How bad can losing a HS bf/gf be?

[SavinaV]

One of our regular clients is a 28 year-old whose gf was ran over and killed by a drunk driver 12 years ago. Till this day he hasn't been able to have meaningful long-term relationships (all were short-lived) nor gotten engaged. Sometimes he still refers to her as the love of his life, the one he would have had a future and family with.

 

My cousin and friend thinks he should have already moved on and form a family by now... that a gf comes and goes, esp if you were just a young HS student at the time and that he more than likely wouldn't have married her if she were alive.

[d0nnivain]

They didn't break up. She died.

 

Few people lose contemporizes to death at that tender age. His only experience with love is that you give your heart away & the other person dies. That would scar anyone for life.

 

He's not going to move on from that easily or without professional help. Accept him as he is of simply deal with him in your professional capacity without butting into his personal business.

[CautiouslyOptimistic]

He experienced a great trauma. As a child. There is a psychological theory (or maybe fact?) that emotional development stunts at the age you experienced significant trauma. It's possible he is still processing things as a 16 year old and maybe always will.

[Orokotikki]

^^100% @donnivain's post

 

Nail on the head. Monkeys and circus ownership.

 

Sad to hear.

Depending on the professional capacity I wouldn't say anything.

Advice from my barber about this, hmm ok, no harm done imho, provided it was mentioned once (not every visit).

[manfrombelow2]

I agree with d0nnivain.

 

That was not a breakup, that was a trauma.

 

We can move on from a breakup, but trauma? It's another story.

[preraph]

A similar thing happened to a former friend of mine. And in a way she was complicit in it. They were high school sweethearts. She is a high drama diagnosed narcissist with bipolar and creates a lot of drama. In the middle of that, he died in a car accident. She really couldn't even talk about the details. It was and will always be a shadow on her life.

 

But she moved on because being the personality she is, she feeds off attention more than anyone else I've ever known, so she moved on. But it's very easy for a person to idealize the person they lost. If you lose someone tragically, you kind of erase any unpleasant memories and idealize that you'd have lived happily ever after. Plus it's just plain traumatic. My best friend's best friend from when she was 14 died in a motorcycle accident and it sent my friend into crisis immediately and she instantly became a teenage alcoholic trying to dull the pain, plus has some alcoholism genes, so big problem. It's hard to process at any age, but especially as a child or teen. It just seems incomprehensible.

 

Your friend probably will need therapy and just needs to be able to talk all about it and get it all out and then see how he feels after a time.

[basil67]

He doesn’t know that he wouldn’t have married her because he didn’t get the chance to see the relationship to a natural end. Or not end. And you don’t know this either.

 

My heart breaks for him.

[somanymistakes]

"Some random person who isn't me thinks I should just get over the biggest trauma of my life" yeah, his cousin's opinion is meaningless here.

 

For that matter, dude is 28 and has had relationships that broke up. Many people are 28 and have not gotten married by that point for any NUMBER of other reasons. People harping on him like he's a failure for that will probably just push him harder to clinging to the ideal of the past lost love, as that provides a convenient 'out'.