My friend Roisin has written an email for her ex. It’s good: funny, open, kind. She writes that she feels bad about how they ended things, and wants to extend an olive branch.
Roisin wants to know if I think she should send it. “Is this a terrible idea?” she asks.
I answer honestly: I’m not sure it’s a good idea.
If I were her ex, I’d interpret it as her testing the waters about getting back together. Roisin doesn’t want that – but silence doesn’t feel right, either. “I think I just want to do something to finish it,” she says.
I understand her frustration. My own drafts folder is full of emails I’ve thought better of sending, sometimes after spending entire days revising them. Then, buried deep in my outbox, are the emails I sent before I learned restraint, mostly to exes.
Some, I now note with horror, are thousands of words long. All reflect my past quests for what Roisin is chasing now: closure.
Closure is an almost fabled thing. We might not be able to say what it looks like, or even what it is exactly. My yoga teacher, devoted to a daily practice of non-attachment, tells me closure doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t stop us from pursuing it.
Whenever a relationship breaks down – a romantic breakup, friendship rift or job loss – it’s tempting to believe that if we could only speak our piece or get our questions answered, we’d be able to accept our situation and move on.
“We have a human need to tie up loose ends,” agrees the psychotherapist Gary McClain. But what if pinning our hopes on closure is holding us back?
***
In McClain’s new book The Power of Closure: Why We Want It, How to Get It and When to Walk Away, he explores why the promise of closure is so compelling.
He sees it as akin to acceptance, “a state of finality, clarity and peace”. Having closure means you might not be happy about your situation, but you understand it. Without it, you might feel stuck in the past, wondering “why” and “what if”.
Often, taking steps to resolve that uncertainty can feel better than living with it, even if it means being vulnerable or risking rejection. Merely breaking the silence may seem like making progress.
Seeking closure – reflecting a desire for open and honest communication – can be “a worthy goal”, says McClain. But, in general, he warns against setting expectations too high: “We don’t always get it.”
You might, for example, send an email to your ex, detailing the ways in which you felt disrespected – but receive only indifference or flat-out denial in return. “Will they even have that conversation?” says McClain. “Or will it lead to more emotional abuse, more frustration, more gaslighting?”
We tend to picture only the best-case scenario: a satisfying apology or acknowledgement of our point of view. “We have a fantasy,” says McClain, “and life usually – frequently – doesn’t meet our fantasies.”
When I was labouring over my long emails, I certainly imagined that a perfect sequence of words would unlock precisely the response I was owed. In reality, “we can’t control what other people believe, how they behave, what they feel,” McClain says.
Before taking steps to achieve closure, he says, it’s important to consider all the potential outcomes, not just the one we hope will set us free. Contact could reopen old wounds or reanimate relationships best left in the past. Couples who can’t move on from each other might be using the idea of closure as a smokescreen to keep the relationship going, McClain suggests: “They tell each other ‘we’re going to change’ … but it’s the same dynamic.”
Even taking responsibility for our own bad behaviour may mask a desire for absolution. One of McClain’s patients heard from their high school bully, who said they wanted to apologise, but then simply continued their earlier power games.
That’s why he advocates gaining clarity on your feelings about the situation before communicating them to the other party. When we say we “just want closure”, we might actually want to change someone’s mind, force an admission of wrongdoing – or hurt them as much as they’ve hurt us. Often, “closure is motivated by revenge,” McClain says. “Sometimes it’s just best to walk away.”
***
Chasing closure can be unpredictable, even counterproductive.
On the one hand, “it’s important to have honest conversations” and to take emotional risks, McClain says. “You’re saying, ‘I’m a valid person, and we had a relationship; I want us to understand each other’ – I think that’s very empowering.”
But by looking to someone else to put our own minds at ease, we might be giving them too much power and ceding responsibility for our own wellbeing. “It’s something you really have to weigh out for yourself,” McClain says.
He suggests unburdening yourself in a letter, with the intention – and this is important – “that you will not send it”, he warns. “It could be very sad and tearful, or it could be a nasty, ugly, horrible letter … Get it all out, and then look for what emerges as you read through it.”
Simply being honest with yourself, on the page, can refresh your perspective. I’ve experienced this with some of my unsent emails: writing down what I wanted to say extinguished the desire to actually communicate it.
Research suggests this has to do with “the activity of making sense of an emotional event”: giving voice to our blocked feelings and shaping them into a story that we are able to live with.
If you do still want to reach out to someone about unfinished business, McClain says, the letter can help to guide your approach and focus your conversation. And that, he adds, is best carried out in person, with the benefit of non-verbal cues like facial expressions and intonation.
“We hide behind email and text,” says McClain. He likewise advises against scripting the conversation, though “setting intentions” is sensible.
Before you sit down together, McClain recommends doing all that you can to take the heat and hurt feelings out of the situation. One method is to examine your feelings rationally, and pinpoint any disproportionate reactions. “Our emotions are not always very reliable; we can follow them down a rabbit hole,” he says.
The best mindset for such a conversation, McClain says, is one of curiosity and compassion – for the other party, as well as yourself. But he agrees that can be tough to maintain, especially once someone’s defences go up.
It’s important “to be willing to listen, as well as to speak”, he says. “You may find out some things about yourself you didn’t really want to hear.” It’s also good to be prepared for the meeting not to go your way – for your apology to be rejected or your attempt at reconciliation rebuffed.
True closure, after all, isn’t achieved unilaterally: for it to be transformative in the way of our fantasies, we must be truly open ourselves. “We’re so conditioned to fear being vulnerable with each other, and to fear letting things out,” McClain says. “I think that gets in the way.”
Tellingly, his patients tend to get most stuck on closure when they have no hope of achieving it: after the death of a parent or loved one, when it’s too late for the “big talk”.
For that reason, McClain suggests building our tolerance for open communication and uncomfortable conversations – so that we might “have closure every day”. That’s the best way to live with clarity and protect against regret, he says.
Learning how to tolerate uncertainty, and let go of the past, can itself be an act of strength. “There are times when you can say, ‘Well, at least I said it, even if they couldn’t hear it’,” says McClain. But sometimes, closure is a case of deciding: “I’m going to be okay with this.”
It can be hard to move on, knowing that you might never be granted the apology or audience you crave. But, McClain says, “there’s a liberation in acceptance: ‘I learned something. I know the warning signs now. It doesn’t need to happen again.’”
As tantalising as the idea of closure may be, it’s rarely a silver bullet: the resolution we crave may only be possible with time and perspective – when we stop searching for it outside ourselves.
None of the emails I’ve sent brought me closure, nor the few replies – but I’ve had conversations, some just with myself, that have put my mind at rest. Roisin decided against sending her email, but I hope the same for her.
