How to Get Closure from Your Ex after a Break-up

Have you ever been in a relationship where you break up for no apparent reason at all, and then your ex goes on to vanish from your life without a trace?

Most people have the common decency to tell you they’re breaking up with you to your face. They’ll reason out that they’ve either fallen out of love with you, that the relationship isn’t working out, or that they’re in love with someone else.

Others are less delicate about it — they’ll send you a text that it’s over and boom! You’re single again.

My friend Trisha had it worse. She and her boyfriend of 2 years had been working at the same company. Like many couples, they had issues. He was extremely insecure, jealous, and protective. He would call her every other minute to check up on her whereabouts. If she so much as looked in the general direction of another guy, he would flip into a hysterical rage.

They had a few good moments, but as time went by, these moments became few and far between. Many times they came close to breaking up. Trisha had put up with so much, she was hanging on by a thread. Even so, she wanted to make things better. Until one day, he suddenly vanished.

He didn’t vanish like some mystery novel, disappearing into the twilight. That would have been acceptable. Alarming, but understandable.

No, instead he just stopped seeing her. He stopped answering her calls and texts. He unfriended her from all his social media. If Trisha passed him by at work, he would hurriedly walk out of distance, avoiding her at all costs. One time, she managed to corner him, and asked desperately what on earth was going on. He didn’t answer, his eyes glazing over her like she was a ghost.

A few weeks later, he quit the company. Trisha never saw him again, except for a random social media post years later of him with his wife and two children.

Trisha never got closure. Two years she spent being emotionally invested in this man, and for absolutely nothing. For most people, this is enough to drive them completely mad. Most people would swear never to love again.

Not Trisha. She chose to be different. She chose never to give her ex power over her ever again.

So she accepted two things: First, that she would never get closure and that’s okay. Second, that her happiness was up to her and this experience would lay the groundwork for a better life.

Today, Trisha is married to the man of her dreams. They have a wonderful family and she couldn’t be happier.

Not everyone gets to have closure. It’s a fact of life. You may deserve it. But you might have to accept the fact that it may never come.

When someone close to you dies, we don’t get closure. It’s why we say things like “Oh it was all in God’s plan” or “Oh it was just his time.” If we can cope with things like death, we can move on from painful experiences.

So how do you get closure from your ex? You don’t. You get it from yourself. It’s you who should choose to end the chapter, not your ex. Don’t let bad experiences take your power. You choose how you want your story to end.