Why It Takes So Long To Mourn Relationships That Leave You With Little Closure

You’re bound to make the journey to accepting the end of a relationship a little easier by blaming it on errors, which is why I think relationships that end with dishonest explanations are some of the worst. An “almost relationship” will leave you confused as to how something so undefined created such an ill-fitting aura of an uncomfortable dismissal and volatile silence. And in one swift moment, you’re not allowed to care anymore.

You no longer sing off-key to your favorite songs; instead, you anaesthetize and lose yourself to a perfectly imperfect gaze. You avoid your favorite places to dodge seeing familiar faces on strangers in crowded streets, bars, or shopping centres. And you nervously chuckle as you tag your best friend in a Facebook meme that they won’t understand, just because you’re still trying to live out what are now dead inside jokes.

We so badly mourn relationships with little closure because not only we are left picking up pieces of someone else’s lost state of mind, but we are frantically searching for clarification and nursing a bruised ego. Little closure can sometimes be worse than actually having no closure, because these conversations leave you merely scatterbrained. There are more questions than there are answers; sometimes answers actually just lead to more questions.

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

The perfect five words that really mean: I don’t want to be involved with you anymore but I do not have the balls to tell you honestly. Rejecting someone will always be unpleasant, so why hesitate about how to say it? Just throw out a classic, cheesy romcom line! It almost sounds too easy.

Why is this cliché phrase such a hard pill to swallow? A decade ago “it’s not you, it’s me” meant the problem lies with them and not you, but nowadays it is such a comical line that is used to mock breakup scenes in romcoms that you expect people not to be stupid enough to use it. Which is why the modern day has rephrased it to “I’m just not in the right headspace for a relationship right now.” They might even say, “We can be friends” or “I’ve just got a lot going on at the moment.”

Translation: “I used you because I’m too immature to decide what I want and now I’m bored of you, but I’m trying to let you down easy to salvage the last bit of ‘nice guy’ reputation that there is left.” Inner response: Something that dickheads say to make them feel less of a dickhead.

At the start of a relationship, we have the tendency to hide any faulty traits that may have previously ruined a past relationship, for obvious reasons. These flaws could be as simple as bad habits: eating with an open mouth, showing up late, cyber-stalking, mood swings, stereotyping, or even something as basic as smoking. These problems can fester under the surface and start to get rather annoying. Although these may not be things that warrant an abrupt 180 degree discard, the likelihood is that they are too afraid to communicate these problems with you, and while what seems like one small problem to you, is a multiplied equation on their part.

If they sugarcoat the real reasons behind the end of the relationship, then they are “not obliged” to feel any guilt. Occasionally, these people would rather dismay the situation as if it never happened and consequently brush off the guilt, almost like you never existed to them in the first place. And then that’s when the entire situation feels deceiving. They may even doubtfully attempt to convince themselves that you’re a bad person to self-justify that treating you badly was rational.

This person had no intention of incorporating you into their life long-term. You should feel sorry for this person—they gave up on someone who would’ve never given up on them. I will leave you with this: The world is full of good people, and you don’t want to miss out on that just because you have been hurt. You don’t need closure in order to move on.