My name is Zhea, and I lost my partner in October 2023. I was just 19 years old, studying abroad in the UK, when my world changed in ways I could never have imagined. He was my favourite person, someone I shared so much love, laughter and happiness with, and someone I imagined being part of my future.
At an age when most people around me were navigating university, relationships, friendships and the excitement of figuring out their futures, I found myself learning how to live with the loss of someone I had imagined being part of mine.
I wasn’t just losing someone I loved. It was losing the future I had pictured, the little everyday moments we would never share, and a version of myself that existed when he was here.
I’ve learnt that grief doesn’t follow a timeline, nor does it look the same for everyone. I’ve also come to understand how isolating losing a partner at such a young age can be, particularly when the world doesn’t always know how to acknowledge your relationship or the significance of your loss.
Through sharing my experiences, I hope to help other young people feel seen, understood and a little less alone in a journey that can often feel incredibly lonely.
When your relationship isn’t recognised in the same way
One difficult part of losing a partner at a young age is realising that your grief doesn’t always fit into the categories society recognises.
When we think of someone losing their partner, we often picture a husband or wife, perhaps someone older who has spent decades building a life together. We rarely picture someone in their late teens, still studying, discovering themselves and dreaming about everything that lies ahead.
But love doesn’t become more meaningful with age, and grief isn’t measured by the number of years spent together.
There is no official title for someone like me. I wasn’t a widow in the traditional or legal sense, but I had lost the person I loved, someone who was an enormous part of my life and the future we imagined.
Sometimes, whether intentionally or not, people minimise relationships because they haven’t reached certain milestones, such as marriage, children or living together.
As young adults, we grieve not only the relationship we had, but also the relationship we were still growing into. We grieve the conversations we never got to have, the milestones we never got to celebrate and the future that suddenly looks completely different.
Finding Support That Fits ‘You’
Grief is deeply personal, and something I’ve learnt is that the support that works for one person may not work for another.
When I first experienced loss, I found myself in a position where few people my age could relate to what I was going through. My friends cared about me, but many had never experienced anything remotely similar.
Finding support isn’t necessarily about surrounding yourself with people who have all the right answers. Sometimes, it’s about finding people who are willing to sit with you in the uncomfortable moments, without trying to fix what cannot be fixed.
I’d encourage exploring peer-support communities, young adult bereavement groups, online grief spaces and organisations that specifically acknowledge partner loss. Sometimes, hearing another person describe a feeling you’ve struggled to put into words can be incredibly comforting.
For young adults experiencing partner loss, finding age-appropriate support can make a significant difference. Traditional bereavement spaces may not always reflect the experiences of someone grieving a boyfriend, girlfriend or partner in their teens or twenties.
And if joining a group doesn’t feel right for you, are there 121 services that might help, like seeing a counsellor? Or you could even try more private ways of processing and expressing emotions, like listening to music, writing, or doing a big fundraising walk in their memory?
And if you try something and it doesn’t seem to help, that doesn’t mean support isn’t for you. It might mean you haven’t found the right space or the right form of it yet.
