Infatuation Rules
Infatuation Rules
Photo: John Diez
According to phenomenological research, "closure is knowing the reason a romantic relationship was terminated and no longer feeling emotional attachment or pain, thereby allowing for the establishment of new and healthy relationships." The devastation that comes from a break up is thus not only caused by the ...
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Read More »Many times, from pained students, clients, and friends, I've heard the mantra, "no one can give you closure but yourself". It's usually said defeatedly while holding back tears after they've explained that their former partner refuses to acknowledge why the relationship ended. The mantra, unsurprisingly, often comes as a form of advice from well-meaning friends, family members, or co-workers trying to be sympathetic to someone who is stuck in a bad situation. That "bad situation" is usually one that involves a one-sided break-up where the person dissolving the relationship has not acted kindly, decently, or even humanely in the aftermath. In an attempt to shirk responsibility and guilt, he or she refuses to give a former partner closure, causing the rejected party tremendous pain and distress. The advice that only you can give yourself closure is so prevalent perhaps because it offers the person who has been broken up with the illusion of control in a situation where realistically none exists. The premise is essentially correct: We are all responsible for our own lives. However, without offering proper guidance on how to find closure, it can serve to make things worse. This is because when someone is rejected and refused honest answers about why the relationship ended, they are left depleted of their dignity. Thus, the advice to 'get your own closure' infuses the notion that the person who has just been rejected is now responsible for moving past a decision they do not fully understand (and therefore cannot psychologically reconcile), and did not make (and are thus insufficiently prepared to navigate). According to phenomenological research, "closure is knowing the reason a romantic relationship was terminated and no longer feeling emotional attachment or pain, thereby allowing for the establishment of new and healthy relationships." The devastation that comes from a break up is thus not only caused by the partnership that is lost, but also by the lack of clarity about why the relationship was dissolved.
While it may feel impossible and certainly takes time to stop loving someone, it's absolutely possible to do just that. In fact, you may find that...
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One of the obvious reasons why a guy may ignore or act disinterested in you is because he feels you are too good for him. He lacks the confidence...
Read More »When given closure, we can re-structure our past, present, and future in a healthy way, through understanding what went wrong and reconfiguring our story accordingly. When we are refused closure, however, attempts to understand what happened flood the conception of our past, present, and future. We are left to wonder: What did I do? How could someone I thought I knew so well do this to me? How can I trust myself to make future decisions when my past decisions have caused me so much pain? Without answers to why a break-up occurred, the way we view our reality through our past-present-future story structure can become warped, because we lose our sense of what we know about who we are and the trust that we have in our decisions. While this is generally mediated by things like personality, social comparison, available others, attachment styles, and mood, not receiving closure can nevertheless be a deeply traumatic experience.
In the first study, which looked at people in romantic relationships in general, 18 per cent of participants broke up after 10 weeks, while in the...
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A real man commits to the relationship fully. He doesn't cheat. He is loyal to his partner and knows that relationships take hard work to keep...
Read More »If your partner refuses to give you closure after you have repeatedly asked for it, ask yourself whether the type of person you imagined him or her to be would treat you with such indignity and whether the future you might have imagined together included this characteristic. Chances are, your answer is 'no'. Therefore, you can begin to reconcile the fact that perhaps you imagined your partner to be someone he or she is not and forgive yourself for trusting someone who has hurt you. You may find peace in confronting your ex-partner's hurtful actions by writing him or her a letter without expecting a response, which you may or may not choose to send. A specific type of writing, research shows, can be particularly effective in lessening post-dissolution distress: Examining the relationship through a redemptive lens, wherein one focuses on the positive outcomes that arise from a break-up or a negative event. Writing about the relationship in this way, over the course of 4-days, has been shown to reduce the emotional suffering that can come from a relationship ending. While friends and family might recommend getting closure through finding meaning from the break-up, surprisingly, research shows that in events such as marital separation, actively searching for meaning and writing about it is not only ineffective but can actually cause worsen and lengthen emotional distress. Instead, remind yourself of the following: Sometimes, things just don't work out and there is nothing you or your partner could have done. Sometimes, feelings fade; there is no real reason for it and there is nothing you could do to salvage them. It may not be fair, and it may hurt, but you are okay. Lastly, determine a goal that is challenging yet reachable, and set forth. In this way, not only will your story can change for the better, but you will build a new one.
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