Ask Julia: Why Does What I Never Said Still Hurt So Much?
When your partner dies and the relationship was complicated, the chance to put things right goes with them. Why regret and guilt hurt so much, and how to work with them rather than trying to tidy them away.
Written by
Julia Samuel MBE
In this article
Key takeaways
- When someone dies, the chance to go back and put things right goes too. That's why the unsaid can hurt so much.
- You may feel guilty for what you didn't say or do, and also hurt by how they treated you. Both can be true.
- There's no neat comfort for this. The relationship was what it was.
- My one tip: stop trying to control or tidy up the feelings. Face the relationship as it really was, and write to them.
- Self-compassion is what makes this bearable over time.
Watch Julia answer
Read the full conversation
Interviewer: Often we have complicated relationships with our loved ones and when someone dies we wish we'd treat them a different way. Either we wish we'd spent more time with them or we'd just treat them in a better manner. And how do you comfort someone who does have that feeling of guilt that they could have done things in a different way? What do you say to them?
Julia: I don't think really there's comfort that you can give people because the relationship is what it was and the difficulty with someone who we've had a difficult relationship with is that now that they've died there's no more opportunity to go back and put it right. And so in the way that you're talking about it you might feel guilty that you wished you'd used that opportunity before. But also you may feel that the person that's died was really, you know, unkind to you. But then you can't go back and tell them that they've been unkind to you. So the kind of task that we have in the app, a tool that can help you process and look at the relationship with the person that died is facing the reality as it is and also finding ways of having self-compassion. Because in a way what you're talking about is that we want control over what we feel. And I think one of the underlying aspects of the app and grief is that we can't control it. So it's working with it, grief works. It's finding a way of working with this new status that we are in and the feelings that we have rather than thinking that we can tidy them up and sort them out. Yeah, that's great.
Transcribed automatically; may contain small errors.
It's a question I hear often from people whose marriage or partnership was loving but complicated.
Why the unsaid hurts so much
While someone is alive, there is always, somewhere in the back of our minds, the possibility of another conversation. When they die, that door closes.
the relationship is what it was and the difficulty with someone who we've had a difficult relationship with is that now that they've died there's no more opportunity to go back and put it right.
— From my answer in the video
So the guilt isn't only about what happened. It's about the lost chance. You might feel guilty that you didn't use the time you had, that you didn't say "I love you" that morning, or that the last conversation was an argument about something small.
When they hurt you too
Grief after a complicated relationship is rarely one feeling. Alongside guilt, you may feel that the person who died was unkind to you, and now you can never tell them. That can leave you with hurt and anger that have nowhere to go, tangled up with love and regret.
All of it is allowed. In the Grief Works programme, I encourage people to reflect honestly on the relationship: to hold the difficult parts and the good parts together, as a whole, rather than turning the person into a saint or a villain.
Why we can't tidy grief away
Much of the distress people describe comes from wanting to control what they feel: to sort it out, resolve it, make it go away. But grief can't be controlled. That's the idea at the heart of Grief Works: grief works when we work with it.
It's finding a way of working with this new status that we are in and the feelings that we have rather than thinking that we can tidy them up and sort them out.
— From my answer in the video
Writing to them helps
One of the most helpful ways to work with the unsaid is to write it. The psychologist James Pennebaker's research, beginning in the 1980s, found that people who wrote about emotionally painful experiences for 15 to 20 minutes on a few occasions often went on to have better physical and emotional health. Writing gives the unsaid somewhere to go.
My one tip: write the letter you never got to send
- Find 20 minutes somewhere private. You don't need to finish in one go; some people take weeks over a letter.
- Write to them directly. "Dear Tom…" Tell them what you wish you'd said, what you wish you'd done differently, and what you're sorry for.
- Write what hurt, too. What you needed from them and didn't get. Both belong in the same letter.
- Don't edit, and don't aim to be fair. Nobody else will read it.
- Read it back, or don't. You can keep it, add to it over time, or let it go.
- End by writing to yourself as you would to a close friend in exactly your situation.
Finding self-compassion
Self-compassion isn't letting yourself off the hook. The psychologist Kristin Neff describes it as treating yourself with the same kindness, and the same honesty, that you'd offer someone you love. When you look back at the choices you made, try to see them from where you stood at the time: tired, busy, hopeful that there would be more time. None of us can see the future. You did what you could with what you knew.
How Grief Works can help
In the Grief Works programme, Session 9, Working through guilt, and Session 11, Exploring your relationship, help you work with regret and the complicated feelings a relationship leaves behind, and Session 17, Journaling, walks you through writing. There's a journal built into the programme, and our counsellors are available by 1-to-1 chat from 9am to 9pm every day.
If you need to talk to someone now
- Samaritans: 116 123, free, day or night
- Cruse Bereavement Support: 0808 808 1677
Common questions
How do I stop feeling guilty after my partner died?
Is it normal to feel angry at someone who has died?
Does writing a letter to someone who died help?
How we wrote and reviewed this article
Julia Samuel MBE wrote this article from her own answer in the filmed conversation above, adding research and practical guidance. Lines marked "From my answer in the video" are her words as she spoke them.
Sources
- Julia Samuel, filmed Grief Works conversation, "How Do I Live With the Things I Didn't Say?" (video, 1.5 minutes)
- J. W. Pennebaker and S. K. Beall (1986), "Confronting a traumatic event: toward an understanding of inhibition and disease", Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3)
- Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion (2011)
- Julia Samuel, Grief Works programme: Session 9: Working through guilt; Session 11: Exploring your relationship; Session 17: Journaling
Article history
- 17 September 2026: Updated
- 25 August 2026: Published
About the author
Written by
Julia Samuel MBE
Psychotherapist and co-creator of Grief Works
One of the world's most respected grief psychotherapists, with over 35 years' experience. Former Vice President of the BACP, MBE for services to the bereaved, Founder Patron of Child Bereavement UK, and bestselling author of Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass.
