"Closure" Is One Big Breakup Myth

[joreth]

I am a science enthusiast.  I have also experienced a lot of things in my life.  Both facts about me are true because I am a curious person.  I like to learn.  I like to know.

But when it comes to breakups for romantic relationships in particular, I have learned that curiosity is not the most practical or helpful of my personality traits in building emotional resiliency and healing after the breakup.

One very huge lie that our society has taught us about breakups and endings is that we need "closure".  Not only do we not need it, it is not always possible to get, so we have to learn how to live with uncertainty anyway.  That needs to be our "closure".  We need "acceptance", not "closure".

I didn't get this for a very long time.  And, ironically, it was my late-blooming interest in science that taught me that not having the answers is an OK state to be in.  It's OK to not know something.  It's OK to live with the knowledge that I will probably never know something.

Our collective need to Know All The Things is what drives scientific innovation and exploration.  But it drives us "crazy" - it leads to a culture that accepts, encourages, and supports things like stalking, like harassment, like dismissing agency, like questioning our own self-worth, like doubting our own value, like creating and building entire mythologies out of thin air because we can't just fucking deal with "I have no idea why the world is the way that it is".

We, as a species, seem to need definitive answers, even if they're completely made up.  We seem to feel better with some kind of resolution.  So we either make shit up (some of which can be actively harmful to ourselves or others), or we drive ourselves "crazy" trying to find some kind of answer that we'll never get.

We may never understand why someone would do the things that they did.  We may never understand why the world is the way that it is.  If you want to make a career out of studying big questions starting with "why", then great!  We can always use curious scientists and philosophers with a commitment to rigor and reality-based truth-seeking methods!

But if you are just sitting at home being miserable because you don't know a "why", learn to accept that you may never know why and that it's OK to not ever know why.  Especially if attempting to answer "why" is a violation of someone else's privacy or agency (even if they were a jerk to you and you think they deserve "justice" or "payback" or whatever, or that you "deserve" answers or control over the ending).

Just let it go.  You may not ever know.  And the world will not end because you don't know, nor will you actually die from not knowing "why".

But you will continue to feel miserable as long as you keep insisting on asking yourself the question when no answer is forthcoming.  Like any really useful life-skill, it may seem difficult at first, but it will get easier with practice and your life will become immeasurably better for the practice, no matter how far along you are at mastering the skill.

Just let it go.