Should I contact my ex for closure?

Three weeks after he ended it himself, a man in a group I run put a question to the others.

I'm just wondering whether it's worth a call. I haven't spoken with her since the breakup, properly.

a man in a group I run, three weeks after the breakup

He had good reasons and he had thought about them: understand what happened between them, each of them owning how they had shown up, say what remained unsaid, then understand where each of them was now. He had also imagined how the call would go.

If she comes on the call and is like, oh yeah, I feel great, the relationship was right, I'm like, cool. And then I can put this to bed and just get on with my life. But there's these what-ifs.

the same man

He wanted her to tell him he'd made the right decision, so the what-ifs would stop. And that's not something she can do for him. So I said no. Absolutely don't.

Should I call my ex to get closure?

Not while their answer could impact how you feel. The conversation you are picturing needs both of you reasonable and neither of you hoping for anything, and three weeks out you are neither, so you come away with more questions than you had going in.

Because you're not going to be able to have that conversation from a neutral state. There's too much emotional tension still tied up in it all.

Daniel Lawson

There is also whose job it is. The pain was created with the person you're speaking to, so it's not their role to help with your healing.

Don't go back and try to talk it out with her. Your healing can't be done in the face of what created the pain.

Daniel Lawson

When does the grief arrive?

Later than you think, which is why the desire for the call comes when it does.

The same man described his first week as surfing a wave, motivated and inspired, and said he naively thought that was it, he had grieved, he had moved on, time for the next chapter. Then week two arrived, and when he wasn't working and was sitting in his car it hit him like a truck.

The last week I've just been grieving. I have been grieving. I've been sad. I have been borderline depressed.

the same man, a week later

I see this with nearly every man I coach. They go, yes, I'm free, and then it takes two to three weeks for the reality to hit. Another member of the same group maps it in weeks of his own: first week, freedom; second week, oh no, what have I done; third week, ah, it's not that bad. So the call comes right in the week where it finally hurts.

And then we resist it. Drinking it away, suppressing it, and it goes on for way longer than it needed to. A woman in a group I run was a few weeks out of a relationship and had already turned it into a meaning: "that means good things are coming." Same instinct, different shape. Make it okay quickly, so there's nothing left to sit in. What I learned through my own breakup was that the goal is to feel more, rather than to feel better right now.

What are you hoping to hear?

Something definitive, usually. One of the reasons we like definitive answers is that they give us a false sense of certainty, or security, in a decision. There are lots of shades of grey in how a relationship ended, so a clean sentence from her would be telling you something that isn't true.

The fourth row is the reason the call keeps coming back, and there is a clue. You can say you don't want it and still be carrying the question. A man in another group I run said he didn't need the closure, then in the same breath said there was something in the back of his head about why she had gone cold on him.

I don't need that closure.

another guy with the same question

So I asked him about his side of it instead: whether any boundaries felt crossed, or any expectations of a friend had gone unmet. His answer was there.

The what-ifs are rarely about what happened. In my experience, the hardest thing about breakups, was this.

It wasn't grieving what was had. It's grieving what will never be.

Daniel Lawson

A fantasy of how it could have gone, which never will. A call doesn't change that, because there is no response that can align to the fantasy now gone.

What do you figure out in the months without contact?

This is where time is important, because there is a question to reflect upon.

Go back over the challenging times you had with them, and ask how you would have liked it differently. What attribute, or characteristic, or value, or approach would you have needed to see in them? Write the answers down. If what you needed is outside what they can give as they are today, you have your answer about the decision, and it came from within.

Then the bigger question, the one I bring people back to: how is it that you want to feel in a relationship? During a breakup is where you can answer most honestly, because you have just finished finding out what it feels like when you don't get it.

You only get these learnings and insights about yourself, your desires, what you want in a relationship, as a result of the breakup. So don't deprive yourself of that.

Daniel Lawson

It's in those moments of questioning that we get insights we wouldn't have got otherwise, and a call in week three trades them for a sentence from somebody else.

What does the conversation tell you later?

Six months is just creating space not a block forever, which can get missed. After my first real heartbreak I set the rule myself, and shared it with her respectfully.

With respect, I don't want to have any contact with you for the next three months. It wasn't malicious. It was just: I need to do my healing.

Daniel Lawson

I blocked her as well, because I didn't want the distractions, and I offered to catch up and debrief afterwards. We did, and by then I had a much clearer perspective on what was good, what wasn't good, and how it went. About four months of deep coaching had gone into getting there. Later I went on a date with my ex, for a specific reason.

This is why I went back and wanted to go on the date with my ex, because I wanted to query whether I had done the healing properly. And I went back and the evidence was, I'd done it properly.

Daniel Lawson

So by then the conversation was where I checked my own healing, instead of where I went to get it. What came out of those months was permission to live my life the way I wanted to. I started showing up for me.

And the man in the group reached out to her anyway, a few weeks later. What changed was his reason for it.

I didn't want to feel like I was following other people's advice, or what other people thought about us, because no one has that feeling apart from myself.

the same man, a few weeks on

He described ending it as pushing the eject button rather than having a discussion, and said he had relied on other people to make his decisions for him most of his life. That was the open question: whether he could trust a decision he had made for himself. But he only discovered that question because he resisted the urge of the week three call.

Common questions

Is asking for closure worth it?

The asking can be, and it often matters more than the answer. A woman in a group I run had waited nearly three years for an answer from somebody but never asked. When she decided to, she put it like this: "I think it's better to ask, and then I got the closure." The closure was in her doing it. After a breakup the asking has already happened, which is why a second conversation gives you so much less than the first one did.

I broke up with her but I miss her

Missing someone says there was real connection there, which was never in doubt. It says nothing about whether the decision was right. The question that does: what did you need that you weren't getting, and is that something within their capacity to provide as they are today?

How is this different from waiting for someone who doesn't know you like them?

You've never confirmed the response, so asking gets your answer, and How do I stop waiting for someone who doesn't know I like them? is the one to read. In this case you've already got it. The relationship ended, and a second conversation would be asking them to confirm a decision rather than make one.

If this is you

If you've carried a breakup while keeping everything else running, you already know how to stand within the pain without passing it on to others. What's next is the reflection for what you needed and weren't getting, and how you want to feel in the next relationship. That answer goes further when you're asked for it in month two, before you've had time to put it into language. And after those months you have earnt a deeper appreciation for the relationship you want next, which is more than a call could ever have told you.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman are the group where we have these conversations together.