I’ve come to feel that sometimes, some of the loss of a relationship is not just about the person, or the attachment, or about the life you’ve created, but can also be about who you are becoming. There are times when we connect with someone in a way that allows us to experience ourselves in new ways. Ways that are exciting and blossoming. Even though this is an experience which is inside of oursleves, we associate it with the other because their presence is helping us embody it. If that relationship ends before we fully integrate those new parts of ourselves, then we dont just lose the person, we also fear (and even prematurely grieve) the loss of that part of ourselves. We are devastated to think we will never become that person who has that experience of self and life.

If this is the case, then it’s really helpful to think about who we want to become and how we can cultivate the experience without them. Of course we might still mourn the loss of the person, but we wont have to grieve the parts of ourselves we fear we will never have/become.