How to get closure when you can't move on
Severing ties and dissolving the emotional bond
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Closure is acceptance and peace about a relationship loss and its absence from your life. Closure often refers to relationships with people that have ended and can also refer to endings at different stages of life.
Relationships are more than a physical experience. They are held together by an emotional bond between two people. When a relationship between you and someone else is over, an emotional bond can remain even in the absence of any physical interaction.
Relationship endings and closure
Endings are difficult for all of us, especially if the ending was unexpected or unplanned, and can often be filled with challenging emotional states. Sometimes endings are traumatic and can prolong the mourning and closure process. There are a number of relationship ending scenarios that can influence the ability and effort involved in getting closure.
Positive endings
Endings can be mutual and amicable when both parties decide to part ways because of the completion of a project, therapeutic process or a body of work. Closure tends to come easily to both parties who experience and have a say in a mutually beneficial ending. There’s no need to sever the emotional bond that connected both parties because the bond is not problematic or likely to cause problems in the future. The bond enables closure.
Adversarial endings
Endings can also be mutual because of conflict between two parties. The ongoing resentment between both people will prevent either party from gaining closure and either party are at risk of holding a lifelong grudge against the other. The animosity between both people sustains the emotional bond and will prevent either party from ever achieving closure.
Abrupt endings - when it’s not your choice
Some endings are unpredicted, abrupt and shocking. Sudden endings, where you’re at the mercy of the another person in control of a decision regarding the relationship or life’s surprises catches you off guard, take more effort to gain closure. When one person wants out of a relationship with you and you feel differently, you’ll be left with mixed feelings ie. rejection and regret, that you will have to process before you can even accept that the relationship is over. The lingering feelings cause you to ruminate about what happened and why, feeding the emotional bond and sustaining the connection with the other person. Closure in this case will take longer and require more effort.
Abrupt endings - when it is your choice
When you’re the one who ended a toxic or narcissistic relationship, closure doesn’t need to involve forgiveness or gratitude as many suggest is necessary. Closure can refer to feeling indifferent or neutral about the other person and that the other person is rendered irrelevent and nonexistent in your life. Feeling at peace when you think about the person who once caused you so much pain, which is different to apathy or emptiness, can indicate the successful dissolution of the emotional bond.
There are other relationship scenarios involving abusive or criminal behaviour that lead to abrupt and traumatic relationship endings. This article will not be referring to these scenarios.
Emotional bonds are sustained by any emotion, whether it’s love, guilt, resentment or hatred. The way to sever an emotional bond is to no longer feed the relationship your emotional energy, including your hopes and desires for that other person or for the future of the relationship.
What keeps you stuck
What keeps you stuck in getting closure is also what delays you ending a relationship that isn’t working. You still hope that something you do or say will magically change them and improve the relationship. When you finally realise that the other person isn’t meeting your needs and admit to yourself that they will never be able to meet your needs, you will then be able to take the next step to end the relationship.
The next hurdle to closure is your hidden hopes and desire that they will regret not working harder to improve the relationship. You secretly hope that they will acknowledge how important you’ve been to them and make an effort to change. It’ll be another stab in the heart when they reluctantly oblige with your decision to end things and is the one to show decreasing interest in you before you get to detach from them.
In a sense they’re depriving you of the empowering ending you envisioned when you decided to end the relationship. This dissatisfying outcome can cause resentment, regret, embarrassment and shame to resurface, sustaining the emotional bond and prolonging the transition period toward closure.
People often think they need the other in the relationship to give them closure and can feel stuck in a suspended transition state until the other person makes the right move to end things properly. The 'right move’ to facilitate closure tend to require the other person admitting to wrongdoing, apologising and asking for forgiveness and another chance. It’s no surprise anyone would be stuck feeling resentful and rejected when these socially accepted expressions of accountability aren’t forthcoming.
Given that most people are self-protective and will do what’s necessary to preserve their self-image, it’s more likely that they will continue to avoid accountability, ignore their conscience and other reminders that your lack of closure is your problem.
Closure is dependent on you and your ability to dissolve the emotional bond between yourself and the other person in the relationship after the relationship has ended.
You are entirely in control of your closure process regardless of the other person’s involvement or their need for closure.
Pitfalls that prevent closure
There are several pitfalls and traps that will keep you stuck in the past or in a fantasy reality that will delay closure. These pitfalls and traps sustain the emotional bond between you and the other person rather than dissolve it.
If you’re currently feeling stuck because you don’t have closure, notice any listed points that cause a reaction, including any point you immediately dismiss as irrelevant. That’s the one to contemplate further.
SHAME. This includes feeling rejected, discarded, unwanted, devalued, inferior, inadequate and unimportant. It’s also possible the other person is mirroring these feelings, intensifying your own and amplifying unhelpful narratives through vicarious emotion. Either way, shame manifests in the many ways described in this section.
Victim aversion and self-rejection. There can be a negative charge - shame - about seeing yourself in the role of victim to someone else's wrongdoing, even if you’re the one who ended the relationship. In order to live into a self-image of a strong, resilient or empowered person, you will need them to ‘see the light’ or ‘take the right action’ so that being 'the victim' had a purpose, the shame associated with that role can dissipate and balance can be restored. These are a lot of conditions for closure that are dependent on someone who is unlikely to fulfil these for you. Being the victim of a fantasy or delusion about someone else is another way to remain stuck without closure.
Being the Saviour. By telling yourself that you haven’t done everything possible to make the relationship work, there’s still a chance they will change and all your efforts/suffering will have been worth it. While you’re clinging to a fantasy and denying the reality where you don’t have the power to change the fate of a relationship or another person’s choices, you won’t be getting closure anytime soon.
Toxic positivity and denial. Many people who want to preserve a relationship with another person, a workplace, a profession or a community tend to overemphasise the redeeming characteristics and downplay the severity of the character flaws that caused and maintain the rupture in the relationship. This can happen after you decide you’re going to leave the relationship/context unless…. Then something happens to convince you (a little too easily) that it’s not as bad as you thought and you’ll stick around longer. And the cycle repeats preventing the internal ending you need to take to get closure.
Thinking about them at all. They are living rent-free in your mind as you constantly wonder what they’re thinking, feeling, wanting, needing, going through and allowing your assumptions and speculation to occupy your thoughts. If you ended the relationship because they mistreated or betrayed you, concerning yourself with them is making them more important than you. Trying to figure them out after the relationship is over while avoiding your own emotional needs is futile and can make getting closure unnecessarily difficult.
Spiritual bypassing. You might believe there is a bigger picture and higher purpose to everything that happened in the relationship. The relationship ending is the karmic consequence of past life dealings, and closure will come during specific planetary alignments or in divine time. The reason the relationship had to end is because the person lost their way and as you’re karmically bound, you hope that your prayers for their redemption and enlightenment will manifest and make the whole experience worth it. You get to be the hero, the important actor in this divine play, the one who took the higher ground while masking the pain of being harmed to avoid acknowledging your role as the victim of wrongdoing. Divine timing might never deliver the closure experience you’re trying to manifest as long as your thoughts and prayers sustain the emotional bond.
Forgiving and gratitude for them. These are great tools but are the wrong tools when seeking closure. You might vehemently disagree with me because of your religious or spiritual beliefs. As long as you’re thinking about them and wishing them well, believing you can ‘let go’ of pain and the impact of hostility, betrayal, moral distress or bullying without being supported to process and integrate the painful experiences, you might be emotionally bypassing while preserving the emotional bond. Forgive yourself and don’t worry about what happens to them because there’s still work ahead for you to get to closure. Once you’re there, you might find you don’t need to forgive anyone and feel immense gratitude for your own effort, supports and achieving your goal.
Curses and ill wishes. Whether you’re praying for their awakening or praying for your version of justice that involves their pain and suffering, that emotional bond is going to remain intact and closure will remain elusive.
Getting closure
Closure is dependent on you and your ability to dissolve the emotional bond between yourself and the other person in the relationship that has come to an end. The dissolution of the emotional bond occurs by gradually eliminating the flow of emotional energy from you to the other person.
The great news is that it doesn’t matter if they remain unresolved about the relationship with you. What they’re thinking, feeling and experiencing is irrelevant. If they do have unresolved feelings about you, any revenge tactics or desire to reform a relationship with you will add obstacles to your efforts without preventing you from eventually getting closure.
Getting closure involves doing the opposite of what you are doing that is currently preventing closure (in the list above) as well as restorative actions to move you toward the reality where you get to experience closure.
Ruthless actions to get closure
You want to do everything possible to remove your exposure to them and their access to you.
Remove reminders of the person and the relationship. Yes, all of them. Stop following their social media, publications and any of their outputs. This also includes cutting out mutuals who want to talk to you about the other person and hope you two can work things out.
Unfriend and/or block them on all channels possible so they can’t access you. It seems harsh but you need to give yourself the space to develop increasing distance to support the decoupling and dissolution processes. Avoid ALL contact with them if possible.
Crush curiosity. Even when you think you have closure, because you no longer feel angst when you think about them, don’t convince yourself that you’re fine now and it’s ok to unblock them or search for them online to see what they’ve been up to. Being curious before you have closure can have consequences. Be ok with them no longer existing in your mind and present life.
Say no. When you notice yourself thinking about them, stop it with a resounding internal NO! You might have to repeat NO internally a number of times.
Ask your friends to stop you when you start talking about the other person and speculate about them.
Check for vicarious emotions. If you start feeling guilty, nostalgic, doubtful about your decision, regretful or ashamed check that these are YOUR emotions and not you feeling them vicariously. Check by asking yourself ‘Are these my feelings? If so, get out of my body.’ Take a few long breaths and notice any changes. If you feel lighter, calmer and different after this exercise, the emotions were not your own. Do this exercise as often as you like.
Stop caring about them, their welfare, what they think, feel, do, want, hope. Make their existence irrelevant to you, at least for the short term.
Replace reminders of them with something pleasant. It can be a physical object, a visualised symbol or a plant. Something wholesome or even sacred to you. If they pop into your awareness, after saying NO, replace them with a mental image or concept that is soothing or funny that isn’t already associated with them.
Crush hope they will ever change or that they even need to change. Accept them as they are. Remind yourself of the negative character traits that caused pain and de-emphasise the positive character traits that didn’t prevent the pain. They don’t need your charitable perspective of them, your forgiveness, your gratitude or to change for you to have closure.
Restorative actions to get closure
Grieve the loss even if the relationship was toxic. Acknowledge the different emotions and avoid blaming the other person or yourself for whatever surfaces.
Accept that the relationship is over and new reality is emerging.
Reflect on the relationship from its beginning, middle and end. Be curious about the relationship and reflect on what led to the end of the relationship without blaming anyone.
Become aware of the fantasies and expectations you had about the other person and the relationship, and what you hoped the relationship was going to do for you. Make a note of what was idealized and what happened in reality. This is evidence of a recurring pattern in your life that you’re invited to change by letting go of the fantasy and replacing it with something realistic. This is the first step to creating different and realistic relationship goals. This is also necessary for integrating the experience to heal or recover.
Become aware of the role the other person played in your life and the role you likely played in theirs that was not apparent during the relationship.
Take stock of what you learned about yourself, your conditioning that resulted in specific relationship patterns and what you would change in future relationships.
Do an inventory of your skills, qualities, supports and resourcefulness that enabled you to get through hardship in the past and will help you through this transition now.
Lean on your trusted supports to encourage you to keep taking it easy and to challenge you gently when they notice you’re trying to move on before you’ve completed the transition period.
Set new and realistic goals. What new insights have you gained about yourself, your needs and the other person that you didn’t have before? Now that you have them, how will this inform a different way of doing things that can prevent repeating history? What will you no longer do and what things will you do differently?
Remind yourself that your healing and recovery is the most important thing to get you closure.
Remember, as long as you’re able to take the necessary actions to dissolve the remaining emotional bond, you will get to experience what closure means to you.
I wish you all the peace of closure.
Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting, subscribing and supporting my work,
Nathalie Martinek, PhD
The Narcissism Hacker
Hack narcissism and support my work
I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.
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This has been so helpful in getting closure with my mother.
When I told her that my father had sexually abused me for years (some of which she actually witnessed, but did not protect me from) she almost immediately cut me out of the family. She encouraged my brothers to cut me out as well, which two of the three did.
This was devastating to me - almost worse than the sexual abuse itself.
Still, for years I held on to hope that I could "reunite" with my mother (we'd never been united in the first place).
Despite moving on and building a rich life for myself, I clung to the idea that she loved me and wanted the same kind of close relationship that I wanted.
Total Bullshit.
She is 83 now. I have not seen her in 20 years.
We still text, because I do care how she is doing. She married a rich man after my father died, and is doing quite well. She has my brothers and her adult grandkids to take care of her. She could not care less that I am out of her life.
Yet I keep clinging to the hope that she "really" does care and "really" does love me.
Again: Total Bullshit.
When her husband died, I called her for the first time in years. I made an opening to come be with her to provide support. That opening was slammed shut as she let me know others would be supporting her and I was not needed or wanted.
She said she would text me to let me know about funeral arrangements, etc (she lives in Florida and I foolishly thought I should go to the funeral) but no information about the funeral has been forthcoming.
The phone call was brief and cold and I have not received a call or text from her since.
I will use the tools you shared in your article in the coming days - I know that at some point she will die and there will be no healing of our relationship.
It's been a lifetime of accepting this and coping with it.
I'm 62 years old and have a life filled with love and good health, yet I still have a hard time coping with the rejection by my mother.
Oh, well. Onward and forward.
Thank You for the work you do.