When Grief Speaks Different Dialects

Honoring Your Partner’s Grief Without Asking Them to Grieve Like You

July 10, 2026

When our daughter Aila died twelve years ago, Ryan and I had been together for over a decade.

We had already weathered hard things. My ulcerative colitis diagnosis had changed the trajectory of the life and marriage we thought we’d have. We’d lost twins early in pregnancy before Asher was born.

We knew disappointment and suffering.

But nothing prepared us for burying our daughter.

At the time, we knew almost nothing about the Enneagram. We certainly didn’t know Ryan was an Eight or that I was a Four. Looking back, I would not have even identified as a Four then. Maybe I always was. Or maybe profound loss peeled back layers I didn’t know were there.

Whatever the case, we didn’t have language for why we were grieving so differently. We only knew that we were.

For years now, whenever I’ve walked alongside a woman whose child has died, I tell her one thing before almost anything else.

Don’t assume your partner’s grief is measured by how much it looks like your own.

If they don’t cry the way you do, it doesn’t mean they aren’t devastated. And if you can’t stop crying, it doesn’t mean you’re grieving “too much.”

We instinctively give ourselves permission to grieve the way we’re wired, but we often struggle to extend that same grace to the person we love most.

After twelve years, I can now see how often Ryan and I were translating each other’s grief through our own language instead of trying to learn each other’s.

I wanted him to sit with me in the pain. He wanted to carry me through it.

Neither of us was wrong.

We were simply speaking different dialects of heartbreak.

Now, we’re walking through another devastating loss. And somehow, despite everything we’ve learned, grief still has a way of exposing every place where we’re different.

As an Enneagram Four, I want to talk about everything and name every emotion before it disappears.

I want to tell him every memory that surfaces unexpectedly. The restaurant that reminds me of her. The recipe she loved. The future I had quietly imagined that will never happen. I picture her taking Kezia out for coffee and shopping trips as a teenager. Sitting in the stands at the boys’ sports games and front row at the award banquets. Watching graduations. Celebrating weddings. And if we were lucky like I was with my own grandparents, meeting her great grandkids.

The only version of the future I had written in my heart included her. Now she’s missing from every chapter. I want to listen to her voicemails. I want to spend hours looking through photos.

I want to ask Ryan what he’s thinking when he stares off into space. I want to know what memory he’s carrying so I can carry it with him. Or maybe, if I’m honest, because every memory he is willing to share could become another piece of her that I can add to my own memories. He has sixteen years of stories that existed before I ever met her, and now they’re more precious than ever.

When the rare tears suddenly come, I always wonder what memory found him. I wonder if it’s something from his childhood, or a song or sunset that reminded him of her, or the realization hit him again that our children were so gravely cheated. I want to sit beside him in it. I’m not looking for him to grieve like I do, but that’s how I instinctively love people. I climb into their joy, their fear, and their sorrow so they don’t have to carry it alone.

There’s another part of my grief that I don’t often share with Ryan.

My mind keeps returning to the day she died. Grief has a way of revisiting the moments that changed us forever, even if we don’t make the choice to go there. Your life is suddenly split by the before and the after. I catch myself replaying conversations, searching for answers that don’t exist, and trying to make sense of something that never will. I know none of that will bring peace, but grief is rarely logical.

As a Four, I have to resist the temptation to believe that if I can just understand every detail or feel the pain deeply enough, I’ll somehow stay connected to the person I’ve lost.

Ryan is almost the opposite. As an Eight, he doesn’t naturally linger where the pain lives, or move towards it willingly.

He has learned that purpose is how he survives. He keeps moving and makes himself feel useful by making plans. He focuses on his work and on protecting everyone around him. And he avoids some of the things he knows will undo him until he feels ready to enter them.

Years ago, I mistook that for avoidance. Now I recognize it as the way he’s built.

I’ve watched him grow so much since Aila died.

He isn’t afraid of tears anymore. I’ve seen them. But he doesn’t like to stay there long, and he doesn’t revisit them simply for the sake of revisiting them.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve witnessed that the greatest expression of his grief isn’t found in the moments when he cries at all. It’s found every night when one of our children collapses into sobs because the reality of losing Nanny crashes over them all over again.

He doesn’t tell them to stop crying, rush them toward tomorrow, or tell them to focus on the happy memories. He quietly lies beside them. For an hour if that’s what it takes. He listens, holds them, and lets them grieve. That is his heartbreak.

I’ve read that Eights often feel responsible for being the rock for everyone around them. Whether that’s true for every Eight, I don’t know. But I know it’s true for Ryan. When the people he loves are hurting, every instinct tells him to stand up straighter, not fall apart.

Despite knowing all of this, I still worry sometimes that he isn’t grieving enough or at all. I have to fight against that worry, because what I really need to remember is that he isn’t grieving like me.

His propensity to be silent, dive into work, or take a long run aren’t the absence of grief. His steady presence with our children or determination to keep putting one foot in front of the other isn’t the absence of grief. It’s his grief.

I’ve also realized something else.

Because I understand him better now than I did twelve years ago, I know he would do it.

If I asked him to replay every detail with me or listen to every fear, he would. If I asked him to look through every photo or watch videos, he would. IT’s not in his nature, and he wouldn’t choose to move towards the pain like that, but he would stay in it with me because he loves me.

But just because someone loves you enough to carry your way of grieving doesn’t mean that’s the most loving thing to ask of them.

For years I assumed loving Ryan meant asking him to meet me where I grieve so we could connect over our shared sorrow. I’m slowly learning that sometimes loving him means walking into the place where he grieves instead. Not asking him to become more like me, but believing that his silence or forward-movement can carry just as much love as my tears.

That doesn’t mean I stop needing to write or stop wanting to say every thought out loud. It doesn’t mean that I need to squelch my own tears that come many times a day, or that I need to force myself to be productive and get work done like Ryan does when I just feel frozen in pain. It just means I’ve learned that not every aspect of my grief has to be shouldered by Ryan.

Some of those conversations happen in my journal, some happen with trusted friends who are wired like I am, and some happen by writing here.

Marriage was never about asking Ryan to become me. It was learning to love who he already was, and after twenty years, falling in love again with who he’d become.

Twelve years ago, when Aila died, grief taught us who we were. This time, it has shown us how much we’ve learned to love each other inside those differences.

I still find myself worrying whether Ryan is grieving enough. But instead, I’m trying to detour into asking a different question.

What does grief look like in the language of the person I love?

I think that’s the question all of us need to ask more often during times of crisis.

Sometimes it weeps or writes. Sometimes it stays busy. Sometimes it needs seven miles of pavement. And sometimes it looks like quietly lying beside a grieving child in the dark until they finally fall asleep.

Love doesn’t always cry the same way. Sometimes it simply carries the people it misses

One thing I left out of the essay above is that this understanding didn’t come naturally and it didn’t come without a lot of heartache and arguments. I’m sharing more about that below.