Why you don't want to be a grieving fiance

I don't like sharing with people that I lost my fiance. It's not that it's hard to share it but that it's hard to deal with people once you tell them. You will forever be treated differently. Typical scenario:

Well, I lost my fiance 18 weeks and 1 day ago.

Question 1: Oh, wow. I'm so sorry. What happened?
Response 1: Well, his death was a suicide.

Now this typically goes 1 of 2 ways

• Compassionate response not dependent on details: "I'm so sorry, I lost my (insert relationship) the same way (insert time) ago" or "I have no idea but I am so sorry"
• Making things more awkward: *Fumble over words* or *Flag me as a "victim"* or (god forbid) "Did you find him?" <none of your damn business

Almost without fail my very next question if it comes (if they haven't run out of the room yet):

Question 2: So, how long were you together?

*Usually at this point, they also look down at my left hand. I'm not sure why...just to make sure I'm telling the truth?

Awesome. I've just shared with you the hands-down-most-difficult-event-of-my-life. And now the person that is questioning is setting themselves up to assess (in their mind) how difficult it is for me. Ugh. 

There are people married 20 years that hate each other's guts. Time doesn't equate to quality of the relationship or difficulty of grief. 

I opened up to his mother, an absolute Angel of a woman, that in some ways she has the 'benefit' (terrible word) of being a grieving mother in that I haven't heard of anyone asking "how close were you with your child?" or otherwise provides compassion contingent on first deciding the strength of the relationship... Usually, after question 1 it's something like "Oh my god. I can't even imagine..."

Guess what? You can't imagine what my heart and mind are like right now either.

If you want to know how much it hurts: I spent 3 1/2 years with someone that I was overjoyed at the prospect of spending another 50-60 years with. Within the first year of dating him, I was modifying some life goals because I wanted happiness in us more than just me. In the 6 months before he died, I was putting myself in a position to support him - no matter what it took (financial, geographical changes) I would let him decide. 

I lost my emergency contact, my best friend, my confidant, my advisor, my lover, my partner. I lost my Every Day. I marked up on my cell phone bill the number of times I called or was called by him, just in the last 2 weeks he was alive. The page was bled through with pink pen underlined multiple times every single day of the week. I'm now caring for 2 dogs, caring for the house we bought, except I'm doing it all alone. Try and think about how much that hurts before you judge how important he was by the length of time I was blessed to have him...