Yes, CanFix, I agree, we need to be compassionate. I have a therapist who has sat with me while I was in pain for not months, but years, because of a break-up with an addict I deeply loved. The therapist did not tell me my pain was in any way wrong. He accepted my grief and my destroyed self-worth. He did not hold up a calendar to time my emotional breakdown's start and finish.
No one understands better than someone who has been in love with a beautiful/horrible addict how wrenching it is to lose him or to have to leave him. To be powerless over his disease of the mind and soul and to lose him because of it.
I do understand why other people don't understand why we suffer so terribly. I learned to be very careful about to whom I revealed my pain. Some friends were just too impatient for me to get over it. And I hurt so much I could hardly breathe. They could not understand. They said "You just dodged a bullet." "God just did you a favor."
And all I wanted was the addict I loved to come back. Healthy and capable of loving me.
Who else would understand that except those who post here and sit in Al-Anon and Nar-Anon rooms all over the world?