What happened when we sought closure

CLOSURE. Almost every relationship ends with us not getting this relief — we never find out why it ended, why things changed, and what ultimately led to our love lives crumbling. Many of us seek closure, demand it even, as if by some miracle, finding it will make us feel better, justify the end, or allow us to move on.

But as Karen Salmansohn says in How to Be Happy, Dammit: A Cynic’s Guide to Spiritual Happiness, “Sometimes you don’t get closure, you just move on.” However, not many people heed this advice, and prolong their quest for closure, sometimes even months and years after the end of the relationship. They don’t understand that it’s possible to move on all by themselves, and so reach out to their exes, often with bad results.

What happened when these people sought closure?

Chris-Ann, 26:

About two months after he broke up with me, and blocked me when I sought an explanation, I drove to Clarendon to his mother’s house to talk to her, as we had always been close, and I just wanted her to tell me what her son had said about me. The dogs in the yard ran me down when I came out of the car, and the lady just stood there looking, with her hands akimbo, looking at me like I was a mad woman. After the dogs calmed down I just went back in the car and left.

Fiona, 23:

I was seeing this older guy and he got married on me, and just sent me a text to tell me to lose his number. I mourned for a year, then reached out to him because I couldn’t move on without feeling a deep sense of violation. His wife answered and I left a message with her, like I was just a client. She sounded quite nice because I guess she didn’t know who I was. But later that night I guess he had told her I was his crazy ex or something, because she sent me a bunch of messages saying I was a Jezebel and a homewrecker and she would beat my behind if she ever saw me in public.

Yshima, 37:

You know the saying, leave well enough alone? Sometimes it’s good to heed that. My ex and I had a tumultuous relationship — big fights, even bigger making up, it was explosive, in a good way, or so I thought. He was migrating and the long distance thing wouldn’t work, he said, so we parted amicably. I was soon in another relationship —same up and down high emotion environment, and one day after an argument with my new beau, I reached out to my ex to ask him if he thought I was the problem. Well, he told me I was a hellraiser, a Delilah, and that he didn’t know what a healthy relationship was until he left me. He urged me to see a therapist, and to leave relationships alone until I dealt with my demons.

Nigel, 33:

She told me that I had shown her what she absolutely didn’t want, or would be willing to tolerate in future relationships, and she was thankful for that. So all the while I was thinking that I’d been a good boyfriend, she had used me as a lesson for the kind of man not to date. That hurt to the core.

Denzil, 37:

I saw her at a function and she was hiding from me and avoiding me, and I didn’t understand why because she was the one who said she wasn’t feeling me, but said we could still be friends. That had messed me up for a while, but after I got over it, I was willing to be her friend, but she never took my calls or answered my messages. So seeing her that time was the first I was seeing her in months, and I guess I wanted her to see that I was OK. When I glimpsed her again and tried to walk over, she pointed me out to security, so I just left. Later, she messaged me and said I should stop stalking her, and to this day, I don’t understand what would make that crazy lady say that.