Women

Why Closure Talks Are Bullsh*t

According to the National Coalition for Women and Children Reporting Abuse, an estimated 2 million children have endured a physical or sexual assault by a family member or close family friend since 2009. Most are never reported, so the number could be much larger. In the United States, only about a quarter of child sexual assault victims are believed to contact police, even though most who are assaulted are between the ages of 11 and 16. These aren’t isolated incidents, either:

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When you think of a “closure talk”, what comes to mind? In the past, it was the therapist or friend who spoke a word of emotional closure and helped you get closure on a past grief or loss. In the future, there is a new closure talk, and it is the one in which men are encouraged to be the “best men” and women are encouraged to be the “best women.” It’s called Closure Talks, and they are a highly debatable topic.

Breakups are a pain. Whether you’re breaking up with someone after a six-month or a six-year relationship, I believe we can all agree that the weeks and months that follow may be painful and perplexing. You might have had the world’s most transparent and well-communicated breakup and still be left wondering what the heck happened months later.

This is something I’m going through right now. After four years together, my (now former) boyfriend and I decided to call it quits around ten months ago. Following the split, I got many views and nuggets of advise from family and friends on how to proceed. Some people advised me to take up a new activity, trim my hair, and use dating apps. Others even offered me a formula, claiming that moving on would take about half the time it took to end the relationship.

(Years or months together / 2 = time it takes to move on, for example.) I’ll keep you updated on if it works or not.

A few individuals also warned me that I wouldn’t be able to go on since the incident had left me with no closure. That I should meet with my ex and have the “closure conversation” if I wanted to move on fast. I’m sure you’ve heard of the phrase.

Allow me to explain if you aren’t sure. The closure discussion is basically an excuse to speak with your ex one final time. It’s the discussion in which you’re meant to have all of your questions about what went wrong in the relationship addressed, as well as all of the loose ends from the breakup wrapped up. In principle, this seems to be innocuous. And that was something I really pondered for a time.

However, after spending a lot of time analyzing my own thoughts and emotions about the relationship and the breakup, I’ve come to the conclusion that, contrary to popular belief, a closure conversation isn’t required to move on.

We’re left with a lot of bits to attempt to make sense of when a relationship ends. Maybe the split caught us off guard, or maybe we knew it coming. In any case, our thoughts tend to stray back at some time. We may start to remember the night their answers were shorter than usual, or we might start to question whether they’re grieving the breakup in the same way we are. Suddenly, a slew of questions float about in our heads, and it seems that the only way to stop thinking about them is to go straight to the source.

It’s easy to believe that knowing the answers to our most urgent concerns will provide us with all the information we need to go forward. It’s why I think so many people romanticize closure discussions. We want to think that if we only knew what happened, if we could just hear it from them or see that they’re in pain as well, we’d be able to stop wondering and put it all behind us.

But that is precisely what our closure talk concept does: it enables us to get complacent in our recovery by convincing us that we can’t possibly go on until all of our who, what, when, where, and why questions have been addressed. We convince ourselves that after we meet or talk with our ex one final time, we’ll be able to move on. And, although we may see no harm in it, this story simply delays our recovery by putting the burden of closure on our ex-partners, giving them an unspoken power over how and when we may go on.

So here’s what I’ve learnt after my breakup: closure conversations are a load of nonsense.

They’re nonsense because closure can’t and won’t come from your ex— you have to do it yourself. And, although we’d want to believe that answers would provide us closure, the truth is that closure has more to do with our acceptance of the circumstance than it does with the reasons behind it. Because, even if you had one final discussion with your ex and got all the answers you needed, it would still be up to you to accept those answers and decide whether or not to go ahead.

I realize that this isn’t the simplest thing to accept. I’ll admit that there are still days when I wish I could have one final chat with my ex-boyfriend. I push myself to concentrate on the answers I need—the ones that will eventually offer me closure—when I start obsessing over the answers I desire but will never receive.

The reality is that there are a slew of reasons why a relationship fails. It might have been a matter of schedule, timing, adultery, boredom, or something else else. However, the termination of a relationship is often due to the simple fact that two individuals did not complement one other in the manner they had hoped.

When you realize that there was nothing you could have done to make someone love you more or less, you will find closure. The truth is that some individuals are just incapable of cooperating. And that’s OK. In fact, being able to identify when a relationship is no longer benefiting you or your partner is a sign of maturity. It doesn’t rule out the possibility that the love was genuine at one time. It does not imply that there is a problem with you. And that doesn’t rule out the possibility of being harmed by it.

I know how difficult it is—I’m going through it myself. But I hope that knowing that you are in control of how, when, and why you move on brings you some comfort.

There’s no need for a wrap-up speech.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that I hate talking about myself. I get all touched out when asked about my life, and I hate the feeling of someone else trying to get inside my head. I dislike sharing intimate details of my life with anyone, because I feel like I’ve been through enough growing up and dealing with the death of my parents. I don’t like being put on a pedestal and I dislike being the center of attention. I don’t like the idea of others trying to get close to me, and I don’t want to be looked at as different. I’ve always been a person who doesn’t like to be. Read more about closure with ex after years and let us know what you think.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is closure so important?

Closure is important because it helps people feel like they have a sense of completion. It allows them to move on and not dwell on the past.

Why do people refuse closure?

Is seeking closure selfish?

Seeking closure is not selfish. Its a natural human instinct to want things to be over and done with, but it can also be beneficial for the person who has had their life turned upside down by something that happened in the past.