I found this post to be beyond helpful! thanks so much! I have been trying to find a ‘closure’ myself, for about 9 months. First, I couldn’t let go because it felt like I was being disloyal to the relationship. Now I need to let go, but I keep wanting to go back to this relationship. It was my first and deepest love and I can’t understand why it broke the way it did. I did everything right… I was there.. I gave all of myself for the first time in my life. Unfortunately, this situation became untenable and the other person had to be done with me for their own reasons. As I wanted only my love back, I would have done anything to get the relationship back. As expected, it didnt work out that way. After a lot of therapy, I am figuring out that I am not without my own issues, but that I did exactly what I needed to in order to make this work. I needed closure. My therapist has offered several ideas on what or how this happen, but it hasn’t brought me the relief from the pain I have felt both physically and emotionally. How cleansing to read this post and understand that I probably will never understand the why’s and what if’s. But to know that I can move on and be ok, myself, to open myself to another love? to not NEED the closure? is a relief. Thank you so much. 🙂

very well written. awesome post. focusing on 1, 2 & 3 would help a LOT of people.

but to Gladys and Blaice, i sure hope you guys never get into a relationship where you’re trying to figure things out, figure out your feelings, before you blurt something out and can’t take it back. A LOT of people are confused, scared, unsure of all the emotions and feelings that are passing through their head, especially at a young age when you’re still not sure of what you want or need.

Its pretty hard to talk between the months of “January and December”, when those conversations involve statements like “i’m not sure I’m happy with this relationship anymore” or “I’m not sure I want this for the rest of my life” or something along those lines. unfortunately, in most cases once those words are uttered, things start to unravel quickly.

I guess in some ways, I was either of your partners. In her perspective, I blindsided my (now) ex-wife with the same sort of epiphany, although looking back over time, I think you could see the cracks developing. Over 8 years, I sacrificed myself, my relationships with my family, my dignity, all to make my wife happy – to be the good husband who gave his wife everything she wanted, to be the good son-in-law to my in-laws who wanted to control every single aspect of my life such that it kept their daughter close to home and treated materially like a princess. After a long 2 years of depression, I finally, in my mid-30s, woke up and realized that all my messages, outbursts, all my communications, all my wants and needs, were not going to be heard by my wife and or her parents. Instead of listening to me, they redirected me, told me how I was misinterpreting myself.

I finally figured out: It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t change. They had their perspective, and I had mine. And I was outnumbered.

So I said those dreadful (or perhaps you see as cowardly) words: – “i’m not in love with you anymore”, “my feelings had changed.” And they had. i was DONE. At that point in my life, I wished I was dead already, because I had nothing to live for other than to try and please my wife and her family, and receive their validation. but there was a spark in me that ignited and said that life doesn’t have to be this way. i wanted to see my family – my mom, my brothers and their kids. I wanted to have the freedom to move wherever i wanted to live, hell, even to pick the color of the damned paint on the wall in the house that I paid for.

so yes, I was the “blindsider” or the “coward” as you call them. and that’s okay, they’re just terms and frankly, I don’t need your approval or validation. I realize i made mistakes, and i’ve learned from them. i tried to be the good partner – I find its often hard to discern what is “working hard at a relationship” and “compromising” versus completely giving yourself up, losing yourself. I think a lot of people have a hard time too.

So did I do wrong? Yes. Do I regret it? No, because I didn’t know then what I know now about myself. I had to go through that to learn what I would not put up with, to learn that I had to stand up for my own feelings and values, wants and needs. Was it cowardly, those last 2 spans of Januaries through Decembers, when i was trying to sort through figuring out my life? yeah, you might call it that. and that’s okay. I think i was doing the best I could with what I knew at the time – I was trying to make it work.

Am I sorry about what happened? Absolutely, and deeply. If I could go back and do it all over again, there are many things that I would do differently, and perhaps I would have had the beautiful relationship I wanted, but its easy to say that – its sort of like being a Senior in high school saying how you could ace Freshman algebra, and who knows, my wife might not have liked that version of me versus the old me(?).

just my $0.02, or more aptly put, the other side of the equation.

I can understand the pain Blaice and all of you have gone through who felt left by their partner. But for all of you who feel this way, not needing closure means letting go of the negative thinking and laying of blame, and instead accepting that both you and your partner are both worthy of finding the right person for each of you. What matters and is a positive step, is that you have both discovered that you were not right for each other. Blaice you talked in terms of your partner being irrational and immature. It is difficult but it really will help to consciously Stop when you feel your negative views rising inside you and instead, breathe, and let yourself consider positively that even if you don’t agree with how your partner behaved, she had her reasons. The reasons may be because there is part of “who you are” which was simply a mismatch with her personality make-up, or if she was immature and irrational, then again, you are in a positive position of being now free and able to find yourself in a relationship where you both find that the “who you are” is naturally, without uncertainty, a fantastic match with “who she is”.

From the perspective of the person who leaves the relationship, Like Porterman, I was the partner who ended the relationship. I spent 6 months before I broke up with my boyfriend, explaining to him that I felt that we needed to make more time for each other, when we had reached a point where he spent time with his own family, his friends, and work colleagues, at the expense of any time with me (we both had jobs far from each other so we had limited opportunities at outset). My last words (after he announced that he had invited friends over to his house for another full weekend followed by plans for a number of the following weeks which did not involve me), were that I had run out of ways of trying to explain my feelings, and trying to have a discussion with him. What turned out to be his last words in response, was that he was too busy. I broke up with him after this. He had reached a stage with our relationship where he took it for granted without question that I would be there and this taking for granted blocked his ability to listen and hear what I was saying. In the meantime, so sociable was my boyfriend, that everyone who knew us would tell me what a great guy he was and I could never meet a nicer guy. Similar to Porterman, it was partly a difficult decision to leave knowing that I could well be viewed by his family and friends as heartless. When I ended our relationship , from his perspective it was without closure. He sent me alternately bewildered and angry, blaming emails, saying he was shocked, wounded, hurt, and I believe that he may still believe that I ended the relationship without any reason when all he did was love me. From my perspective, I had left the relationship exhausted with months of trying to explain and talk to him without sounding like I was whining. I guess what I am hoping to show by this rather long-winded account of the end of my relationship, is that staying in a relationship which hurts you, or seeking closure for why it has ended, are both energy-sapping and emotionally-draining activities which do not move you forward. Accept the the bottom line that your values, personalities and needs were not in sync and too far out of sync for the better parts of your relationship to offset this. Acceptance will not pull you back, it will bring you to the here and now of your life. The end of an out of sync relationship frees us to find that person who will be our great match. I am sure that my boyfriend will find the women who will be his, and I will find the man who will be mine. This is what makes me happy inside. Try to think this simple thought too (there are no timelines but it will happen one day) and I hope (and am pretty certain!), that it will make you happy inside too 🙂

I also had a reaction to @Blaice statement above – as the ‘dumper’ in this case, somehow a reluctant dumper, I feel I have been cornered into having to do this….I have this situation where I have been trying to talk to the person I was with about the issues I had with some aspects of the relationship and he would respond with anger and swearing, or completely shut down. Eventually after being forced to end it (when its not the outcome I actually want) because I cannot tolerate the abuse or disrespect, I get accused of bullshitting him all along? I feel hopeless. I tried to talk to him about these things so many times and he wanted to make light of it all, and now it is all my fault, according to him.