How to get the right closure after a breakup

How do people get closure?

Depending on the person and the relationship, people find different ways to try to move on. However, closure is unlikely to be clean.

Talking about the breakup

Some people seek to find the reason behind the breakup or what went wrong through talking. Reflecting back on the relationship and why it ended can offer some relief and open doors for reconciliation or friendship.

Having sex

For some people, having that last intimate moment is a way to get closure for their feelings. Perhaps even a way to see if there's still something to salvage.

Friendship

Staying friends with an ex is also a closure tactic. Instead of dealing with the finality of the breakup, forging a friendship can offer a soft ending.

Why we want closure

The state of getting closure is a mythical one in which we hope to be healed of emotional pain.

This concept of closure evolved from Gestalt psychology. According to one of Gestalt's principles, the mind seeks closure in everything. Even when presented with an incomplete circle, the mind perceives it as a full circle.

With time, the principle crossed over into processing experiences. Gestalt believed that if someone suffered unresolved trauma, whether, from a breakup or death, the mind was unable to move on until that issue is resolved or "closed".

Then began therapeutic techniques like "the empty chair" where participants would imagine the source of their unresolved issue sitting in the chair and talking to them. In the short term, the method offered some emotional release. However, participants were not freed from long-term suffering.

Despite not being an effective technique, Gestalt has thrived in modern relationships where emotional pain is involved.

How closure prolongs emotional pain/suffering

Through searching for permanent closure, we distract ourselves from the emotional pain. Seeking closure protects us from processing and feeling difficult experiences in healthy ways.

We want happy endings

Seeking closure is one way of getting our happy ending despite the heartbreak. It is an attempt to magically heal and walk away from relationships will that happy ending we desire.

"We're a feel-good society. We like clean-cut things. We want to believe there's an end to pain. In reality, it's not that the pain ends, but it changes over time." Davis Bush, author of "Hope and Healing for Transcending Loss." told Dave Roos from HowStuffWorks.

We avoid bad breakups

Even if a relationship was not working, we seek to understand the breakup more than what led to it. Relationship problems are best solved in the relationship. Seeking to solve them or understand them after a breakup can be a way of avoiding emotional pain.

"I do think that closure is more relevant when you have the end of a relationship. There really are elements of closure, whether it's signing the divorce papers or moving out of the apartment you shared," Bush added.

Progress over closure

It is hard to close the door on breakups. The best way is to learn to live with the loss, and heal and grow from it.

"I also call it 'living with the love, really allowing the memories of that person to fortify you. Recognizing that you're a different person because you loved them, that they're still with you in certain essential ways, and not being afraid to honor that relationship," Bush said.

Rather than becoming emotionally dead after the relationship, accepting your feelings can keep you emotionally alive.

Honouring the relationship and getting wisdom from it. There's going to be emotional baggage after a relationship, but how you deal with a breakup determines how much baggage you will walk away with.

How to move on

Research has shown that releasing emotional baggage through writing about a breakup is very effective in moving on.

100 participants were asked to write positive aspects of a recent breakup for 30 minutes a day for three days. After the exercise, the group reported low negative emotions and an increase in positive experiences like confidence, optimism, comfort, wisdom, gratitude, and empowerment.

Takeaway

Seeking closure is not bad. It is a means of trying to cope with a bad experience. However, breakups are not all bad. Through associating with the positive aspects and processing the experience progress can be made. And progress is always better than closure in the long term.