MO AND PHINDI | Why closure after a break-up is overrated

Sure enough, your brain craves an authentic narrative to make sense of what happened between the two of you, especially if the break-up, disappearance or the pulling away was unexpected. No one deserves the cruelty and hurt of being happy with someone one day, only to have the stars in their eyes remorselessly snuffed out the next day by the very person they thought they would forever be with.

You need to know why. Even if no answer will stop the tears or put an end to the pain in that moment, you still deserve answers regardless. And hopefully, your ex affords you enough respect and has enough emotional maturity to have a grown-up conversation with you.

And that is basically what closure is about: for your ex to be there with answers – the heartbreaker giving the heartbroken a chance to have their curiosity satisfied.

Closure is great because more often than not, it helps people have a firm grasp on reality quicker. But while the idea that you need it before you can move on with your life is a popular one, it is actually an incredibly overrated one.

Closure is not compulsory to get you to move on from a break-up. With or without closure, your endgame should be to heal truly and move on completely. And you can do this without having any post-break-up conversation with your ex, especially if they don’t avail themselves for such emotional honesty.

Furthermore:

Your ex has a right not to give you any answers

You might think the final talk is what you need, but your ex has to be willing, and that’s not always the case. Everyone has the right to handle a break-up their own way. They don’t owe you a reason or conversation about it, no matter how much you deserve it. You don’t necessarily have a right to what you deserve.

Sometimes it leads to undesirable ends

How a “closure conversation” goes depends on the emotional maturity and mutual respect of both people involved. Rehashing a bad relationship can easily turn ugly. Instead of getting to the bottom of what went wrong in an objective way, it can turn into a blame game and an all-out screaming match.

You may not get the honest truth anyway

The one way to get closure is true honesty, and that’s hard to come by. Even if the relationship is over, your ex might lie just so they don’t feel like the bad person in the end. And the whole exercise becomes a complete waste of time.

Sometimes the best learning comes from within

You’d like to think that your ex can say the magic words that will open your eyes and help you see what perhaps you couldn’t before. But sometimes stepping away from the situation will help you see that on your own. You don’t need anyone else to do that work for you.

Accept that sometimes things just don’t work out. Not every broken relationship is someone’s fault. Sometimes relationships just don’t work out, and all the relationship needed to spiral downward was the slightest of triggers.

Closure is overrated, and when it’s not forthcoming, it is frankly just a speed bump in your healing process. It’s a lot better if you get it, but you don’t actually need it. Your ex’s disappearance is the actual closure. Accept it and keep it moving. You don’t always have to know why they did what they did.

No matter how much you try, when someone has decided not to form part of your life, they will leave for the stupidest of reasons and there’s nothing you can do about it. And you’ll kill yourself with self-doubt, self-blame and feelings of inadequacy for someone with zero courage and maturity to face you with the “why”.

Acknowledge the pain, learn from the experience – even your role in it, make peace with yourself, pick up the pieces and move on. The break-up is in itself the whole closure you need.

The idea that you can come to terms with why someone doesn’t love you anymore and you being at peace with it, just doesn’t happen sometimes. You can choose to accept that they’re gone, forgive, heal, learn and move on.