Why everyone wants closure at the end of a relationship

It’s natural and normal for everyone who wants closure at the end of a relationship. It’s an ending to a chapter, of course, you want to know what happened. When your friends and family ask you, ‘what happened’ you feel stupid if you don’t have a response.

But closure may be overrated, especially if the person you are waiting on can’t give it to you. In this post, I want to suggest what you can do instead of waiting for someone to help you move on.

It’s normal when a romantic relationship ends — either a slow death or through a blindside — to feel as if your heart is ripped out without anesthesia. It doesn’t matter whether your breakup happens over the phone, via text, or through smoke signals. You feel spiritually and emotionally depleted. Once the shock passes, you feel grief, sadness, anger but mainly confusion and you start looking for answers.

Definition of Closure: 

When I was single, I believed there was a ritual to most breakups. The ritual was to get “Closure.” In psychology, closure can be paraphrased as, “an individual’s desire for a firm answer to a question.”

Most of us hate ambiguity. When thoughts and behaviors don’t align, it creates what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance happens in situations where thoughts and attitudes conflict with behaviors. Someone says, “I Love You!” but then they end things, ‘What?’ The closure may feel particularly important if you’ve received mixed messages.

The purpose of closure:

Most people believe they deserve closure. This might also depend on the length and intensity of your relationship. If you were seriously dating someone for four years, you most certainly will want a longer conversation about what the hell just happened. But for a fleeting relationship that was never defined people might feel differently about needing or wanting closure.

Suffice it to say, you somehow believe that getting closure will allow you to move on and maybe even learn from your experience. Particularly if you didn’t see your breakup coming, it’s easy to become a private investigator of sorts. You comb over every email, text, and message searching for clues to the mystery of what went wrong. However, despite your best sleuthing, often the evidence you do find may not warrant the ending. You begin to question your own sanity –Did my relationship actually happen, did I make it all up? Why did it have to end?

When people insist upon closure, it is usually one of three things you are REALLY looking for:

1. An ending that makes sense.
2. Validation that the relationship was significant and,
3. Information about what really happened.

What closure is not:

Seldom — if ever — does closure actually mean feedback. Ideally, what people long for is evidence that the relationship was real, that the other person feels bad and that it was not a waste of time.

Do you really need it: 

While you may really want closure the reality is you don’t need it. You can invest a lot of time and energy in prolonging your pain trying to make sense of someone else’s actions when the best way to heal is to focus on your new future and work on processing YOUR feelings about the relationship ending.

That said, the type of closure you seek will actually depend more on your love style than any other personal trait.

If you are an EMOTIONAL TYPE a Nora or Nick closure for you is the desire to know that your relationship was real and significant. You want to be able to trust that your feelings were mutual and validated, to know that the time you spent was ‘special.’ You want to know the emotional ‘truth’ beneath the decision. Ideally, closure of emotional types is sharing feelings of sadness with your partner.

If you are more the INDEPENDENT TYPE closure is less about sharing tears and more about sharing facts. You want to make sense of the ending; was I deceived? Did I misread the situation? You want to know what changed and when? You don’t necessarily want validation, you want information.

If you don’t know your type, take my free quiz here

Regardless if you prefer tears or a factual testimony, is it realistic to expect closure? Do you imagine your ex will be able to give you anything that is helpful? Even in the best-case scenario, you might hear, “You’re wonderful, it’s ME, not YOU!” How will this information be useful? Will you be less wonderful the next time? Will closure actually answer the burning question- Why am I still single?

The most important thing to learn from a breakup is your history to piece together your romantic life like a puzzle and see the big picture. Are you picking emotionally unavailable partners? Are you projecting your needs and fears onto others? What is most worrisome to you: are you afraid of being alone? Look at these questions and examine the answers more for patterns.

What to do instead:

When a relationship ends instead of seeking closure try the following:

• Create an ending that fits

Your ending should be neither a fairy tale nor a horror story. No one person is 100% responsible for a relationship outcome. The real reason your relationship didn’t work is usually a combination of you and your partner’s love styles. You tell people, “John and I broke up because he’s emotionally unavailable and coming out of a divorce.” While there may be some elements that are true is this the whole truth? John might also have a pattern of avoiding closeness and you have a pattern of seeking closeness and falling in love quickly. A more accurate ending should take into perspective the combination of people being opposite types, with competing needs in their relationships.

• Look for the patterns that are consistent across most of your relationships.

The things you do repeatedly are those things that will make a bigger difference in finding sustainable love. If you have a Nervous love style, your need for validation may push you towards commitment because you want consistency versus your partner being ready for this. Given that you are nervous, can you learn to take things slower and tolerate some ambivalence at the start? If you have an Isolated love style, your need for independence might come across as aloof where partners question whether you are “all-in.” If so, can you learn to share more of your feelings, see your partner as equal, and make your partner feel loved and adored?

Once you focus on clarification and an understanding of your patterns, then you can learn from your relationships.

The mystery of why the end of your relationship is a very personal spiritual journey that only YOU can solve. Insight into yourself and your patterns will help you crack the code yourself AND allow you to move forward without spending time and energy rehashing your history.

Summary: Instead of getting closure from an ex, pay attention to your patterns. You hold the key to your future. If you can learn from your past, you will be one step closer to finding the love of your life. What do you think of closure?