Do men grieve differently?

Yesterday I met a man over the coffee who told me about the traumatic loss of his wife four years ago.

We ended up talking for quite a while about grief and what happens to us when we lose the person we thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives with. We talked about how difficult it is in the beginning, how life somehow continues around you even when your own life feels like it has stopped, and how, eventually, you have to start finding your way forward.

One of the things we talked about was how important it is to have someone to talk to. Someone who understands what you are going through and doesn't need you to explain why you feel the way you do. Someone who won't judge you or tell you that you should be feeling better by now. And at some point during our conversation, he asked me a question that I hadn't really thought about before.

“Do you think men grieve differently to women?”

"I don't know," - I said.

I'm not a man, so I can't tell what it feels like to lose your wife from a man's perspective. Until yesterday, most of the people I had spoken to about losing a partner were women. I've talked to widows who have shared their experiences with me, and although every one of us has a completely different story and a different way of grieving, there are certain things that we seem to understand in each other without having to say very much. Yesterday was the first time I had really spoken to a widower about his experience. And it made me think about how many men there must be going through exactly the same kind of search for connection that women experience after losing their partners. Maybe the way men and women express grief is different. Maybe it isn't. I don't think we can really generalise about something so personal. Everyone brings their own personality, their relationship, their circumstances and their history into their grief, and everyone's journey is different.

But what does seem to be universal is the need to be listened and understood.

When you lose someone you love, there are so many things you suddenly have to deal with, and often the people around you don't really know what to say. They may care deeply about you, but they haven't experienced what you are experiencing. Sometimes you don't even know how to explain it yourself. That is why talking to someone who has been through something similar can be so valuable. You don't necessarily need someone to give you answers. Sometimes it is enough to have a conversation over a cup of coffee or tea with someone who understands why a particular day is difficult, why you can feel completely fine one moment and overwhelmed the next, or why even years later there are still moments when the loss feels very close.

Our conversation yesterday made me realise that this need for connection isn't limited to women. There are men who have lost their wives. Men who are raising children on their own, rebuilding their lives, trying to work out who they are now and what their future looks like. And I imagine that some of them are feeling exactly what so many widows have told me they feel: that they would simply like to meet people who understand.

That is something I want to explore through HerSphere or I should call it HisSphere. I don't know exactly what it will look like yet, but I know there is a need for people who have experienced the loss of a partner to find each other and talk openly about what comes afterwards. Because grief doesn't end when the funeral is over, and it doesn't necessarily become easier just because some time has passed. We learn to live with it. We slowly find our way back into life, and sometimes we discover that having the right people around us makes that journey a little easier. I also believe that life does continue. That doesn't mean forgetting the person we lost or leaving them behind. It means finding a way to carry their memory with us while allowing ourselves to have a life again. Yesterday's conversation reminded me of that. Two people who had lost their partners, coming from different experiences and probably grieving in different ways, but finding something familiar in each other's stories.

And perhaps that is what connection really is. Finding someone who doesn't have to have lived exactly the same life as you, but understands enough of your journey that you don't feel quite so alone in it. So, if you are a man who has lost your wife or partner and you are somewhere in that difficult process of grieving, rebuilding your life or simply trying to find yourself again, I would really like to hear from you. You may not know what you are looking for yet. That's okay.

Let's start with a conversation.

Perhaps through those conversations, we can help people find the connection they have been looking for.

Anna Heenan
Founder, HerSphere