Strong Women Don't Need Closure — We Just Move The Heck On
Don’t wait around.
Iurii Stepanov / Shutterstock When we’re broken-hearted, we tend to do some really dumb stuff, and I don't just mean impulsive things like dying your hair or going shopping, that's actually normal.
I mean like leaving a drunken voicemail of you singing Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License,” at 4 a.m. kinda dumb stuff.
It’s cool. I mean, we’re all human, and we all go a little crazy when facing the harsh reality of romantic rejection.
While I’m totally down to use it as an excuse for a lot of things (fender benders, speeding tickets, junk food binges, sleeping in, missing work, etc.), after a certain period of time, that heartbreak becomes a crutch we use that keeps us from moving on.
Or from doing anything at all. Sometimes heartbreaks can be truly crippling and leave you bedridden with your own tears for weeks.
Yes, I’ve met tons of people (myself included) that milk the sad feels of a breakup far longer than we were supposed to just because we were afraid of change.
We're terrified of making any moves because we don’t want to experience that heartache again.
In order to keep ourselves safe, we lie and say we are still “going through stuff” hoping no one would expect anything of us — ever.
But the thing about safety — especially emotional safety — is that it’s an illusion. It’s not real. It’s just a curtain we hide behind because we don’t want to take responsibility for anything.
We don’t want to be the ones who mess up.
One of the lies we tell ourselves in an effort to stay in that sad but seemingly safe place is that we need closure. We just can’t get over the breakup until we fully understand every little detail that led up to it.
You don't need to know any of those details because they're likely to hurt you in the long run anyway, and we don't need anymore hurt after that.
We say it out loud like it makes sense, but it doesn’t.
Why the eff would you ever want to know why someone stopped wanting to be with you? How could knowing something so sad and awful make you feel good enough to move on?
People tell me I’m dumb for wanting to live in such a naive space, but if nothing productive is going to come out of that kind of conversation, why have it?
You’re smart. You can probably figure out the role you played at the end of the relationship.
You don’t need someone to spell it out for you in order for you to move forward.
It’s time to stop waiting for people to save you and start saving yourself instead.
Emily Blackwood is a writer and editor focused on relationships and pop culture.