How long does grief last after losing a partner?

"How long will this last?" is one of the most frequently asked questions in our community. It usually carries another question underneath: Am I doing this wrong? The short answer to that is no.

Grieving takes longer than anyone wants; we cannot fight it; we can only find ways to support ourselves through it. When we attempt to block it, we lay ourselves open to physical and mental illness. On the positive side, over time the intensity of the pain lessens; we do naturally adjust and re-engage with life.

— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works, Pillars of Strength: Time

Will this pain ever go away?

When you're in the depths of it, it's almost impossible to believe it will change. Julia compares it to weather:

it's a bit like the weather, whatever that state is, when you're really hurting and missing the person, it feels like I'm going to be living here forever. You know, it's never going to pass this, I'm going to be stuck in it. And it's the same like when you're in a rain shower, you kind of never believe the sun is ever going to shine.

— Julia Samuel MBE, speaking in the Grief Works video "Will This Feeling Ever End?"

The evidence is genuinely hopeful. Research by George Bonanno and colleagues, following large groups of bereaved people over time, found that gradually adapting is the most common pattern of all. And Mary-Frances O'Connor points out that what helps isn't simply the passing of time, but experience: every day lived without your partner slowly teaches the brain a new reality.

The Grief Works programme describes what that looks like:

At first, we feel the death as a black, bottomless void. We feel that 'grief is all there is.' But over time, perhaps over many months or years, we rebuild our lives around the void. It's not that our grief shrinks, but instead, our lives expand.

— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works programme, Session 21: New normal

Julia has written that the pain "changes shape. It becomes woven into the fabric of your life."

What about the five stages of grief?

Most people have heard of the five stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But they were originally described in people facing their own deaths, and research hasn't found that bereaved people move through them in order. Julia is clear:

Grief doesn't hit us in tidy phases and stages, nor is it something that we forget and move on from; it is an individual process that has a momentum of its own, and the work involves finding ways of coping with our fear and pain, and also adjusting to this new version of ourselves, our 'new normal'.

— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works, Introduction

The model Julia finds matches people's real experience is the dual process model, developed by researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut:

The process is in the movement, the back and forth, between the loss and restoration. Sadness, tears, yearning and preoccupation with the person who has died alternate with present-day tasks, functioning, having hope for the future and having a break from the grief.

— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works, "The Process of Grief"

That back-and-forth is healthy. A good afternoon followed by a devastating evening isn't a sign of failure. For partners, Julia notes that coming home can be the moment it hits:

You get some life in your life, but then you go back home, you may get hit as you come through the door feeling, you know, devastated again. But that is the oscillation, that is the movement. So that's natural.

— Julia Samuel MBE, speaking at the Grief Works Community Get-Together "Understanding Grief and What's Normal"

Am I grieving wrong?

Almost certainly not. Much of the distress people feel about how they're grieving comes from other people's timetables.

I think society, culture, friends give you a kind of certificate. You're allowed three months to grieve, or six months or a year, and you should be over it.

— Julia Samuel MBE, speaking at the Grief Works Community Get-Together "Understanding Grief and What's Normal"

The programme notes how much this pressure has grown:

In the past, death was more public. Queen Victoria wore her dark, widow clothes until she died, even wearing them to her daughters' weddings. These public displays showed grief as an all-encompassing, slow process. With the rapid pace of modern life, we feel more pressure to be strong and 'bounce back', perhaps before we're ready.

— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works programme, Session 14: Relationship with time

And Julia is equally clear about the reverse worry, of feeling better than you think you should:

whether you're grieving too much and think you should be over it or not grieving enough and feel guilty that you feel better than you expect what is really important is tuning in and being aware of what you do feel

— Julia Samuel MBE, speaking in the Grief Works video "Letting Go of Grief's Imaginary Timeline"

Why can grief feel harder later on, or in the second year?

Not everyone experiences this, but many people are surprised to find the second year, or a point well past the first anniversary, harder than the early months. There are some good reasons. The shock and numbness that protected you have worn off. The support that surrounded you has usually thinned out. And the permanence becomes more real.

And all of you will know better than me that grief does adapt and change over time and the intensity should lessen. Although you can get hit by intense waves of grief, but it can feel harder because the permanence of the person's death, it gets increasingly real.

— Julia Samuel MBE, speaking at the Grief Works Community Get-Together "Understanding Grief and What's Normal"

Don't worry if your difficult emotions are more intense than usual. Grief isn't linear. It's normal to have ups and downs.

— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works programme, Session 26: Managing milestones

Grief years later

Waves can come long after the rawest grief has eased: a song, a smell, a stranger with their walk, a milestone that didn't touch you last year but does this year. That isn't unfinished grieving. Julia describes grief for someone we love as something that becomes part of us, and says of these moments that "that's natural".

And the language is that you get over it. You know, you forget and you move on. And I don't think we ever do get over it. I mean, I think everyone here knows that we don't get over it. We learn to accommodate it. We learn to live with it.

— Julia Samuel MBE, speaking at a Grief Works live session, January 2024

When grief becomes stuck

For a minority of people, grief doesn't ease. In 2022 prolonged grief disorder was added to the main psychiatric diagnostic manuals, and recent studies suggest it affects roughly 5 to 7% of bereaved people, more often after sudden or traumatic deaths. The important message from the research, including work at Columbia University's Center for Prolonged Grief, is that it is treatable.

It's worth talking to your GP or a bereavement specialist if, a year or more after your partner's death:

• the yearning and pain feel as intense as in the first weeks, most days
• you can't manage work, home or looking after yourself
• you feel life has no meaning without them, or you can't imagine any future
• you're avoiding everything connected to them, or can think of nothing else
• you're relying on alcohol or other things to get through

If you have thoughts of not wanting to live, please don't wait: call Samaritans on 116 123 or speak to your GP today.