5 ways to get closure after a break-up
It takes time to heal when a relationship ends, but these tips, based on advice from a couples counsellor, and a sociologist, can help ease the pain
Anyone who’s gone through a bad breakup will be very familiar with this statement: “I just need closure.” As you spend your first newly single days sobbing and bouncing back and forth between “I can do better” and “I’ll be alone forever”, closure seems like the best way to make the pain stop — stat.
But it’s an elusive concept — and it may not even be a real thing. “Closure doesn’t exist,” says Nancy Berns, PhD, sociologist and author of Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us. “It’s an ambiguous term that means something different to every person.” Forgiveness, revenge, forgetting — you have to figure out the root of your yearning first.
A more tangible definition of closure: healing. In other words, even though closure doesn’t exist, it doesn’t mean you’ll be in pain forever, Berns says. “You can heal without closure.”
Still, that’s easier said than done. Why is it so freakin’ hard to feel better? One explanation comes from a Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, in the late 1920s: she hypothesised the reason waiters could remember orders up until they delivered the food was because unprocessed material lingers in our brain.
This so-called Zeigarnik effect applies to loose ends throughout our lives, says Don Cole, a couples therapist and co-founder of The Centre for Relationship Wellness in Texas. “Until the information is processed, it’s being worked on in part of our brain.” And it keeps nagging at you, kind of like a stone in your shoe.