seeking closure in breakups

September 22, 2024

What Can We Learn From Heartbreak?

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” — James Baldwin

It may be that everyone who ever reached the age of reason has suffered from a broken heart. Even those afraid of approaching someone for romance might imagine the person they desire and pine away.

Real hearts are resilient. They keep pumping, indifferent to the wound.

The loving kind of hearts have their own type of resilience. They mourn, endure, and often try again. Changed? That can be for the better, though it is a costly loss that leads you there: the end of courtship and countless plans and hopes.

Since we all have or will suffer in this way, might something positive come from the experience? Something to help us lead our lives and learn from hardship?

I think so.

Here is a short list of ways to enhance ourselves in the aftermath.

  • Learning Who We Chose And Why

One of the most valuable tasks we can undertake is to reflect upon the kind of people we are drawn to. Are they hard to get? Have they had many broken relationships themselves? Do they often blame others to justify their actions rather than take responsibility?

Did we ignore the danger signs our friends warned us of? Do the people we pursue remind us of someone else? Were we so taken by their appearance and sparkle that we ignored their minds and hearts?

We cannot change our former lovers, but we can change ourselves and increase our chances of finding a better-suited person.

  • Enhancing Our Empathy

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” wrote the French philosopher, teacher, and activist Simone Weil. It is possible to enlarge one’s empathetic capability by experiencing pain.

Weil’s life exemplified not only witnessing the suffering of another and giving the attention of which she spoke; she chose to experience it herself. Though this woman came from a privileged background, she took on punishing factory jobs for a year, entered the Spanish Civil War battlefields, and worked in the harvest.

None of us choose heartbreak, yet it offers something to learn about adversity. We can apply our experience and awareness to help those who have lost the one they loved in whatever way.

  • Acquiring Knowledge Of Our Resilience

When my patients explained their affliction, they often doubted they could take it on and get past it. I asked the following frequently: 

“Please tell me of the hardships you lived through before this.”

They ran down a mental list of such situations. 

“What inside you enabled you to survive?”

The sufferer proceeded to identify the human characteristics within him that got him through his previous misfortunes. 

“Do you still have those abilities and qualities inside yourself?”

The answer was yes, more often than no. Thus, the client affirmed the forgotten strengths he could still draw on.

Life contains everything imaginable: beauty, wartime horror, hope, and despair. If our ancestors lacked resilience, the planet would be without humankind.

Not everyone is resilient in every circumstance, but most have elements of a hard-won or inherited capacity to survive the heartbreak caused by a lover’s departure. We live to love again or not, as we choose.

  • Learning Kindness

The pain of breakups sometimes adds insult to injury. There are many ways to say, “We are done,” and some people hurt us with cruelty or indifference. 

Think of those who blame the person they left while failing to recognize his value or visible torment. Some people end a relationship by ghosting the other or sending a text rather than face-to-face. A few tap an intermediary to deliver the bad news.

Once we experience this kind of ending, it can instruct us on what not to do when we break up with someone. If we have loved another, the best we can do is honor what made them desirable in the first place and show them the respect we would wish for ourselves in the same circumstances.

St. Paul advised the Ephesians to speak “the truth in love,” not hate.

  • Changing Ourselves

If a gentle ex-partner had been insightful in revealing what we lacked, valid shortcomings might have been understood despite the pain of taking in this information. 

With former partners who were less wise, some of us might have thought the indictment unfair when hearing the list of our deficits. Others among us flee from the truth. We do well to discount falsehoods when considering the judgments of others in any case.

Most of us avoid or regret these discussions. The closure we seek then must be found alone.

There is an alternative path to the same knowledge. We can recognize our deficiencies by looking in the mirror and reflecting on why the relationship ended.

If we conclude that the mirror provides a sense of recognition worthy of internalizing, the future offers us a chance to change.

A long pattern of breakups leaves us with this task—not on the first day or the 50th day, but someday.

  • Enlarging Our Humanity

As James Baldwin wrote in the quote at the head of this essay, his heartbreak led to a new awareness about the human community:

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

I wonder why we find it so hard to remember the connection Baldwin describes. Perhaps it is because a significant portion of the shared pain of life—the unhappiness we all experience—is hidden. Maybe it is also because much of it happens to people we have never met or who live far from us.

We persuade ourselves we will outsmart fate.

Imagine this: one day a year, as if by magic, we could see through the momentary gladness of our fellow men to the physical and emotional scars they hide. On the same day, we would witness the tears they carry from the episodes we call the Dark Night of the Soul.

Would that cause us to treat each other more kindly?

I can only say that the message we take from heartbreak and suffering, however long or short, informs us of one of the reasons we are here, not alone but among others of our kind: that our foremost purpose in life is not to gain wealth, status, victory, or material things but to care for others.

To this, I believe Simone Weil would say yes.

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The top image is a Broken Heart symbol by Orazon. It is followed by photos of Simone Weil and Her Family in 1916 during World War I and Weil in a Cafe. Finally, a Kid Caring for Young by Joseph Lionceau. All of these were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

January 2, 2022

Searching for Closure: the Challenge of Loose Ends

Closure is a “sometimes thing,” to use an expression from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Most of us want our uncomfortable emotions gathered and tied, but knots on the human package tend to loosen. Feelings leak out because they are squirmy, slippery parts of every life. Endings find a way not to end whenever they discover a quiet, tender crack through which to wiggle.

Breakups and losses happen to everyone. Usually, one party wants the book to close more than the other.

The latter experiences greater relief than grief. The other carries the heavier burden of pain and seeks an escape or another chance.

Perhaps he enlists distraction, alcohol, drugs, and medication, to no avail. Sometimes therapy, rebound romance, and faith also fail to heal wounds. What then?

Some wait and hope. They want to unend the end, begin the friendship or love anew, hoping the guy or girl realizes the loss. The seeker — the one with more anguish — searches for renewal, not dissolution.

Maybe he hopes his distant dad will finally say, “I love you, and I’m proud of you.” For years he pretended the old man’s opinion didn’t matter.

Then the father dies, and the not-so-sunny boy learns the ache didn’t get buried with the man. He relives the pain over conversations remembered or never achieved.

At least, this survivor can grieve to the level of acceptance. Papa shall not come back, so all the solutions belong to the younger man. His situation can be both harder and more straightforward when his late father resides in “a world elsewhere.”

If a friend or lover is a call or email away, the possibility of a reunion may continue no matter the odds.

The long-standing therapeutic approach to bereavement involves expressing feelings — love, hate, sadness, emptiness — all of it. Over time, these should quiet themselves.

Standard techniques to advance the process include writing farewell letters one never sends, “speaking” to the deceased at an actual or ad hoc gravesite, role-playing a conversation with the one you cared about, or burying a note as a symbolic departure.

All these try to turn the abstraction of loss into a material or ritualized object, something you can see, hear or enact.

Some people, however, sustain their preoccupation with the other. Without intent, they train their minds to return to her repeatedly. They watch videos of her, listen to recordings of her voice, read her texts and emails, view photos of the loved one.

Friends, too, do this, not just people with romantic attachments. They remain absorbed in thoughts of estranged companions, replaying the events leading to the rift, analyzing and reanalyzing the why of it all.

Wondering whether there is a way to mend the bond continues the one-sided relationship. If these expenditures of time don’t end, the person engaged in them becomes an enemy of his own healing. His hope prevents a final goodbye and a step that might offer something more attainable.

Some romances can be rekindled, others transformed into friendships, and buddies return for various reasons. When those efforts work, here are some contributing factors:

  • Both individuals remember the best times and still yearn for reattachment, though at least one hasn’t said so.
  • One of the former partners hasn’t made an effort because of fear of rejection or anger.
  • Both members of the couple have changed in the ways necessary to create a more lasting bond.
  • One of the pair has reflected on the mistakes he made. He would welcome the chance to apologize if the other would listen. This could permit as much closure as the singleton requires. If the other reciprocates, an avenue to a fresh beginning may open.
  • The two souls feel incomplete without the other half.
  • No other relationships or responsibilities, especially with a spouse, would be compromised by taking up the old connection.
  • Life events or thoughtful changes have not caused one to recognize the need to maintain distance.

Reconnection can be wonderful if the two once again experience joy. When the attempt fails, it may at least remove hope and set dreams of recommitment aside. The “final” unhappiness might be a necessary step toward letting go. From the bottom, one can only rise.

When I continued to practice, patients sometimes asked what they could do to reclaim a failing or terminated relationship. No single answer works for all, and the counselor who dares to offer a confident prognostication walks unsteady ground. Even so, when my clients reported a long period of unanswered calls, texts, and emails, the unstated message was clear.

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This time of year — dark days, pandemic, political and media-fueled rage, heightened anxiety, and more — increases our desire to embrace those we’ve loved and still love. Moreover, reaching out in the holidays might reduce the chance of a rude reply.

Still, not everything in life can be put right. More frequently than you might think, neither person in the split is wrong. Instead, their interests no longer coincide. It can even happen that two hearts are together in their breaking.

Before any new attempt to reattach, ask yourself whether the other is essential to you, recognizing most of us are not. Reflect on past losses, recalling your hard-won buoyancy and resilience.

A recent conversation with a close friend illustrates how hard letting go can be. She wondered …

Does “acceptance” require giving up asking “why”?

GS: I need to know a bit more to understand what you are looking for.

Your response gets to the heart of my question. I am questioning going down the rabbit hole of gathering more and more information. Is it intellectually crippling to turn away from that effort?

GS: Knowing why is not always possible. Neither is turning away easy. Life always has loose ends ...

My friend asked her daughter-in-law the same question. Here was her answer:

I don’t think that it’s human to stop asking questions. Acceptance to me is more about being at peace with whatever answers we get. Acceptance is also being OK with not knowing, with not getting answers.

A wise young woman.

Here’s to a New Year full of wisdom and kindness, enough to repair a world of broken hearts.

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The top painting is Mt. Fuji from Kishio by Kawase Hasui, 1937, from History Daily. Next in line is the Narrows, Zion National Park, December 2020 by Laura Hedien. Blaue Kegelberg by Gabriele Munter follows, then Tragedy by Franz Kline, 1961. Finally, just below is Northern Lights at the Arctic Circle by Laura Hedien. As with the first photograph, these come with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.