Conversations With an Ex that Won’t Set Back Your Progress

“I heard that song today that always makes me think of you. Do you ever hear certain music and miss me?”

I wrote those words recently to a guy who broke my heart. And before you start yelling at me like the girl who’s about to walk alone into a dark basement in a horror movie — No, you idiot, don’t go there!— let me clarify that he didn’t receive the message. Or any of the many questions, half-formed thoughts, and occasional curse words I’ve aimed his way since he exited my life.

These one-sided conversations exist only in unsent email drafts and the Notes app on my phone. And while they may not ever reach their intended recipient, they have been a crucial part of my own healing process after a heartbreak.

Conventional breakup wisdom places a heavy emphasis on sticking to minimal or no contact with an ex, and while that can feel like agony in the early stages post-split, it is almost always the best approach, at least until you can honestly say you’ve moved on. But maintaining a “conversation” with someone you’ve lost is a healthy and productive part of grieving death, and there is no reason it shouldn’t be similarly cathartic when the death in question is that of a relationship.

In both cases, the point is not to receive a response, or to remain in denial that this person is no longer an active part of your life. The point is to air some of the sadness, or regret, or anger, or longing you feel before it starts to eat away at you from the inside. The point is to say all the things you need to say to this person so the weight of everything unspoken between the two of you stops feeling so unmanageable.

Research supports the use of letter writing as a therapeutic tool to help people during bereavement. A research paper published in February 2022 in OMEGA — Journal of Death and Dying notes that communicating with the deceased through letter writing and other means can facilitate self-disclosure, confront unfinished business, and help create a more coherent narrative around the loss. The potential benefits of the imaginary conversation with an ex are similar.

One obvious downside of this coping mechanism is that you won’t receive a response. That is also the biggest upside. Because questions like, “Do you still miss me?” or “Why couldn’t you love me the way I needed you to?” open the door to a whole new layer of heartbreak if the answer is anything less than something you’d find at the end of a Julia Roberts movie. And let’s be honest, that’s not usually how these things play out IRL.

In other words, the healing power of these conversations comes from the opportunity to voice whatever you are feeling on any given day, at any given moment. It’s not about having an audience, and that frees you up to be as emotional, vulnerable, and inarticulate as you need to be to just let it out. My own unsent communiques to various past loves include rambling paragraph-long sentences, an equally long paragraph that consists only of the F-word in all caps, and a single string of letters meant to convey a primal scream.

Communications directed at your ex don’t necessarily need to be written down, but a benefit of doing so is to track your progress through the stages of grieving. Something you wrote even yesterday can be almost unrecognizable when you re-read it, and that is a sign that even if you’re advancing slowly and haltingly, you’re still moving forward.

A final bonus worth noting: You will never be interrupted, contradicted, or belittled in an imaginary conversation with your ex. You will always be in control, and you will always have the last word. You will find your true voice and use it, and then carry it with you into your next relationship.

Reference:

Larsen LH. Letter Writing as a Clinical Tool in Grief Psychotherapy. OMEGA — Journal of Death and Dying. February 2022. doi:10.1177/00302228211070155

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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