Maybe you hadn't spoken in years. Maybe you had, but every conversation left you drained, hurt, or angry. Maybe you loved them deeply and resented them in equal measure, and now that they're gone, you don't know what you're supposed to feel. The death of someone you had a complicated relationship with is one of the most disorienting forms of grief there is, and one of the least talked about.
Disenfranchised grief is grief that society doesn't openly acknowledge or validate. It's the kind of grief that comes from losing someone you had a complicated relationship with, where the people around you may not understand why you're struggling or may expect you to feel only relieved.
Anchor Therapy is a counseling center in Hoboken, NJ with mental health therapists specialized in helping children, teens, adults, couples, and families with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, life transitions, and more. Anchor Therapy is accepting new clients and is now providing in-person sessions and teletherapy sessions to residents of New Jersey, New York, and Florida.
Why Is It Hard to Grieve Someone You Had a Complicated Relationship With?
Grieving someone you had a complicated relationship with is hard because you're not just mourning the person. You're mourning the relationship you never had, the repair that never happened, and the future in which things might have been different. The grief is layered in ways that don't fit the standard script.
One of the biggest reasons this grief is so hard is that it doesn't fit the script. When someone dies who you loved cleanly and simply, the world around you understands what you're going through. People bring food, send flowers, offer condolences.
When the relationship was complicated, the grief often has to be carried quietly. Other people may not understand why you're struggling, or may even expect you to feel relieved.
There's also the finality factor. In a difficult relationship that was still ongoing, there was always the theoretical possibility of resolution. Things could have been said. Apologies could have happened.
Death closes that door permanently. Grief in this context often includes mourning not just the person but the possibility itself.
Research published in NCBI found that insecure attachment histories which often develop in relationships marked by inconsistency, emotional unavailability, or conflict, are consistently associated with more complicated grief responses following bereavement. In other words, the more complicated the relationship was in life, the more complicated the grief tends to be after death.
To learn more about complicated grief, read our blog “Am I Experiencing Complicated & Traumatic Grief?”.
How Do You Grieve an Estranged Parent or Family Member?
Grieving an estranged parent or family member is one of the most complex grief experiences a person can go through. Estrangement already involves a kind of grief, the ongoing loss of a relationship you needed but couldn't have. When the person dies, that grief doesn't resolve. It often intensifies, because the estrangement is now permanent in a way it wasn't before.
Many people who lose an estranged parent describe a particular kind of disorientation: not knowing how much they're allowed to grieve, or feeling like they have no right to be devastated by the loss of someone they chose to distance themselves from. That's not how grief works.
You can grieve deeply for a parent you were estranged from. You can grieve the parent they never were. You can grieve the childhood you deserved and didn't have. All of that is real loss, and all of it deserves space.
Some of what makes estrangement grief particularly complex:
The loss of the possibility of reconciliation which may have been something you'd been quietly holding onto
Grief that is disenfranchised, meaning others don't recognize or validate it because the relationship was already distant
Complicated feelings about the estrangement itself, including guilt about whether you made the right choice
Family dynamics that may require you to grieve alongside people you have your own complicated history with
The resurfacing of old wounds from the relationship that you may have worked hard to process or set aside
At Anchor Therapy, we often work with clients who are surprised by how much grief they feel after losing someone they were estranged from. The grief isn't always for the relationship that existed. Sometimes it's entirely for the relationship that never did.
Is It Normal to Feel Relieved When Someone Difficult Dies?
Yes, and it's more common than most people are willing to admit. When someone who caused you pain, fear, or chronic stress dies, relief is a natural and understandable response. It doesn't mean you didn't love them.
It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means your nervous system is recognizing that a source of ongoing difficulty is no longer present.
Relief after a difficult death often coexists with grief, guilt, and even shame about feeling relieved in the first place. That combination can be particularly hard to sit with because none of those emotions cancel each other out.
You can feel relieved and sad at the same time. You can feel relieved and also wish things had been different. Those feelings don't contradict each other. They're just the reality of what it means to lose someone complicated.
The guilt that often accompanies relief deserves attention. Many people feel deeply ashamed of feeling relieved after a death, as if the feeling itself is evidence of something wrong with them.
But relief after the death of someone who hurt you, controlled you, or caused chronic suffering in your life is not a moral failing. It's a human response to the end of a painful situation. Shame about that feeling tends to block grief rather than help process it.
If you're carrying guilt about feeling relieved, therapy can be a useful space to examine where that guilt is coming from and whether it's actually telling you something true. In our clinical experience at Anchor Therapy, most people who feel guilty about relief are people who cared deeply and gave a great deal, and who are holding themselves to a standard of grief that was never realistic to begin with.
How Do You Cope With Guilt After the Death of Someone You Had a Complicated Relationship With?
Guilt is one of the most common and most painful emotions in complicated grief. It can take many forms: guilt for the estrangement itself, guilt for things said or not said, guilt for not trying harder, guilt for feeling relieved, or guilt for not feeling sad enough. Whatever form it takes, grief-related guilt tends to be relentless and self-punishing in ways that make the grieving process much harder.
A few things that can help with guilt in complicated grief:
Separate regret from responsibility. Wishing things had been different is not the same as being responsible for how they were. Most complicated relationships involve two people with their own histories, limitations, and patterns. The whole story is rarely one person's fault.
Challenge the revisionist narrative. Grief has a way of editing our memories. After someone dies, it's common to focus on the moments of connection and minimize the reasons the relationship was difficult. While it's important to honor what was good, it's also important not to rewrite the history in ways that make your past choices seem unjustifiable.
Give yourself permission to grieve what you didn't have. A lot of guilt in complicated grief comes from grieving the wrong thing. You may be grieving a loss that was already lost long before the death. Acknowledging that explicitly, that you're grieving the relationship you deserved and didn't get, can shift guilt into something more like sorrow.
Talk to someone. Grief guilt tends to grow in isolation and shrink in honest conversation. A therapist who understands complicated grief can help you examine the guilt clearly rather than just carrying it.
According to NCBI StatPearls, grief is an inherently active process filled with meaning-making and reconstruction, not a passive state to be endured. That means actively working through guilt, rather than just waiting for it to fade, is both possible and important.
What Grief Counseling Looks Like for Complicated Relationships
Grief counseling for a complicated relationship looks different from standard bereavement support, and it's worth knowing what to expect. Standard grief support often focuses on processing the loss of a loving relationship. Complicated relationship grief requires more: processing ambivalent feelings, examining the history of the relationship honestly, working through guilt and anger, and grieving multiple things at once including the person, the relationship that never was, and the closure that never came.
A skilled grief therapist can help you:
Hold Contradictory Feelings Without Resolving Them Prematurely
One of the most common mistakes people make in complicated grief is trying to resolve the contradictions too quickly. Deciding you're either sad or relieved, either forgiving or angry. The reality is usually both, and a good therapist can help you sit with that complexity without needing to flatten it into something simpler.
Process the Grief You've Already Been Carrying
For many people, the death of someone they had a complicated relationship with is not the beginning of grief. It's the end of a long stretch of ongoing grief that started long before the death. Therapy can help you recognize and process the grief you've been carrying quietly for years which is often the deeper and more important work.
Work Through Unfinished Business
When a difficult relationship ends in death rather than repair, there are often things that were never said, questions that were never answered, and conversations that never happened. A therapist can help you find ways to process that unfinished business, not by pretending it was resolved, but by finding a way to carry it that doesn't keep you stuck.
Rebuild Your Sense of Self After a Defining Relationship Ends
Complicated relationships, especially with parents or long-term partners, often shape our sense of who we are in profound ways, sometimes in painful ones. When those relationships end, rebuilding a sense of identity that isn't defined by the wound can be important long-term work.
The grief counseling services at Anchor Therapy are designed to support exactly this kind of nuanced, layered grief work. Our therapists work with clients in-person in Hoboken, NJ, and virtually in New Jersey, New York, and Florida who are navigating losses that don't fit the standard grief script.
What Is Disenfranchised Grief?
Disenfranchised grief is grief that society doesn't openly recognize, support, or mourn. It happens when you lose someone others expect you not to grieve, like an estranged parent, an abusive partner, or a friend who hurt you. The loss is real, but the grief becomes invisible because no one around you treats it as a real loss. This invisibility is what makes it so painful and so isolating.
Disenfranchised grief is grief that is not publicly mourned, openly acknowledged, or socially supported. It tends to be more complicated and longer-lasting than grief that is recognized, because without external acknowledgment, the griever has to carry the full weight of the loss alone.
If you find yourself in this position, a few things worth knowing:
You don't need other people to validate your grief for it to be real. Your loss is real regardless of whether anyone around you understands it.
Seeking support from a therapist rather than relying on social support from people who don't understand can make a significant difference
Grief groups specifically for complicated or disenfranchised grief exist and can provide the kind of understanding that's hard to find elsewhere
You are not obligated to grieve in a way that makes other people comfortable, or to explain or justify your grief to anyone
It can also help to be selective about who you share this grief with. Not everyone in your life will have the capacity to hold the complexity of it, and that's okay. Finding even one or two people who can sit with the full picture of what you're feeling, without trying to simplify or fix it, makes a meaningful difference.
Our blog “How To Support Someone Who Is Grieving” is a must-read.
Grieving the Relationship That Never Was
For many people, the most painful part of losing someone they had a complicated relationship with isn't the death itself. It's the permanent loss of the possibility that things could have been different. As long as the person was alive, there was some version of a future where the apology happened, where the relationship healed, where you finally got what you needed from them. Death removes that possibility forever.
This is sometimes called ambiguous loss or secondary loss, and it deserves as much grief as the death itself. You may be mourning a parent who was emotionally unavailable, a sibling you grew apart from, a friend who hurt you, or a relationship that was defined more by what it lacked than what it gave. That grief is valid. The relationship you deserved and didn't have was a real loss, even if it never existed in the way you needed it to.
Giving yourself explicit permission to grieve this secondary loss can be one of the most releasing things you do in the grieving process. It shifts the focus from trying to make sense of a relationship that was confusing and painful to simply acknowledging that you needed something you didn't get, and that's sad. That sadness doesn't require a defense.
Check out our blog “Grieving A Life That Never Was” for support.
Your Grief Doesn't Have to Make Sense to Be Real
If you're grieving someone you had a complicated relationship with and your feelings don't fit any of the scripts you've been given for how grief is supposed to look, that's normal. Complicated grief rarely follows the stages. It rarely looks like sadness alone. It's messy and contradictory and often feels like something is wrong with you for not grieving the right way.
Nothing is wrong with you. You're grieving a loss that was already complicated before the death made it permanent. The feelings you're carrying, whatever they are, make sense in the context of the relationship you actually had.
If you're ready to work through this with support, the team at Anchor Therapy is here. We work with clients in-person in Hoboken, NJ, and virtually in New Jersey, New York, and Florida who are navigating grief in all its forms, including the complicated ones.
You can get started through our intake form below or visit our Meet Our Team page to find the right fit.
Victoria Scala
is the Community Engagement Director, Office Manager, and Social Media Manager at Anchor Therapy in Hoboken, New Jersey. She is a graduate of the Honors College of Rutgers University-Newark and is currently studying Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the graduate level.
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