so tired.
I miss him.
You’re allowed to feel this way. You don’t have to force yourself to go to dinner, I’m sure your in-law’s will understand. Why don’t you take a day to yourself and grieve in peace. Remember him and all your happy moments. Cry because you’ve lost things you didn’t plan to lose.
I’m so sorry you’re going through this baby. Sending you loads of hugs and warmth. 🌷
I do have to go. I’ve been saving for six months to take them to the nicest restaurant in town. They’re both so excited about it. They’d looked in before but never thought it was for “people like them”. I can’t let them down. They lost their only son because of me.
Ditch that last sentence! I am sure none of this is your fault! Treat them in your fiance's memory if you would like, but don't feel like you have to and don't feel guilty.
I do though. I should have known he needed me and been there for him.
Hey! The man I was going to marry also died because I wasn’t home, but his was due to an overdose. I understand the guilt of feeling like you should’ve been there, but there’s nothing you could’ve done. If it wasn’t this time, it’d be next time. You can’t control others
I know I just miss him so much
I understand
It’s really really hard to find people who do
If you ever want to chat my dms are open
Thank you so much, I always feel so awkward messaging people without being invited to because it feels kind of like how it would be if you were sat alone at a cafe and a random stranger sat down and said “Hey. ‘Sup.”😂
Gently, what do you mean by your last sentence here? Unless you willingly pulled a trigger you cannot hold this kind of responsibility and guilt.
Basically I got a job/grad programme at New York University. I’m Irish. He was meant to come with me. I got a visa. He got a five-year exclusion order from the United States. I promised to come home to visit. I didn’t realise how much he missed me. One day on our daily call he said “I’m so excited to see you at Christmas” and I said “oh, I thought I might stay here this break and see NYC in Christmastime because I’ve always wanted to, but I’ll still be home for spring break!”
He hung up. I assumed he was sulking. I let him be. I gave him space. And then two days later I walk into the reception of my college and his aunt from Boston and the dean of the school are there asking can they have a quiet word.
All because I wanted to see New York dressed up for fucking Christmastime.
If you really think this is your fault then it’s probably time for some therapy. He obviously had much bigger mental health problems than a than realized. If it hadn’t been you not coming home for Christmas, it would’ve been something else. It’s not your fault and no one should be blaming you for it. But you should be seeking help to deal with your guilt.
I’m on the waiting list at the moment, it’s just really long in my country
As a mental health professional, I am telling you that his death isn’t your fault.
I'll bite: how is it your fault?
Basically I got a job/grad programme at New York University. I’m Irish. He was meant to come with me. I got a visa. He got a five-year exclusion order from the United States. I promised to come home to visit. I didn’t realise how much he missed me. One day on our daily call he said “I’m so excited to see you at Christmas” and I said “oh, I thought I might stay here this break and see NYC in Christmastime because I’ve always wanted to, but I’ll still be home for spring break!”
He hung up. I assumed he was sulking. I let him be. I gave him space. And then two days later I walk into the reception of my college and his aunt from Boston and the dean of the school are there asking can they have a quiet word.
All because I wanted to see New York dressed up for fucking Christmastime.
I’m sorry to be so blunt, but he killed himself because he couldn’t see you at Christmas?
That is extremely tragic that he passed but my god, he burdened you with trauma and guilt that you are in no way responsible for. You don’t have to be indebted to his parents and his memory because you think you’re responsible for this. You are NOT.
He was extremely selfish to burden you with the responsibility of supporting his mental health and sanity. If he was so fragile that he couldn’t wait a few more months for spring break, that was not your job to fix. He committed the ultimate cruelest, manipulative act that will forever haunt you, if you continue to allow it.
You were allowed to want to explore your new city. You were allowed to be independent and have new experiences without him. If you had gone back home, would there have been other acts of manipulation and control? Would you have been forever trapped to cater his emotions and feelings? I’m only making these comments based on a tiny observation you’ve provided with us here, but you not coming home for Christmas and him killing himself over that was not normal and not a symptom of a healthy, normal man.
I hope his parents don’t hold his decision over your head like you owe them. I hope you can find happiness in a relationship that is healthy and balanced. I’m sorry you are so depressed and sad but you cannot forever hold your happiness and life hostage over the memory of someone who did something so terrible for which you are 100% not responsible.
No. He had a very difficult life too. We both grew up during the civil war in the North of Ireland but he had it much worse because he was four years older and the son of a (political group) family which were repeatedly targeted by the British Army. Once when he was about five he came downstairs in his Batman pyjamas after being woken at 3am by his mother screaming there was only we’ens in the house, wrapped in a sheet, as his father fled buck-ass nude in the dark across the fields into County Louth in the South.
Anyway, one of the soldiers laughed, jokingly pointed his gun at him, and said “kill the kid now, or wait ten years?” And that’s when his mother knocked the soldier out cold with the coal scuttle, yelling at Sean to run upstairs and mind his sisters because he was the man of the house (mostly because she didn’t want him to see her carried and thrown naked into the back of an armoured van.)
He had pretty bad PTSD.
Hi lovely, I dated a lad from Lurgan who his dad was from one of those families too and he had very very bad mental health issues from that and the loss of his mother as a tween. I have seen first hand what the PTSD is like for them (and this is relevant) but I have my own flavours of PTSD from other things in my childhood and early adulthood. I moved over there to be with him (and went to Queens) when I was 17. Even with me being there he would crumble and deteriorate whenever he didn’t feel in control of situations due to what happened when he was young. I’m saying this because I want to try and give you a different view too. I stayed with my ex for many years and I tried so hard to make it work but he got so much more unstable in our interactions that I eventually had to leave.
What happened in Northern Ireland blew my mind especially seeing the peace walls and the maze prison for the first time and the sheer bunkers that the police stations were.
You aren’t responsible for the choice he made and it’s ok to wonder what ifs but you should seek grief counselling and trauma therapy. Wit PTSD (which I think when you see someone is likely to be what they say based on what you’ve said) the best success I ever had was with a type of therapy called EMDR. Please consider looking into it, it’s especially helpful with trauma.
You don’t deserve to blame yourself forever OP. He could have told you he needed to see you. He should have communicated with you. He didn’t and has burdened you with a lifetime of pain. You don’t deserve this.
I definitely have some PTSD and lasting issues from the war. I was a Westie, so avoided most of the interface trouble there was in Belfast because it’s just such a sprawling Catholic area, and Sean was from Cullyhanna in South Armagh, near Crossmaglen. We did still have the wee bombs though, and the big Saracens, and the soldiers, and of course we were ‘accidentally’ killed all the time, so it wasn’t the best. There were huge riots all over shortly after I was born so my mother and father moved me into the bed between them that night and stayed awake listening for trouble.
I think one of the best things to happen to the North actually is the creation of the show “Derry Girls”. The Falls is very like Erin’s part of Derry (the Bogside/Creggan.) It shows actual life carrying on amid the sheer lunacy and without actually doing so asks “hey, what is this shite?” It shows the reality of it. I remember I’d be sitting watching a TV show - say Father Ted - and it’d abruptly cut in with “There has been a bomb on X Street in Belfast. Keyholders, please check your premises.” And then it’s Father Ted again a split second later. A child. That phrase is going to be imprinted on my brain for life.
It still feels unreal to me how much it wasn’t in the media in Canada even growing up. Like when I went there for the first time I think it was 2002? So just after the Good Friday ageeemenr and the walls were still up and the horrific sniper mural was up at the end of Ormeau Rd in the Falls. I moved in 2006 though so several years later.
But the fact there were segregations at that scale and viciousness has never been something I can in my heart understand. My mums side of the family is English and Dutch and my dads side is Scottish and Irish (I’m first and second generation respectively to either of them so for my mums side I’m first to be not born in the UK). I live in England now but I don’t think I ever have thought highly of the English after what I saw in Belfast in the early 2000s.
My exes family was in Lurgan and Craigavon and the ones in Lurgan were literally right across the street from Taghnaven where all the murals of the hunger strikers are painted into what I think were council house rows but might have just been ugly buildings lol.
A black cabbie took me on a bit of an adventure my fist Christmas over there and gave me a full tour of Belfast and showed me all the stuff and was casually pointing out oh that there is where as a wee lad I threw a stone at a Black and Tan and they shot me with a rubber bullet from atop the wall. Just like it was a completely normal story to tell. I was quite sheltered and naive and just horrified (still am lol).
My first July there I didn’t know about the marches and was unprepared for the barricades and the bombs on the railroad tracks.
I write all this and yet the people I met in Northern Ireland are some of the most incredible people in the entire world. I am still very close with all my uni friends and go back as often as I can. What was done there is horrifying in an extreme way and the legacy of pain and harm is still ticking in our generation who were kids when it “finished”. He didn’t deserve what happened to him and neither did you or anyone who lived through it.
On the flip side it’s interesting the legacy it’s left on English side. I live in Manchester now and my partner is half Irish half English and his mum had actually taken him shopping to a mall in the bang centre of Manchester in the 1990s and she couldn’t park where she normally do because of a big van blocking the only easy pop in and out parking spot on the road there. So she went around the other side directly opposite and nipped into the Arndale leaving young him in the car for a few minutes. That’s when the explosion went off. The van that blocked the parking was the one that exploded. The sheer luck she went around the other side of the building and thus she and he were ok is wild to me. But that and the constant bombs in public waste bins means there are almost no rubbish bins in Manchester which these days can be infuriating lol.
I just want to stress again though that he deserved help but he had to seek it for himself. If you had known how bad he felt and managed to force him into therapy or doctors, unless he was ready and open to receiving help it wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. It was his choice and responsibility to not communicate his needs to you. And it’s your responsibility now to get help too. Because you sound like the sweetest person from your post and honestly you deserve to find the joy in life and happiness and adventure and peace too.
Also total aside: I’ve never watched Derry Girls but I am going to add it to my next playing list.
And if you ever want to chat to someone who can’t be biased because they don’t know finer details of the situation. Sort of like venting to the void. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. I really am happy to be an ear.
Thanks, I appreciate that! It’s rare to find another who gets it really!
hi, it sounds like you have been holding on to this guilt very tightly for a long time, and I'm sorry about that.
unequivocally, this is not your fault. it's no one's fault, he was ill
would he want you to be living your life this way after more than ten years?
I think you deserve to forgive yourself, be kind to yourself
It might take a while, it took me eleven years to progress from depression to anger in the grieving process (managed it three months ago finally)
You’re such a kind person. Would you maybe be able to postpone the date for dinner instead? Maybe do it on a day when your heart isn’t feeling this heavy?
I don’t know the details, but I really hope that someday you won’t blame yourself. I don’t pray a lot but tonight, I’ll pray just for you. You deserve peace.
No, today is a special day. I can’t let them down.
Basically I got a job/grad programme at New York University. I’m Irish. He was meant to come with me. I got a visa. He got a five-year exclusion order from the United States. I promised to come home to visit. I didn’t realise how much he missed me. One day on our daily call he said “I’m so excited to see you at Christmas” and I said “oh, I thought I might stay here this break and see NYC in Christmastime because I’ve always wanted to, but I’ll still be home for spring break!”
He hung up. I assumed he was sulking. I let him be. I gave him space. And then two days later I walk into the reception of my college and his aunt from Boston and the dean of the school are there asking can they have a quiet word.
All because I wanted to see New York dressed up for fucking Christmastime.
Oh baby. This is not your fault at all. As someone who has been in extensive therapy for years, I can tell you for sure that it’s never one reason. There must have been a lot of other reasons why he decided to take that path. I promise you that this is not on you.
I know I’m just a stranger on the internet to you so you have no reason to believe my words but I hope that someday you can see this yourself.
Loving someone doesn’t make you responsible for how the world treated them. What happened was unfortunate and I know you would do anything in the world to go back and change it. You loved him. You probably saved him without realizing it. Please give yourself credit for that.
🫂
That’s the thing though, is that actually he saved me. My engagement ring has pieces of blue diamond in the design because he always used to joke that he was my Jack and I was his Rose, since it was my go-to weepy and the actual ship was built in our city. He meant it in terms of “the farmer’s son corrupting the posh girl.”
Actually, it was true in the sense that he woke me up and saved me from a life I had been pushed into for so long that I didn’t even realise that it wasn’t what I wanted.
Would he want you to be stuck again, as you are now? I know grief is hard and it is complicated, but would he honestly want this for you? To be burdened like this for so long? Hopefully this post can be another wake up out of this as well. *big hugs through the screen
If you’re all that excited about it, then by all means go! He would want you all to be happy.
Have you opened up to your in-laws about how you are feeling? They probably feel similarly, but in a different way. You might be able to find solace in each other.
That’s why I thought meeting up tonight would be a good idea
I am so so so sorry for your unimaginable loss. I got married in November 2015 and the thought of grieving not only my partner, but the future we should have had…I have no words.
Sending as much love to you as an internet stranger can.
Thanks. I really appreciate that
I'm so sorry. I hope you find happiness.
I already found it once, I’m not sure you get another one
You can get another second chance at happiness. I went through something similar 10 years ago (a little more - date of death was 9/11/2015). Boyfriend (found out his parents considered me his fiancée) ultimately killed himself. Not directly but he had a heart condition and I found out that he wasn’t taking his meds. I carried guilt for a long while - I should have figured it out and forced him to take the meds. I was young and dumb, but it wasn’t my fault. He was already giving up, had likely done so before we met - he didn’t take his meds for a long long time. He ultimately made the choices every day that ended his life in the end. But you can process it, I promise. I celebrated my one year anniversary this past weekend. I now have a wonderful husband who has made room not just for me, but also for my other love and my loss. Please seek therapy and be kinder to yourself. I’m sending you love and courage!
I’m on the waitlist for therapy but it is really, REALLY long in my country.
Hey. Widow here. My husband died in a super weird way (anaphylactic shock after a bee sting on his lip) in June 2022. We have two kids. Had been together for 19 years. I miss him every single day and I have found happiness in a new love. It’s not the same as it was with my husband and it’s not a replacement, but it’s good and healing in its own way. Much love to you today.
Thanks, I appreciate it
You can get a 2nd chance! One of my friends lost her new husband (less than 6 months married) on new years eve. It was a freak heart attack no one could have known about or saved him from once it happened. But she found someone new eventually. He is great and they have several kids now. There is always grief that comes up, sometimes by surprise, but life does get better and others can be out there for you.
I asked a question about it once on AskMen. A lot of them seemed weirded out by it.
💔 I'm so sorry.
I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way. Grief is so heavy, and anniversaries like this can make everything feel so raw. Take it one step at a time, and don’t be hard on yourself for how you’re feeling. If you ever need someone to listen, I’m here for you. You’ve got this, even when it feels like too much.
I thought I did got this but now it’s like it’s happened all over again, we should be going out TOGETHER this evening…
I know you love and miss him. I know you're still grieving and may always do so. Acknowledging that doesn't change the fact that he made a very selfish, very cruel CHOICE that continues to impact you and his parents 10 years later. It was HIS action and HIS alone that cause you and his family to suffer to this very day. Let go of the guilt. It's not your fault. Celebrate the person you love but don't martyr yourself another minute.
I hate the holidays so much because of past trauma that I flare up with my crohn's and have to be hospitalized! So many Xmas, mother's days spent in surgery at the ER. I joke with my docs that I'm very in touch with my trauma and it comes out every 6 months in the form of a painful abscess on my ass that has to be drained in an ER. OH WHAT FUCKING JOY IT IS! Sending commiserating love to you.