In Grief: Feeling Let Down By Closest Friends

Source

[Reviewed and updated February 21, 2026]

I can't tell you the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone. ~ Ed Sheeran

A reader writes: I've grown up as a people pleaser and a pretty much a doormat, taking care of others' needs always before my own. As one of my dad's primary caretakers, I became overwhelmed with burnout as I was given a great deal of the responsibility of taking care of him as he was bedridden as well as running errands, doing chores, etc.

Now my father's gone. I'm on the edge of depression and my closest friends are not only, NOT supporting me but also being judgmental and critical about how long I stayed to take care of family matters until I flew home.

Understanding and Managing Grief, April 14 - April 20, 2013

Best selections from Grief Healing's Twitter stream this week:

Your Wedding Day after a Loss, http://j.mp/ZE7lBE « What's Your Grief

Sibling Loss: The Forgotten Griever, http://j.mp/17wnoWK  by Caroline Flohr, author of Heaven's Child

Poem: “My Daddy’s #Grief” « Grieving Dads Project http://j.mp/XUYGRa

Yes. Robert Slayton: Let Us Grieve First, http://j.mp/17sXxiw « HuffPost Healthy Living

Surviving the Unthinkable,  http://j.mp/XJzlaC « The Grief Toolbox

Betrayal, Fear of Separation and Unresolved Grief

[Reviewed and updated October 11, 2025]

Disappointments in love, even betrayals and losses, serve the soul at the very moment they seem in life to be tragedies. The soul is partly in time and partly in eternity. We might remember the part that resides in eternity when we feel despair over the part that is in life. ~ Thomas Moore, in Care of the Soul

A reader writes: I am a soldier in the US Army recently returned from deployment overseas. I spent a year there and found out last December that my wife had been in love with a Catholic priest for 3 years unbeknownst to me (he was a friend of the family). She never let on to him that she was in love, however, her devotion to him was very intense. I know this from their emails, friends and my wife’s own admission. They were rarely alone together, and did nothing untoward with each other (physically). My wife allowed me to believe that the emotional distance between us was caused by my neglect of the relationship and nothing else.