Life after partner suicide

Hello and welcome @Foobar

While I have not shared a similar experience, and can only imagine the complexities of your experiences and emotions around this, I just wanted to reach out to say hello and good on you for taking the step in reaching out here.

I do understand the desire to talk to someone who can relate to your own experiences, and I hope that you can find that here. I am wondering if you have other forms of support who have helped you through this time?

Thank you for your response and warm welcome.

Yes, I have a wonderful group of friends who are supportive. Many of them have been through the grieving process themselves (he was their friend) so it’s a bit tricky.

I also got to therapy - my psychologist actually recommended this site.

There’s so many resources for people having suicidal thoughts, but not much for those of us left behind. Especially those who were made to feel like we were responsible in some way.

I’m very glad that my specific set of circumstances is relatively uncommon, but if there is someone out there who knows this feeling, I would like to connect.

It's great to hear that you have those supports around you already @Foobar I know, the support for those affected by suicide can be a bit limited unfortunately, but I did just want to highlight StandBy as another potential support service that might be helpful for you or your friends who are also grieving. It's a service specifically for those whose lives have been affected by suicide.

Oh, I had never heard of StandBy. Thank you so much. I will definitely reach out.

Sadly, I do know what it is like to be left behind by suicide. @Foobar

What kind of things were said or done that makes you feel blamed?

I’m sorry you have had to go through this too.

He told me he would do it if I didn’t come back to him. I didn’t think he’d actually go through with it, but I encouraged him to seek help.

After his death his family, who had become my family after all those years together, shunned me. I had one person turn their back on me at the funeral and tell their partner “I can’t speak to ‘that’”. And someone else tell me at the funeral that they would never speak to me again and that I must have made him very sad to do what he did.

There’s more.

All I did was choose to leave, but that was enough to make me the devil incarnate to some people.

I don’t carry blame with me anymore. I’ve done a lot of work on myself. It was a lot to go through though.