Relationships are hard. This seems obvious to say, but despite our perception that the world and the people in our lives revolve around our thoughts, our friends, families and significant others all have a unique perception of reality and how they perceive us to fit into their world.
We believe they should feel or act a certain way towards us based on our perceived relationship with them, but this fantasy is most likely completely different from their perspective.
Weird, right?
This concept is never something I was able to understand. How could you fall head over heels for someone just to walk out the door, or how your best friend could wake up one day and not trust you anymore? And no matter how much I experienced this or watched the people in my life go through these struggles, I could never understand how two people could view a relationship so differently.
In the digital age, the quickest way to get rid of someone is to block, remove or unfollow them. Boom. Just like that, they are out of your life for good, with no explanation or justification necessary.
This “no strings attached” approach to relationships is easy for the one cutting the string, but the effects of it on the one who has been cut off are devastating. Relationships valued so deeply will slip through your fingers for seemingly no reason at all, leaving the people who once meant everything to you now unable to look you in the eye.
Recently, I have been facing this exact situation more and more, and the implications of having to deal with no closure or understanding forced me to think about how this mindset was affecting me, and what I could do about it.
Closure is probably the most universally sought-after goal at the end of any type of relationship. However, this is not easy to reach (and is even harder now that we can just block each other) and can end with you feeling more distraught and confused than before. This boils down to a lack of communication, the simplest part of any relationship, right?
Well… not necessarily.
Opening up is hard. When you decide to be honest with someone you are putting yourself in a position of vulnerability, so much so that before you know it, you’re explaining yourself leads to crying, yelling or wishing you hadn’t said anything at all.
This is something I (as well as many of my friends) have had personal experiences and struggles with. I was so afraid of speaking my mind that I would just remain feeling confused or feel betrayed, rather than opening up and telling the truth. When conflict or confusion would arise, I would push the thoughts down and remove myself from the situation and the people around me, who probably didn’t even know they had hurt me.
This has got to be one of the worst coping mechanisms out there, and it has taken me 19 years to finally start recognizing my emotions and believing that they are valid. Nobody should feel ashamed for how they respond to a situation, and nobody is entitled to tell you what you should feel or for how long.
Once you can sit back and recognize this, closure becomes something attainable on your own, and no longer requires affirmation from whoever it is that you feel may have wronged you or left you behind.
The recognition that your emotions are valid and that you deserve the time to process them is the first step to moving on and leaving those thoughts behind. Once you can find acceptance in the fact that you are never guaranteed answers or an explanation, you can realize that the closure lies within your ability to self-reflect.
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