The Idea of Closure Is Great, but Is It Real?

How Do You Get Closure?

There are two philosophical debates that have been around since the beginning of time: 1) Which came first, the chicken or the egg? And 2) Is closure actually real?

Some people claim that closure is necessary to “properly” finish a connection with someone—so that they can finally move on. This might look like sending one last text, giving back an ex’s stuff, or even dissecting the relationship over an in-person conversation. My experience has been a little different.

Unfortunately for me, “closure” has typically been an excuse to sleep with my ex one more time (or two... or seven). I would go into the situation telling myself that the relationship couldn’t really be over until I had one more conversation or got everything I needed to off my chest. But in reality, it was me giving someone the opportunity to say what I thought I needed to hear or be the partner I wanted them to be. It was essentially an emotional Hail Mary packaged as a mature conversation. When in reality, it just kept me stuck in the same mental space.

“We can get trapped in our expectations and hopes about closure,” psychotherapist Ilona Phillips tells Cosmopolitan.

She explains that it’s in our human nature to want to ruminate and understand exactly how or why a relationship ended. We have it in our heads that once we get whatever clarity we’re seeking, we’ll be able to put that burden “down.” And sure, sometimes more information does help soothe us. But, like I’ve experienced, there comes a point where it just keeps you stagnant.

When you’re replaying conversations in your head and wracking your brain to figure out what the hell went wrong, it’s often an indication that this idea of a clean ending won’t happen for you.

Waiting for someone else to provide the answers we need can prevent us from moving forward.

^{—Dr. Viviana Coles}

“Naturally, most of us would prefer to end things in an organized, sorted way, ready to move on, a clean break,” Phillips says. “It's normal and survival based for us to want clarity and certainty. But life is messy, and it is helpful to remember that closure and moving on do not require certainty as a prerequisite for moving forward.”

So sure, closure does exist—it’s just not what we think it is.

When we define closure, we typically describe a final something that we get from a former partner. And this is exactly why people struggle so much with the concept: they’re making their healing contingent upon someone else’s actions. “In reality, closure is often something we have to create for ourselves,” intimacy expert and relationship psychotherapist Dr. Viviana Coles says.

“Waiting for someone else to provide the answers we need can prevent us from moving forward, particularly when that person is unwilling or unable to offer the clarity we're seeking.”

I’m sorry to tell you, you can’t get closure from anyone else but yourself. Thankfully, there are ways to help you get to the other side of healing.

You might think your best bet is shutting down every and any thought about the relationship—but this just isn’t realistic.

”Rather than telling someone to stop thinking about it, we get curious about what all that replaying is trying to do, what we are looking for,” Phillips explains. She tries to figure out if you’re looking to keep hope alive, have some sort of control, or just find a way to protect yourself in the future. By giving yourself permission to have these thoughts, you’re also allowing space to process them.

And once you process things, you can accept them. Some people think that acceptance means some sort of resignation or approval. But it’s in this acknowledgement that we really learn how negative it is for us to keep holding on. This part of getting closure can be really, really painful—it’s hard to let go of things we really care about.

Sometimes, to avoid this pain, people try to selectively remember the bad parts of the relationship. We think that if we focus on how awful someone was, it’ll help us get over them. You hyper fixate on the way they chewed or that one perfume you hate. This isn’t necessarily helpful either. Closure only happens from a place of honesty, because what you try to shove down will likely just pop up later down the line when you least expect it.

There is no finish line you cross to finally have closure. It’s something that happens slowly over time, while you don’t even notice.

“We can remember what was meaningful, what we miss while also looking honestly at what hurt, what wasn’t working and what we might do differently in the future,” Phillips says. “Something can have mattered and still needs to be over.”

Now the harshest reality about closure is that it isn’t anything specific—which is probably why so many people think it doesn’t exist. While we like to believe that closure lives in the words of a final conversation or between the sheets of some breakup sex, it isn’t some singular event.

There is no finish line you cross to finally have closure. It’s something that happens slowly over time, while you don’t even notice. Sometimes, conversations get you over the edge faster, but really it’s just something that you’ll eventually have—even if there are still things about your breakup that you don’t agree with or understand.

“Closure does not require having no unanswered questions,” Phillips says. “We can decide that unanswered questions no longer determine what happens next.”