{"id":4718,"date":"2016-05-25T19:27:44","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T13:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4718"},"modified":"2016-05-25T19:27:44","modified_gmt":"2016-05-25T13:57:44","slug":"broken-heart-finding-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4718","title":{"rendered":"What the Broken Heart Does Not Understand About Finding Closure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span>n the third season of Joe Swanberg\u2019s wildly underrated <\/p>Easy<\/span><\/i>, Jo and Chase \u2013 a lesbian couple whose courtship and eventual coupling was passionately traced in the show\u2019s two previous seasons \u2013 break up. The death of their <\/span>relationship<\/span><\/a> announces itself almost harmlessly, as matters of the heart tend to do. After an evening out, when Jo nudges Chase toward commitment by informing her that their lease is up for renewal, Chase\u2019s hesitant, non-committal reply betrays the schisms in their utopia. <\/span>\n\nBy that point, the two have left no room for ambiguity in their relationship \u2013 they shared a home, a set of friends, and an active interest in each other\u2019s lives. So even when they break up, they vow to remain untethered to each other\u2019s <\/span>memories<\/span><\/a>. Chase moves out of their shared home and Jo moves on from checking Chase\u2019s Instagram stories that are splattered with innumerable faces of strangers. In the ensuing days, Chase throws herself into a series of one-night stands, accumulating experiences and living the life she envisioned for herself. While Jo starts flirting with a woman who doesn\u2019t mind going all in. It seems like both of them have closure. That their past has no power to dictate their future. And yet, by the end of the episode, all it takes is one minor inconvenience for both of them to give up the new lives they\u2019ve built for themselves and come back to each other.<\/span>\n\nAlthough this episode \u2013 befittingly titled \u201cSpontaneous Combustion\u201d \u2013 can come across as a bittersweet portrait of the travails of <\/span>romance<\/span><\/a> in an era defined by its commitment phobia, what it is, instead, is a searing critique of closure. Jo and Chase are living proof that those countless hours that the heartbroken spend toward the search for instant closure, is in fact, a colossal waste.<\/span>\n\nClosure is always the first word that is urgently thrown around every time someone sniffs <\/span>heartbreak<\/span><\/a> in their vicinity, even though it\u2019s really the last emotion that a broken heart has the ability to process. Imagine a scenario where you\u2019ve just broken up: You\u2019ve exhausted all of Netflix\u2019s supply of rom-com movies and exercised your tear-glands enough at that scene in <\/span>Notting Hill<\/span><\/i> when Julia Roberts goes \u201cI\u2019m just a girl…\u201d You\u2019re convinced that all love songs were written specifically to describe your grand connection and even a random object like a leaf ends up reminding you of that joke he cracked about climate change. At that point, you are hardly in a state to distance yourself from your heightened feelings but it\u2019s exactly what the concept of closure insists that you do: Look at your relationship as an outsider investigating it rather than someone who\u2019s mourning it.<\/span>\n

Essentially, closure is just another term for acceptance; for moving on.<\/blockquote>\nThe act of closure is broadly defined as \u201cthe desire or need individuals have for information that will allow them to conclude an issue that had previously been shrouded in ambiguity and uncertainty.\u201d Essentially, closure is just another term for acceptance; for moving on. Naturally then, it\u2019s an <\/span>emotion<\/span><\/a> that should take time to manifest. Except, we\u2019re made to believe that it comes with a deadline. It requires someone to relive their heartbreak \u2013 replay it in their heads \u2013 to arrive at an explanation that can <\/span>justify<\/span><\/i> the unexpected expiry date on a relationship… just after it has ended. <\/span>Elisabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross, a pioneer in the study of grief and loss, <\/span>believes<\/span><\/a> for instance, that closure might not be for everyone; that not every person gets to that grief stage of “acceptance\u201d that can lead to it. <\/span>\n\nA New Yorker <\/span>essay<\/span><\/a> titled, \u201cWhy We Need Answers\u201d explains the dichotomy of closure and how so often we tend to mistake our obsession for answers with the actual process of leaving our past behind. \u201cThe human mind is incredibly averse to uncertainty and ambiguity; from an <\/span>early age<\/span><\/a>, we respond to uncertainty or lack of clarity by spontaneously generating plausible explanations. What\u2019s more, we hold on to these invented explanations as having <\/span>intrinsic value<\/span><\/a> of their own. Once we have them, we don\u2019t like to let them go.\u201d<\/span>\n\nJust last month, a close friend got out of a pretty intense three-year-long relationship. It was followed by multiple nights of uncontrolled drinking and a head-first dive into the world of casual <\/span>hooking up<\/span><\/a>. And yet, my friend still wanted to find all the missing pieces that led to his break up using it as an excuse to relentlessly text his ex. Every text was announced as the \u201cvery last\u201d text he was sending her and every meeting was the \u201cvery last\u201d time he was meeting her. <\/span>\n\nAt the end of these unnecessary one-month long back-and-forth where they discussed the same things and had the same fights over and over again, he ended up more heartbroken than he was at the time of his <\/span>break up<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s been five days since, and my friend, now wiser, claims he has found \u201cclosure\u201d. Yet he still checks his ex\u2019s Instagram story the minute she puts it up. I hate to break it to him, but that is not what closure entails. It\u2019s literally closing one chapter of your life and moving on without having to look back.<\/span>\n\nI know, eventually, my friend will get over it and I suspect he does too. So why is he forcing himself to find closure instead of letting it find him?<\/span>\n\nIn the hyper-connected times we live in, what we often forget is that it\u2019s impossible to stifle the urge to find out if people who broke our hearts are moving on with their lives. Unless we consciously decide to. There\u2019s no secret to instantly moving on. It can happen in a day, week, or even years. Even an animated horse knows better: In one of <\/span>Bojack Horseman<\/span><\/i>\u2019s most viral monologues, he says, \u201c<\/span>Closure<\/span><\/a> is a made up thing invented by Steven Spielberg to sell more tickets.\u201d <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Closure is always the first word that is urgently thrown around every time someone sniffs heartbreak in their vicinity, even though it\u2019s really the last emotion that a broken heart has the ability to process. So why do we force ourselves to seek closure instead of letting it find us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":4719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[4759,3966,4560,8342,1712,1835,1049,224,8343,228],"class_list":["post-4718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love-and-sex","tag-break-up","tag-couples","tag-emotions","tag-ex","tag-friends","tag-heartbreak","tag-hooking-up","tag-love","tag-one-night-stands","tag-relationship"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat the Broken Heart Does Not Understand About Finding Closure<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Closure is always the first word that is urgently thrown around every time someone sniffs heartbreak in their vicinity, even though it\u2019s really the last emotion that a broken heart has the ability to process. 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