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> And that was just a dog. I forget which book I read this in, but the author in their autobiography described their "real man" father as someone who they'd on
by red_admiral 2y ago
> And that was just a dog.
I forget which book I read this in, but the author in their autobiography described their "real man" father as someone who they'd only seen cry three times in his life. When his wife died, he was all stoic about it and didn't show any upset in public. But when his favorite dog died, he broke down crying.
Many people who don't understand how upset one can get over a dog, have never had one. I have a photo of our first family dog and it still makes me upset if I look at it for too long.
- nly 2y agoWell humans are aware of their own mortality and can talk about it with one another. Your man can find peace because he would know his wifes outlook on life and her wishes We are entirely responsible for the health and welfare of domestic dogs, like young children.
- darkwater 2y agoI will be downvoted but that ("real man", no crying for the wife passing away...) tells more about subtle "machismo" and patriarchy that about how much people can care about dogs.
- luluthefirst 2y agoGrief is complex and deeply personal, and is not about fitting someone else's expectations... Losing a dog hits different because their presence is so genuine and uncomplicated. They provide unconditional comfort. That connection is usually way less complicated than the ones with have with people.
- darkwater 2y agoLet's add conformity to (wrong? IMO totally) social/religious rules like "you cannot divorce". Because if your spouse passes away, either young or when it was their time so to speak, and you aren't genuinely sad, well, why were you two still together? If you spent a happy life together with someone, you should be sad even if they passed away serenely, because hey, it was the person with whom you shared and lived almost everything. If instead you were still together but actually secretly hating each other, or just because "it was always like that", well, the marriage should have not lasted til that point. If it did, it was most probably due to social rules to follow no matter what and/or patriarchy. And if it was a young person, well, even more! A young loss should generate even more grief. And the "real man" part...well, I think it explains itself. I understand this can come off as simplifying too much but I believe it boils down to those reasons in the vast majority of cases. So, there can be exceptions of course but they are a minority.
- iamacyborg 2y agoA bit daft, but my dad died when I was 6 and I had (and probably still have) a lot of issues expressing grief at the time. I absolutely lost it when a pet goldfish died ~5 years later. This kind of stuff can come up at the weirdest time.
- svieira 2y agoWhat I have found is that each new grief brings all the others with it. Morning the new sorrow is tied up with morning the old sorrows.
- iamacyborg 2y agoHmm, I've not really found that to be the case personally. Past that initial shit period up until my late teens, subsequent losses and grief has been quite different.
- hinkley 2y agoI had an unrequited love thing in college that never got resolved but I gave up and started trying to date. The second one sat me down one day and said we were only ever going to be friends. I was grumpy the rest of the night but when I got home I just crumbled to dust. We would have been a terrible match, so it was the right thing to do. I don’t even know that we would have been friends except we had one in common. I didn’t understand why I felt so unanchored around her and so we stopped hanging out. Which I realized is just the sort of thing women complain about with male friendships but what can you do. It took a while to realize I wasn’t grieving her. I was jammed in the Denial phase of a previous loss and adding a few more rocks to the pile caused an avalanche. I’m betting that’s what happened with your goldfish.