CwC - Closure Is a Myth We Tell Anxious People

Closure sounds neat. Comforting. Final. It promises a tidy ending with a bow on it—answers, apologies, accountability, maybe even a heartfelt explanation that makes everything hurt less. It’s also mostly fiction.
Closure is a story we tell anxious people so they keep waiting instead of walking away. It’s the idea that if you just understand why, the pain will dissolve. That one more conversation, one more text, one more “can we talk?” will finally make things make sense. But life doesn’t wrap things up. People don’t always explain themselves. And most endings arrive without permission or clarity.

The Lie of the Final Conversation
We imagine closure as a calm, adult conversation where everyone is honest and emotionally available. Where the other person takes responsibility, explains their behavior, and validates your feelings. Where you leave lighter, healed, and suddenly okay. That conversation almost never happens. What usually happens is silence. Deflection. Half-answers. Or worse—answers that raise more questions. You ask for closure and walk away with fresh confusion, reopened wounds, and the unsettling realization that the person you’re talking to is not capable of giving you what you’re asking for. Closure assumes mutual emotional maturity. Most situations end precisely because that doesn’t exist.

Why Anxious People Chase Closure
If you’re anxious, closure feels like oxygen. Your brain wants certainty. It wants to know what went wrong, what you missed, what you could fix next time. You replay conversations, dissect tone, reread messages like there’s a hidden meaning you somehow overlooked. You don’t want them back—you want the noise to stop. Closure feels like control. Like if you can just understand the ending, your nervous system will finally calm down. But the need for closure often keeps you tethered to the very thing that’s hurting you. You call it healing. It’s usually bargaining.

Understanding Isn’t the Same as Peace
Here’s the part no one likes to hear: even when you get answers, they don’t always help. Sometimes the explanation is selfish. Or shallow. Or painfully unsatisfying. Sometimes the truth is that they didn’t know what they wanted. Or they chose themselves. Or they simply didn’t care enough. None of those answers soften the impact. They just confirm what you already suspected. Peace doesn’t come from understanding someone else’s behavior. It comes from accepting that their behavior was enough information.

Closure Is Something You Give Yourself
Real closure is quiet. It doesn’t require a meeting, a message, or mutual agreement. It’s the moment you stop asking questions that keep reopening the wound. The moment you accept that you may never fully understand—and decide that’s okay. It’s choosing not to chase clarity from someone who couldn’t offer consistency. Closure isn’t an event. It’s a decision. A decision to stop waiting. To stop hoping they’ll explain themselves better. To stop giving them access to your emotional energy. You don’t need their permission to move on.

The Power of Unanswered Questions
Unanswered questions feel cruel at first. They linger. They itch. They demand attention. But unanswered questions also teach you something important: you can survive uncertainty. You can live without everything making sense. You can move forward without all the facts. The need to know fades when you stop feeding it. And what’s left is space—space to rebuild, to refocus, to redirect your energy back to yourself. You don’t need every chapter explained to close the book.

Closure Isn’t Healing—Acceptance Is
Healing isn’t about tying up loose ends. It’s about learning to live with them without letting them control you. Acceptance doesn’t mean what happened was okay. It means you’re no longer negotiating with reality. It means you stop asking “why” and start asking “what now?” And “what now” is where your power lives. You can’t force someone to be accountable. You can’t extract the apology you deserve. You can’t make someone care more than they do. But you can choose yourself without a closing argument.

Walk Away Without the Bow
Some endings are messy. Some people exit your life mid-sentence. Some stories end without resolution, acknowledgment, or fairness. That doesn’t mean you failed. It means you stopped waiting for someone else to validate your experience.

Closure is overrated. Peace is not.
And peace doesn’t come from knowing everything—it comes from deciding you know enough.

love, kate

Pop over to the Anxiety! page for help with anxious thoughts...

A little bit of humor: I didn't get closure, I got tired. Closure is overrated—blocking works faster. I walked away mid-sentence.