Listen: Grief, Loss & the Reality Gap
There’s a moment in life when you realise things aren’t going the way you thought they would. Maybe it’s a relationship that never happened or one you cared deeply about that is no more. A death of someone that really mattered to you. Or perhaps it’s a career or business venture that fell apart, or a dream that keeps slipping further away.
The gap between what we want and what actually is can feel unbearable. It’s that space that the bigger it is, the more it hurts.
This is the reality gap, and it’s often where grief takes hold.
The Reality Gap: When Life Doesn’t Go as Planned
We all have this mental blueprint of how our life should unfold. You work hard, you get rewarded. You find love, it lasts forever. You want a child, you have one. But life doesn’t follow a script. Far from it. Reality often diverges from expectations, and when it does, the emotional fallout can be devastating.
What makes this kind of grief unique is that it isn’t just about losing something. It’s about losing an entire imagined future. It’s not just mourning what is gone, but what will never be.
That’s why it can feel so deep and inescapable.
Sometimes the mind clings to the idea of what could have been, refusing to let go of what it expected. The internal dialogue might sound like: “This isn’t fair. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Life often unfolds in ways that are indifferent to what we want.
So let’s take a moment to acknowledge something: the reality gap hurts. Words often can’t function in place of how intense the pain and suffering is when we face a significant reality gap.
The pain doesn’t come just from what was lost. It’s a whole future that is now different to what we desire, deep in our hearts. And it comes in so many different forms.
It Isn’t Just About Death
When people think of grief, they often think of death. But loss comes in many ways. It might be the end of a relationship, infertility, a personal limitation, or even a realisation that you’re never going to be the person you once believed you could be, or get what you wanted to get.
The mind struggles with these losses. It replays different versions of the past, as if somewhere in the reruns, there’s a way to change the ending. It clings to the belief that life was supposed to be different.
And when that belief meets reality, the suffering grows.
Grief isn’t just about an event, it’s also about identity. Who am I if I never become a parent? If I’m no longer part of that relationship? If I don’t achieve that dream? The reality gap forces us to redefine ourselves, and that process can feel like standing in an empty space, unsure of what to hold onto. It’s lonely and scary.
The Unseen Battle
Many people try to outrun their grief. They push it aside, pretend it’s not there, or tell themselves they “should” be over it by now. Society reinforces this too. People get uncomfortable around deep sadness and tears. They offer platitudes like “everything happens for a reason” or “just stay positive.”
While often well-intended, these comments can make grief and loss feel even more isolating.
But grief doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t vanish just because we don’t want it to be there.
Ignoring it only makes it grow in the background. Making room for grief on the other hand, can actually give us the freedom to move forward. Not move on, but move forward, carrying the loss in a way that doesn’t consume us.
Just like the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, a king condemned to roll a boulder up a mountain each day eternally, only to watch it roll down again so he had to start anew – we all wrestle with our own boulders we have to carry along in life.
Sitting with grief isn’t the same as drowning in it. It’s the difference between letting yourself feel the weight of a loss and letting it define you entirely. When we stop fighting reality, we can begin to shift how we hold our pain. Instead of being trapped in the past, we learn to walk with it, step by step.
Finding Meaning in the Rubble
When life takes something important from us, it can feel like nothing matters anymore. This is a normal response. But meaning isn’t something that just appears. It’s something we create, something we can shape if we choose to.
This doesn’t mean slapping a silver lining on pain. It means asking things like, “Now that this has happened, what do I want to stand for?”
If you’ve lost a relationship, maybe what matters is still being someone who loves deeply, whether you are in a relationship or not. If you’ve lost a dream, maybe there’s another way to engage with what made that dream important in the first place.
Meaning doesn’t just erase loss. But it can help us hold it differently, to carry it lightly and gently.
A powerful way to re-engage with meaning is to shift focus from what has been taken to what still remains. Loss narrows our vision, which happens anytime we are in pain, whether physical or mental, making it hard to see the possibilities that are still there.
But when we intentionally widen our perspective, we can begin to see life beyond the absence. There’s a skill attached to this, a mental muscle that can be trained. It’s not easy, and the path comes with challenges and barriers. Our minds, like an overly helpful friend, may detract from our attempts. If you are reading this in the grip of grief and loss your mind might even be saying something about this right now.
A Different Kind of Hope
The hardest part about grief is the sense of finality. There’s no alternative anymore. The feeling that what you wanted is gone forever, and nothing will ever be as good. It’s easy to believe that if life can’t be what we planned, then it’s not worth engaging with at all.
But hope isn’t about guaranteeing a happy ending. It’s about being open to life, even when it doesn’t look how we expected. It’s about recognizing that even in the wreckage, there is still something worth caring about, something worth showing up for. It’s turning toward the pain and recognizing and acknowledging that it hurts, and in our pain we also find those things that reveal what really matters to us, and in the choice we have in responding to it.
The reality gap never fully disappears. But in time, we can learn to live within it, not as victims of what we’ve lost, but as people who continue to choose meaning in a world that doesn’t always give us what we want.
A Gentle Step Forward
If you’re feeling stuck in the reality gap, it might help to ask yourself: What is one small step I can take today? Not to erase the pain, but to move forward alongside it. How can I hold the pain, and take a step even though it hurts?
Maybe it’s reaching out to someone you trust. Maybe it’s engaging in something that brings a sense of fulfillment and meaning, even for a moment. Maybe it’s just acknowledging that it’s okay to grieve, and that grief doesn’t mean you’re broken. You are going through a normal human experience in response to something painful in your life.
The gap between what we wanted and what is will always exist in some form. But within that space, we still have choices. And those choices can lead us toward a life that, while different from what we imagined, is still meaningful.
