Good Endings in Love

The pain exacted by the unwanted end of a relationship will always be significant for the abandoned party – but this does not, crucially, mean that it must always be equal.

There are relationships where, despite a lot of regret and surprise, the sadness can in time feel bearable. The loss can be mourned; the melancholy can lift. And then there are situations where, despite the best efforts of attentive friends and therapists, the agony goes on without apparent end.

The difference lies in a feature of love to which we collectively pay far too little attention: the nature of the closure. There is an enormous distinction between an ending with a so-called good closure, in which the wounded party is offered a thorough, plausible, polite and honest-without-being-devastating explanation of why they were rejected – and one without. In a good closure, a departing lover might calmly and without guilt or fear lay out that a relationship ended because (let’s imagine): there was too much geographical distance, or cultural barriers got in the way, or ultimately there was too much of a gap in terms of respective attachment styles. 

With a good closure, one might expect to be very sad for a few weeks or months. Without one, the agony might marr years. When we are denied a proper explanation, a part of the mind thinks that there must be some sort of ‘mistake’ and if there is one, that it can then surely be corrected. The abandoned party will plot obsessively for fresh contact and ruin their future in naive expectations of reconciliation. Few things are worse than a departing lover acts who says vaguely and sweetly: I will always love you, nothing can stop that – and then ambiguously slopes off. True kindness means throttling hope at the earliest opportunity.

When there are no sound reasons for the ending, the mind will necessarily gravitate to the most awful ones: They loathe me. I disgusted them. They have someone else. It may not – in truth – be anything like as bad. But few minds can resist visiting such grottoes in the early hours.

In a better arranged society, no one would be allowed to leave a relationship without an adequate closure conversation. There would be an expectation of three discussions at least over as many days, in which a departing person would lay out their reasons with formal intent. They might say: My respect for you is immense, but in the end, I needed more freedom than you could comfortably provide. Or: I know that my manner will always frustrate you, but I don’t think I can realistically change the way I am in the time-frame you are looking for and want to avoid years of friction that would have a heavy toll on both of us. There would be tears and anger, but not paranoia or ambiguity. We can endure so much when our ‘whys’ have been quelled.

Many relationships cannot realistically be resurrected; all relationships deserve kindly, dignified and thoughtful burials.