Carolyn Hax: After a loss, grieve and trust it will pass

Dear Carolyn: I’ve been with my partner seven years. We have made a life commitment to each other (we’re legally married in Canada, but have no option of legal marriage where we currently live).

Here’s the issue: I developed really strong feelings for another woman. After weeks of feeding those emotions with fantasy and spending waaaay too much time with Crush-girl, I came clean with my partner about my crush. We’ve decided to go to counseling to see if we can restore our relationship.

I know this is the right course. However: I’m incredibly sad that I can’t spend time with Crush-girl any more. She was one of my closest friends.

Any suggestions for how I can deal with this sadness? Please don’t tell me to address the issues in my relationship that led me to look outside of it for happiness, or find some other change in my life. That’s what my friends say, and that’s what I’m doing. What I lack is a short-term, immediate intervention for when I get to thinking about Crush-girl and start crying. – Trying to Do the Right Thing

If there were such a thing as an effective, “immediate intervention” for grief, then about 90 percent of everyday fears would be gone.

So there is no magic answer. What you suffered was a loss, and what you’re feeling is grief, and the only way to get through that is to grieve.

I can see how, since your crush was “wrong,” it wouldn’t seem “right” to cast yourself as a victim. And, your loss was a choice … and, your partner is already hurting. Your pain over Crush-girl probably feels like piling on.

But all of these are logic, and while logic may help immensely in the long term, you’ve seen firsthand that it’s useless against an immediate swell of emotions.

What is effective: acknowledging the swell for what it is, and trusting that it will pass. In practical terms, it means you keep doing what you’re doing to make sense of what happened, but also leave room in your day just to cry. Something else you’ve learned firsthand, in your seven-year relationship: When it comes to emotions, intensity can’t be sustained.