Think It’s Too Late To Seek Closure? Think Again

A couple of days ago, I texted my ex-best friend, with whom I had zero contact for more than 1,5 years.

Our friendship ended for reasons that were— until recently — unknown to me. Somehow we drifted apart, and then, one day she literally just disappeared from my life. No texts, no calls, no explanations — no closure.

At the time, I was too preoccupied with taking care of my sick mother, finding a stable job, and overcoming depression so I simply let it pass, by thinking, “It’s ok — friendships just end”.

However, a couple of months ago, when life got a bit easier and I finally had the chance to sit down and relax with my own thoughts, my mind started wandering more and more to our former friendship, mainly the reasons behind our breakup.

Although it wasn’t an easy decision — as a lot of time had passed, combined with the fact that I was the one who had been abandoned — , I decided to text and ask her for some answers. And finally, after 1,5 years, I got the closure I needed.

If you’ve been reading my work you know that I rarely share personal stories. I’m sharing this story because I think it might prove helpful to all of you who never got the closure you needed from a relationship — be it with a partner or a friend — and feel like it’s too late to get it.

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It’s Never Too Late to Ask For Answers

Friends drift apart. Relationships end. They might end abruptly or gradually, via a personal confrontation or a phone call.

But what about the ones that end with silence?

Those ones suck. When there is silence, there is no explanation, no apology, no “I’m happy we met and I still wish you the best” kind of talk. There is no closure, which means that we’re bound to dwell on memories and what-ifs.

Time passes, and we still think about it, and yet we choose not to act, not to talk, not to ask the other person that devastating “why?”. In the beginning, it’s usually our hurt ego that prevents us from doing it, and then, as time passes, there’s one sentence that gradually gets stuck in our heads:

“It’s too late now.”

Do you know what I realized though? It’s not. There’s no such thing as “too late”. It’s never too late to ask for answers, for an apology, for closure.

I was afraid that my ex-best friend wouldn’t answer my text after such a long time. I was thinking that maybe she wouldn’t want to bother with giving explanations to a person that now means nothing to her.

But she did. She answered all my questions, explained everything, and gave her reasons — reasons for her disappearance that hadn’t even crossed my mind. And turned out she had been waiting for our conversation herself. It’s better to say some things late than never.

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Without Closure, You Can’t Be Present, Heal, or Move On

You’d think that after 1,5 years I would have stopped thinking about my friendship breakup. You’d expect that I would have healed and left the experience past me.

But I still needed answers. I still needed to get closure — and without closure there’s no healing, being present, or moving on.

Essentially, closure is about knowing the reasons a relationship or friendship ended, getting an explanation, and often, an apology.

During the past few months, my mind drifted more and more often to my friend and the reasons behind her disappearance. Now that I was finally emotionally ready to re-structure my life and my relationships, I felt there was still an emotional obstacle standing in my way.

According to this article in PsychologyToday:

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.

That pretty much explains how I felt myself. It was like I had this puzzle that I needed to finish before I was able to move on and write the next chapters of my life, and my unresolved feelings about my friendship were the missing piece.

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You Might Learn a Lot of Useful Things About Yourself

I mentioned above that the reasons my former best friend gave for our friendship breakup hadn’t crossed my mind at all, not even once.

I was under the impression that she had abandoned me when I was most vulnerable and weak, when, as it turned out, I had been pushing her away for months — and never realized it.

I came to realize that I had made a series of mistakes that otherwise would have never been acknowledged and that the end of our friendship was due to a combination of negligence, misunderstandings, miscommunication, and poorly thought behaviors.

It turned out that our friendship did mean a lot to her. That thought, combined with the fact that she hadn’t abandoned me out of the blue as I initially thought, instantly made me feel lighter, happier, and more emotionally secure.

The most important part? I learned from my mistakes. I realized what I had done wrong and, even though I can’t turn the clock back to change some of my actions, I now know better — and I’ll use this knowledge to become a better friend and properly nurture the rest of my current or future friendships.

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Closure Is About Healing — Not Repairing the Relationship

If you’d ask me whether there’s any hope of rekindling my friendship, my answer would be simple: I don’t think so.

From my part, I’d be willing to take some steps and put in the necessary time and effort to repair our friendship, or maybe, start from scratch, but it seems that she thinks it’s too late for that.

But does that mean that our story doesn’t have a happy ending? Again, I don’t think so. You see, closure it’s about healing yourself and any trauma the relationship might have left you with, not repairing the relationship per se.

Of course, if both people are in the place to do so, great! But even when that’s not possible, you should be grateful that you had the chance to get the answers, the explanations, or the apology you craved — that’s what matters most.

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Final Note

I’m proud of myself that I had the courage to ask my friend for closure.

In fact, I regret not doing it sooner.

It’s never too late to ask that someone for an explanation or an apology. It’s never too late to speak your mind and reveal your feelings.

Stop thinking things like “it’s too late”, or “they should make the first step”, or “I don’t want them to think I’m obsessed with them”. Most of the time, the other person proves to be as desperate for closure as you are, and even if they’re not, remember: you’re not doing that for the other person, you’re doing it for yourself.

Put your ego aside. Send that text. Make that call. Write that letter. Do whatever you have to do to get rid of your emotional burden once and for all.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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