527 - Why Your Search for Closure Isn't Working
Types of closure
After a relationship ends, there are two types of closure we tend to seek: either the need for answers and understanding or the need for processing and acceptance.
The first type of closure is often characterized by:
Putting the puzzle pieces together.
Asking yourself “Why did this happen?”
Ruminating on “How could I prevent this from happening again?”
The second type usually consists of:
Seeking a felt sense of ease or lightness.
Ability to “move on” and focus on other things.
A restored sense of normalcy.
Very often, when seeking closure, people behave as though they’re seeking the first kind of closure, but really they’re looking for the second. In these situations, we might do one of multiple of the following:
Continuously request “one more conversation” with an ex to understand why thing ended. We may think that we’re seeking answers and understanding, but it’s likely we’re actually craving emotional comfort and for the ex to just make this all feel less painful.
Stalk an ex’s social media and analyze posts and activity, trying to piece together what’s happening in their life now.
Obsessively review every detail of the relationship to look for warning signs or figure out where things turned.
We also sometimes laser focus on reaching acceptance so much that we barrel right past answers and understanding. This can look like:
Rushing to forgiveness, friendship, and a “no-drama” de-escalation without examining red flags or patterns in your ex or yourself.
Taking on all responsibility for a relationship ending rather than examining all contributing factors.
Diving into a new relationship, moving cities, or making a major life change while avoiding giving time or space to any analysis of what happened.
Why do we even want to seek answers?
In 1993, the Need for Closure Scale (NFCS) was developed by Arie Kruglanski, Donna Webster, and Adena Klem. They created a standard way to measure the need for closure: a 42 item scale. In 2007, a shorter version of the test was created that is very close to as accurate but with only 15 questions.
Researchers found that some certain tendencies arise, though nothing is set in stone:
Having too intense of a need for closure can cause bias to show up in your pursuit of answers. For example, you might:
Select only evidence that support the first answer you come up with.
Get stuck in one way of thinking, in spite of new information.
Not check the reliability of a source..
People high in NFC (need for closure) “tend to prefer an autocratic leadership and hierarchical group decision structure, while derogating group members with deviant opinions.”
High levels of a need for closure has been linked to things like racism, sexism, and belief in conspiracy theories, among others, although “they also seem to be more susceptible to the positive effects of inter-group contact, which means that if they get close personal friendships with a member of another race, they experience a greater drop in prejudiced attitudes than people low in NFC.”
People with low NFC may have an easier time understanding and accepting complicated situations
Low NFC people may have an easier time making decisions even when faced with ambiguous information, but having too low of a NFC could mean difficulty making decisions at all or an inability to move on, or active avoidance of clarity and certainty.
Our need for closure isn’t always fixed – when we feel comfortable and safe, our level of need for closure goes down. When we feel threatened, it goes up.
It’s important to be able to find answers, lessons, and helpful narratives after a relationship ends, but trying to get there too quickly can have consequences.
Processing and acceptance
Some factors to remember when processing and accepting:
A commitment to active grieving and proactively pursuing your own healing instead of avoiding, numbing, or distracting.
Understanding the non-linear stages of grief.
Let yourself actually feel the sadness, depression, rage, loneliness, etc.
Set aside the obsessive need for answers. Creating a narrative that can tolerate “maybe I’ll never know all the reasons why this happened” is a good skill to practice.
Time. Treat yourself like you might if you were sick and waiting for an illness to pass.
Being witnessed and held. Talking to friends, a therapist, a loved one, and being given space to cry, complain, or vent without judgement
Reconnecting to your identity. Return to activities, social circles, and interests that may have fallen by the wayside during the relationship.
Dr. Alexandra Solomon calls this experience of processing and acceptance the “pain-to-pang” transition. Closure does not mean a total absence of pain, and it doesn’t mean you finally feel positive or neutral about your ex or the relationship.
You are moving toward closure when the edges of your grief become a bit less jagged—when there are longer stretches of calm between your bouts of deep emotion and when you are looking more through the windshield than in the rearview mirror.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are tackling a universal experience: wanting to feel better after a relationship ends. Here's the problem. Most of us are actually seeking the wrong kind of closure, which can keep us stuck in pain longer than necessary. Today, we'll break down the critical difference between searching for answers and finding true acceptance, explore the fascinating science behind our need for closure, and give you practical tools to identify which type of closure you actually need in this moment.
Whether you're processing a recent breakup or trying to move forward from an old wound, this episode will help you understand why your usual approach might not be working and what to do instead. If you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers some of our most-used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it in written form, as well as our new audiobook format, read by our own Emily. You can check all of that out @multiamory.com/book.
Dedeker: Let me tell you a tale of two cities. One city is called a closure, and the other city also called closure. Andre, in A Fork in the Road. You know that you need to get closure, but you're not sure which city of closure is the right city of closure for you.
Emily: This will be really confusing on maps and everything ends--
Dedeker: I know.
Emily: Airbnb is--
Jase: We got the right to my city councilperson to tell them this road sign's confusing because both directions say the same thing. What's going on?
Dedeker: That's why it's confusing. It's so confusing.
Emily: It's very confusing.
Dedeker: The term itself, "closure," can mean many different things. There are many different people living within these two cities of closure. The reason why I use this very silly two cities image is because I find it helpful to think of there being two distinct types of closure that we seek, particularly when it comes to the end of a relationship. I think of Closure Type 1 being the need for answers and understanding, and then I think of Closure Type 2 as the need for processing and acceptance.
For instance, this need for answers and understanding, our relationship ends, and you're really trying to put the puzzle pieces together. You're asking yourself, "Why did this happen? How did we get here?" Maybe more importantly, your brain is trying to figure out, "How do I prevent this from happening again? If I can get answers and if I can understand all the dominoes that led me to this point, maybe I can help prevent myself from making these same mistakes again or having to go through this particular pain again."
I want to set that up in contrast to Closure Type 2, City 2, Part 2, which is our need for processing and acceptance. This looks like seeking a felt sense of ease or lightness, seeking a way out of the pain and the sadness, wanting to find our ability to move on and focus on other things to feel healed, to feel whole again, or to find a restored sense of normalcy after the chaos of a relationship falling apart or heartbreak. Does that seem like that tracks this dual nature of closure? This tale of two cities that I have told you?
Emily: I think yes. Also, I've heard it said that in certain relationships, when maybe somebody was at fault and that you are very angry about a certain thing, and you end a relationship due to that anger or due to that thing that happened where somebody was at fault, to me, I would put that under Type 2, this processing and acceptance and moving on and being like, "Okay, I'm moving out of here," whereas the need for answers and understanding might come when there wasn't necessarily anything that anyone did wrong, but the relationship ends due to maybe incompatibilities or somebody's just like, "I'm sorry, I'm not feeling it anymore," and it ends up being this sort of deep sadness as opposed to anger.
That often can be really difficult to figure out, "Wait, why did this happen? I need more answers, more understanding to get why this thing occurred that feels so challenging and hurtful, and harmful," whereas the other thing, it's like, "I just got to move past it. I got to move past my anger, move past the challenging thing that happened and accept it, and get out of there. Move on."
Dedeker: That's a really interesting way of looking at it. It sounds like what you're saying is if you're in a situation where already out of the gate, it's clear to you, this person was an asshole. "They cheated on me. They lied to me. They betrayed me in some way." That settled for you. Now, it's just, "How do I heal? I know that they're the bad guy, and now I just need to find a way to move on," versus where maybe it's a little bit more ambiguous or a little more messy, then you think that triggers more of the, "Oh my God, I need to sift through this and find answers."
Emily: Totally. That's how I would view it.
Jase: I would just want to complicate it more-
Emily: Of course.
Dedeker: Yes, of course, you do.
Jase: -to find the situation where it's like, "I want closure from this because they were the asshole, right? No, it was them, right? We're all certain about this, right?" That lingering doubt of like, "What part did I play in this? What do I need to learn, or no, or was it just them? I need some outside referee to clearly state this is exactly what happened, and here's who is wrong at different points." I think sometimes it can go in that direction, too.
Dedeker: Yes, I know. That's so true. Ultimately, I'm not trying to pit these two types of closure against each other. I don't think that one is inherently better than the other. I think, depending on the situation, most of us seek both of these, right? However, what I think I sometimes see is that often, people will behave as though they're seeking one type when really they want a different type.
For instance, I think I will see people behave in ways as though they're just seeking answers. They're just trying to understand when, really, what they're seeking is, "I want to find a way to move past this and process this and accept this and feel better."
Jase: Yes, and thinking that getting those answers is the thing they need in order to move on and let it go.
Dedeker: For instance, can you think of scenarios where someone behaves as though they're seeking just answers and understanding, but really what they're wanting is processing and acceptance?
Emily: I think, for instance, when somebody keeps asking their ex for another conversation or another sit-down, another last discussion together to try to understand why things ended, that person might feel like they're really seeking answers and understanding, but I feel like often, that's actually just emotional comfort and the comfort of being around this person again and trying to find something of what the two of you used to have together.
Maybe that would make this scenario a little bit less painful, even though you're saying you just want to figure out, "What went wrong? Let's process this, let's go through this together." In reality, you want that comfort and that support and just recognition from another person that you are in a lot of pain.
Jase: I feel like another subtle variation on that is saying, "I want to really understand. I want more closure," when it actually might still be, "I want to keep negotiating to keep this relationship." That's a similar thing, where it's this inability to let it go, whether that's just wanting to talk again or thinking that you can somehow save it at this point. It's like disguising it as, "I just want clarity. I just want to understand," when maybe really there's something else underneath of like, "I want to try to keep it going," or something like that, right? Because they're not able to have that letting go.
Dedeker: Yes. The last big devastating breakup that I had a few years ago, it's so funny because when I look back through my journals of that time, of course, there are so many questions I wanted to ask him, and I really struggled with, "Should I keep trying to talk to him? Should I keep trying to sit down with him and have conversations?" That I realized, if I sit down with him and have another conversation, unless his answer was like, "I was totally stupid and wrong and you were right and I want to fix things," there's literally nothing he can say.
There's no answer that he can give that will give you what I'm actually seeking, which is just to feel better about this and to find a way to move on. For me, that's how I came to the conclusion, like, "No, I should not reach out to this person and keep trying to talk because I think that I want to ask a bunch of questions, but I really don't actually want to or actually want to get those answers."
Emily: There's also I think scenarios where, after you've broken up with a person, you look them up, whether that's through social media. I hate to say this, but I checked, "Is my ex still in California?" for instance, found out the answer to that question, and then I was like, "I'm going to put that away."
Dedeker: How great did you feel?
Emily: Not very. Not very. I don't even know why I did that. I was just in a space where I was like-- I'm coming up basically now, I have just passed the year anniversary of me breaking up with my ex of nine years and also leaving California and moving to New York. There were a lot of feelings that came up around that anniversary, and it did make me question, like, "Okay, what's going on here?" Because he's not on social media at all, so I was interested to--
Dedeker: I think it's good for you.
Emily: It's extremely good-
Jase: Yes, it's less temptation there.
Emily: -for me. Extremely good for me, but I did just type his name into Google and see what got spat back out, and some things got spat back out. That was interesting. Then I was like, "You're done now. Put that away," which was good.
Jase: That's good, you were able to do that. I feel like sometimes that's harder to actually control yourself and actually stop looking up those things again-
Dedeker: For sure.
Emily: -not seeking an answer that maybe you don't actually need the answer; you just want to somehow feel less uncomfortable than you do right now.
Dedeker: Totally. Even if you're not trying to reach out to your ex, or you're not trying to creep on your ex's online presence, our brains can still fall into this place of just obsessively reviewing every detail of the relationship, all of the relationship history. I did this with that same big breakup a few years ago, where I just went through all of my journals obsessively, like everything I'd ever written about this person, for no good reason.
There's this part of me that's just like, "Oh my God, I just want to understand, I just want to understand, I just want to understand," but there was no new understanding to be found. Again, it's not like it's bad to seek answers or understanding, but truly, it just was coming from a place of like, "I'm just trying to feel better. I'm just trying to be able to move on from this," but on the flip side, we can do the opposite, I think, that we can laser focus on getting to the other side of it, on getting to processing and acceptance and moving on. We can barrel right past any analysis, getting answers or understanding, or insight from it. Can the two of you think of situations where you've seen that?
Jase: Yes, I think anytime we talk about de-escalation, and actually, we have an episode coming up in a few weeks about de-escalation. If you are interested in that, be sure you're subscribed to the show so you can get that when it comes out but something that I noticed came up a lot when I was researching that episode was this idea that "I want to be a good poly person," or "I want to be a good, really evolved relationship person."
Every breakup, we've got to stay close friends. We've got to stay in each other's lives somehow. We have to have this no-drama de-escalation, but that's like the minimum de-escalation possible, and that we can sometimes forget that we also need a process and grieve, and that maybe there isn't still a friendship there to be had, that we can sometimes maybe overvalue "healthy de-escalation" for its own sake rather than for how it actually serves you and serves the other person.
Dedeker: Totally.
Emily: I just went through that recently, and instead of trying to stay friends with this person, which I tried for quite a while, and that was circumstantial as well, I was working with them, but I have said now like, "Hey, let's actually take some time apart and not talk for a number of months." I think it's been really healthy and helpful for both of us, I'm hoping. I do think that it's extremely important to be able to give yourself that time and not just rush immediately into this idea of "We have to be buds again," because that's not always the most healthy way in which to process.
Dedeker: I think I've also seen people really blaze past any of the getting answers, getting insight, getting understanding, and they will dive straight into self-blame. I know we talked earlier about some people who take zero responsibility for a relationship ending, and it's just, "I know who the bad guy is, and it's not me, and that's all I need in order to move on," and people can swing the complete opposite as well, where they can take on all the responsibility for a relationship ending, rather than examining all the contributing factors.
Often if somebody is doing this, chances are high that this is a repeating pattern for them and for their brain to go here to go somewhere like, "Oh my God, of course, I ruined another relationship. I always ruin my relationship. I just wasn't evolved enough to be non-monogamous," or "I wasn't skilled enough to be monogamous," and there's something about just diving straight into this pit of self-blame that weirdly, even though it's miserable, it can feel like, "Okay. Well, I've already got the answers. I know the answer is that I'm the bad guy. Great. I don't need to spend any more time with that. I can just work on accepting the fact that I'm the bad guy and then moving on with my life."
Jase: Right. Yes, and maybe not getting some answers that would be helpful to actually introspect and understand, "What did happen? What might I learn about the partners that I choose, or how I expect other people to engage with me in relationships?" Maybe the problem is actually at a different point. That's a great point. I think another variation on that is the rebound, right?
Emily: I feel called out.
Jase: Is just going straight into another relationship as a way of being like, "Oh, well, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else," or whatever that saying is, right? Maybe there's some truth to that sometimes, but often, it's like now, we're just trying to skip ahead to acceptance by moving on to something else, and instead we're increasing our what? Emotional processing debt that we haven't paid yet, or something like that.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Emily: Can I just say from experience and not only did I jump immediately into a new relationship and then also moved across the country and made a bunch of major life changes, but I also think that a lot of the unhealthy patterns that you may have had from a past relationship will creep into that new relationship immediately, without giving yourself the opportunity to really examine them and be like, "Hey, is that something that I want to be doing again?
"Is that the kind of thing that I want in my life again? Is that the way in which I want to conduct myself in relationships?" Often, you'll find, "Actually, I'm only doing those things because they feel really safe and they feel really normal, but not necessarily because I actually want them."
Jase: Yes, for sure.
Dedeker: Totally. This is what I mean, where I'm saying I am not trying to place one type of closure as being better than or healthier than the other. I do think in certain situations, we need some of both. That's why, after the break, first I'm going to be diving into what the science says about this seeking answers behavior. We're going to dive into the Need For Closure Scale, and I'm going to force my co-host to take a quiz about that, on how to evaluate themselves.
Jase: Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
Dedeker: Then after that, we're going to dive into the other city of processing and acceptance. All right. Let's talk about this first city, about seeking answers and seeking understanding. In 1993, Arie Kruglanski, I think that that's my best attempt at that, Donna Webster, and Adena Klem created the Need For Closure Scale, the NFCS.
Emily: Scales for everything.
Dedeker: Oh, yes. Scales of all scales.
Emily: The Need For Drama Scale, the Need For Closure Scale. I love it.
Jase: I don't know. The NFCS, though, makes me think it's some sort of crime drama-
Dedeker: NFCS Los Angeles.
Jase: -procedural.
Dedeker: NFCS Los Angeles would be helping people stalk their ex.
Jase: Oh, dear.
Dedeker: No, they'd be helping them get those answers to like, "Oh my God, does he still live in California? Oh, has he moved on? Is he starting to date somebody new? What kind of job does he have now?" That would be this very unhealthy, but I think also very funny show.
Jase: Exactly.
Dedeker: Anyway, the NFCS was created to make it a standard way to measure people's need for closure. It was originally a 42-item scale. In 2007, there was a shorter version of the test that was created that's very close to being accurate to the 42-item scale, but only has 15 questions. Some examples from this scale include things like, "I dislike questions which could be answered in many different ways.
"I hate to change my plans at the last minute. I feel irritated when one person disagrees with what everyone else in a group believes. I don't like to be with people who are capable of unexpected actions," and so on and so forth. What you'll find interesting is that very few of these statements have to do with something like a romantic relationship or about closure directly.
Jase: away.
Dedeker: Let's all take it.
Jase: Oh, gosh. Oh, dear.
Dedeker: Here's a link.
Jase: Oh, here it is. Here it is.
Dedeker: Let's see. Jase's score is 47. Emily's score is 55, which puts you both in the healthy mid-range.
Emily: Great.
Dedeker: A score up to 30 means low need for closure. Scores between 75 and 90 means high need for closure. I was a high need for closure, personally.
Emily: Really.
Dedeker: This is what I predicted.
Emily: Really?
Dedeker: This is what I predicted.
Emily: That both of us would be middle, and that you would be high?
Dedeker: Well, I operated on a binary in my mind where I assumed the two of you would be low and that I would be high. Okay, I have to start out with a caveat as far as interpreting these results, that nothing is set in stone, none of this is a death sentence, but researchers have found that certain tendencies will arise depending on where people fall on this scale.
Having too high of a need for closure can cause particular bias to show up in your pursuit of answers and understanding, specifically. For example, that might mean something like selecting only evidence that supports the first answer that you come up with. It could mean getting stuck in one way of thinking in spite of new information, deciding not to check the reliability of a source. This idea of like, "Okay, I found something that confirms and gives me a clear answer, so I don't really care about checking to see whether or not it's reliable."
Jase: That means a higher need for closure?
Dedeker: A higher need for closure, yes. Now, this is a fun one, too, that, according to the researchers, people who are high in their need for closure, "Tend to prefer an autocratic leadership and hierarchical group decision structure while derogating group members with deviant opinions. High levels of a need for closure has also been linked to things like racism, sexism, belief in conspiracy theories, among others. In other words, I guess I suck."
Jase: No, jeez. Okay, now let's hang on a sec here.
Emily: I will say, though, Dedeker, listening to you talk about-- I don't think you use the word "obsessively," but that you went through your journals, for instance, to try to find what was going on there, why this thing occurred. That's behavior that is a little different from my own, for example, when I'm looking at closure. Mine is usually stalking her Instagram or looking them up on Google.
Going back, I think the distinction there is that what I'm doing is a little bit more external, what you're doing is a little bit more internal. Looking back at "What were my feelings surrounding the relationship, and could I have guessed somehow before that this happened?" Mine's just like, "What's that bastard doing now?" It's a little different.
Jase: Yes, interesting. Okay, a couple of things that are surprising me about it is that, I guess, it makes sense that I'm in the middle ground. I feel like, for me, it's more the third one we talked about earlier, which is the replaying it in your head, trying to figure out, "What were the patterns there? What were the things I missed? What were the clues I missed, or what did I do? What did they do?" That kind of stuff. I'm surprised, Dedeker, because I feel like you're the one who, if you're going to buy a chocolate bar, you'll look up five different review sites-
Dedeker: Because I need the answers.
Jase: -Wirecutter's Top Chocolate Bar of the 2025. You're so much more likely to do that rather than just going with your first answer and only looking for things that support that.
Dedeker: That's an interesting way of looking at it, because the way that I would interpret it is that I need closure with this chocolate bar to know that it is the right one to buy. Maybe I'm less comfortable with it being ambiguous. I don't know if this is the best chocolate bar to buy. It's okay to just take it and then let it be mysterious.
Jase: Wow.
Dedeker: I think it still comes from the high need for closure. We can throw people with a low need for closure under the bus, also. On the positive side, people on the lower end of the scale may have an easier time understanding and accepting complicated situations, right? I think, like you were talking about, Emily, that sometimes when a breakup happens, it's messy.
It's not always clear that, oh, yes, there was one asshole, or there was one bad guy, or maybe this has been many, many years in the making, and it's really hard to untangle. If you have a low need for closure, you may not feel that same impulse to really comb through and create a narrative and figure out, "How did this happen?" You may just understand, "Wow, there's just a lot of complicated factors."
Also, low-need-for-closure people may have an easier time making decisions, even when faced with ambiguous information. Jase, that's what I'm saying with the chocolate bars is maybe-
Jase: Yes, I see.
Dedeker: -it's ambiguous which one is the best to buy, but they can still make a decision regardless, even when that's ambiguous. Talking about chocolate bars makes it sound so silly.
Jase: If we're looking for, you want to get a new frying pan or something where I feel like your impulse is to look at a lot of different review sites, read a lot of information about it to really try to make the right decision versus I might look at one or two review sites and be like, "Yes, this feels pretty good. I guess I'll go with that one."
Dedeker: That's interesting. Here's the question. I don't know if we can apply closure to something like buying something necessarily.
Jase: Just as a quick thing about that, I did recently get exposed to this idea of essentially a searchable good and a non-searchable good.
Dedeker: Oh.
Emily: Interesting. What's the difference there?
Jase: Essentially, the context it came up in was talking about dating and how using app-based dating can lead you to pursue dating relationships like you would pursue a purchase of a good.
Dedeker: Oh, that makes so much sense.
Jase: Thinking like, "Oh, I've got to find the one that has the right parameters and comes in the right color and has these features."
Dedeker: You see all the options.
Jase: "I can compare options and find the one that's the right one for me," versus something that's an experiential good, or good is a weird way to say it, but like an experiential choice, it's about, "How do I feel when I'm with this person?" That's not something that you can just put in the right search parameters to uncover. You're making a good point, though, in thinking about closure and these sorts of things of, "Do we feel different about that if it's a searchable good versus something that's experiential?"
Dedeker: That's interesting.
Emily: We didn't even talk about those. Again, I'm going to say this because these are two different scenarios that you and I were in, Dedeker, that I was the one who did the breaking up in my last relationship, and you were the one who was broken up with. I also do wonder, I have seen, for instance, both of the last exes that I left, I left them when that happened.
Both of them might feel floundered for longer than I did. I don't know that that's not clearly always the case. I think in both of those scenarios, it was there was a lot more anger/hurt/reaching out that I was ready to walk away from that, whereas they were the ones doing much more of that. I do wonder if that tendency is more there for those answers when you are the one who has been left.
Dedeker: Yes, I think you're on to something, because if you think about it, if you're the person who is the dumper, usually--
Emily: You're kind of the closure point.
Dedeker: It's like, usually, it means you've already done your seeking-answers phase, right? You've already done your seeking-understanding phase, and then you have come to the conclusion, "I got to get out of here. This is not working," right?
Jase: Depending on how you measure that, Emily, you could say that for you, your closure took several years for you to get to that decision.
Dedeker: Oh, yes.
Emily: Yes, several years and several failed attempts at trying to make it better.
Dedeker: To come back to the scale, having too low of a need for closure could also be a problem, that you could have difficulty making decisions at all, or you could just truly have an inability to move on. You're so unmotivated by needing closure that you don't even get to that phase of moving on, or it means that this could be--
Jase: It's not like you get closure for free; it's just you feel less compelled to find it. Interesting, how do you put that together? Wow.
Dedeker: Yes, or it could mean you're actively avoiding getting answers, getting clarity, getting certainty in that regard.
Jase: Interesting.
Dedeker: Now, here's the other fascinating thing is that our individual need for closure isn't always fixed, according to the research. When we feel comfortable and safe, our level of need for closure goes down. We're a little more comfortable with if something's ambiguous, for instance. When we feel threatened, our need for closure increases. If we're inundated with fatigue, stress, a noisy environment, information overload, or feeling pressure to give an opinion or pressure to make a decision, our need for closure increases, which, honestly, I feel like spending any time online is all of these things-
Jase: Gosh, yes.
Dedeker: -like fatiguing, stressful, noisy, information overload, feelings of pressure to weigh in on something. That increases our need to like, "I need to find the right answer" in this very complicated, potentially global situation. There's also research that suggests that during crisis and turmoil, general need for closure levels go up among people, and that can lead people to make worse decisions out of a desire to get concrete answers quickly. I think we can look at the past 5 years and 100% see that playing out.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: When you mentioned that our need is not always fixed, I also feel like my answers to this before getting treated for depression and after would be very different, too. Even just seeing some of that behavior in myself, and how I would have answered some of those questions. I'm like, "Yes, I can't say for sure because it's been a while now." It's been a year or so, but I feel like I would have answered them very differently, so again, another circumstantial hormonal change that could be going on.
Dedeker: Totally. I also found this study that took the Need For Closure Scale and, I would say, enhanced it. They had a different way of clarifying it and breaking it down into two distinct parts. Specifically, this information comes from an Argentinian study, 2022, led by Jaume et al., titled "Factor Structure and Internal Consistency on a Reduced Version of the Revised Test of Need for Cognitive Closure."
This was published in Frontiers in Psychology. Long story short, they split the scale into evaluating people's urgency tendency versus their permanence tendency. I think this is really fascinating. Urgency tendency, this refers to our desire to resolve ambiguity quickly, prioritizing speed or accuracy in our decision-making.
Jase: Like we were talking about online in stressful situations, of information overload. Yes.
Dedeker: Yes. That could be something to bring it actually back to retail, like impulse purchasing, like, "I don't want to sit and like do all this research. All I know is I need this frying pan, and so I'm just going to buy the first one that I see that seems okay."
Emily: "The one that Instagram feeds me."
Dedeker: Right.
Jase: That's why the sense of urgency thing in advertising has been a thing for so long.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: That's why if you go to one of those talks about buying a timeshare or whatever, there's always this sense of-
Emily: "You got to do it right now."
Jase: -"This is only available right now. You've got to make a decision soon because this price is only for now." All those tactics come from manipulating this. That's wild. Wow.
Dedeker: Yes, or things like just endorsing the first idea that was floated in a group because you want to avoid having to do a lengthy debate or having action to be deferred. Honestly, I know I fall into this camp sometimes, I think in the meetings that the three of us have, that sometimes I can get frustrated with like, "I don't want to talk about it. Let's just choose a thing and let's go. Let's just go because I don't want to keep talking about it," or whatever.
I want to bring this into the realm of relationships, this urgency tendency that we're talking about, can the two of you think of scenarios where you see this play out specifically in the field of relationships?
Emily: Yes, just why somebody did anything in particular, whether it's like, "Why did we break up? Why did you sleep with that person? Why did you act like that in front of my friends? Whatever the heck. Why are they ghosting me? Is it because there's somebody else that they care about, or they suddenly found me not as attractive or interesting anymore?" Just all of these things of demanding these immediate answers from somebody, when in reality, I think, sometimes things can happen where you don't necessarily even know the answer. You're just like, "Well, I did a thing. I did an impulse purchase on my life, and so here I am."
Jase: The thing that came to mind for me is if you're in that narrative of "I have to be a good, mature, poly person, or just I'm an experienced person with relationships, who knows what I'm doing," there can be that pressure, that urgency of like, "I need to get this figured out and resolved quickly because I need to show that I can move on from this, or that I am not still upset by this," or something.
I could see that pressure coming maybe from your social group or maybe from the online groups that you're in. Then I can see that being related to things like jumping really quickly to accusations or putting some kind of label, like finding some particular thing that could possibly be labeled as toxic, and therefore, "Ah, that ex was toxic. They're abusive, then, and they're harmful. They're a bad person. Okay, good, I've got my resolution. I can only look for things that support that, and I don't have to question it," because it lets you get to an answer quickly, I guess.
Dedeker: Yes, this tendency to immediately create an oversimplified narrative about what happened, and I know with this particular breakup that happened, for sure, as soon as I could land on like, "Oh, he was selfish, that was the problem. He was really selfish." Then it was almost like a mantra just on repeat in my mind because I was just in so much distress, but that was something that felt like, "I've created a concrete answer, great, and I can cling on to that."
Even though now, a few years out, I can look back and evaluate and be like, "Yes, sure, maybe he was selfish in some regards, but I can also see many more of all the contributing factors that went into the end of that relationship." At the time, because I was in just so much pain and I'm this high-need-for-closure person, it makes sense why my brain would've done that.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: Yes, it makes sense.
Dedeker: That's what the urgency tendency looks like. Then the permanence tendency, which I think this is interesting, this involves this need to maintain this particular answer that's given you closure indefinitely and resisting contradictory information. Now, the way that researchers say this looks involves things like having a sustained belief in conspiracy theories. For instance, clinging to a rigid belief in a particular political ideology or a particular candidate regardless of the candidate's behavior, or scandals.
Emily: Wouldn't know anything about that.
Dedeker: I don't think anyone knows anybody that's really hard to relate to right now, or even something more benign, like having resistance to new systems or software being implemented at your work, or a new way of doing things. Jase is just fuming.
Jase: No, that's shown up in basically every job that I've had for the last while, is this struggle of change management, of helping people feel like it's okay to change or to try something new, and I struggle with it with multiamory when I want us to use some new task tracking thing.
Dedeker: I think Emily and I have some more permanence tendencies regarding that.
Emily: Just like, "But why can't we just stay with this one? We’ve gotten semi-closure–”
Dedeker: Like, "Can't we just have gotten closure with this imperfect software that we're using?"
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Right, right. Then at the VFX studio, the same problem of getting people to see, "Ah, the way we're doing this is painful. There could be a better way." The same now, that's a lot of working with people on that. Wow, that's fascinating. I'm actually a little curious about this, though. Dedeker, in this research, this permanence tendency, is this more about that "I need to really thoroughly figure out the right answers, so it can be permanent," or is it more about "I just can't have a decision I've made or a closure I've found be challenged"?
Dedeker: To use myself as an example, where I shared how I, for quite a while, really clung onto this like, "Oh, he was selfish. That's what it was. He was selfish. He was selfish," and I think that it might be even a few years out even if maybe I've worked with a therapist, maybe I've spent all this time looking through my journals and I can see that there's evidence to the contrary that my ex-partner was just this selfish, bad person, but if I'm still maybe overlying on, "No, but that was the answer: he was selfish." People do this with things like, "Oh, yes, my partner, they never loved me. That's what it was. They never really loved me."
Jase: Oh, sure. Yes, I've heard that one before. Yes.
Dedeker: When maybe there's probably actually a lot of evidence to the contrary, and it's like there's a discomfort in having to change that if you feel like the way that you were able to get closure from that relationship was to land there, that like, "Oh, they never loved me. That's why. That's what the problem was."
Jase: Gosh. Something, this is making me think of, one is when people make some really big declarative statement after a breakup, like, "Oh, well, this is why I can never date cis men again" or "This is why--"
Dedeker: I did that one, too, after that breakup.
Emily: "No more dudes. We're done."
Dedeker: Which that was not permanent because I'm still dating dudes. I'm still dating cis dudes.
Emily: Whoops.
Jase: That also reminds me of something else that I just recently was introduced to. I was listening to this dating coach talking, and she was saying that something she's just noticed in the last year or so, relatively recently, is people saying, "Oh, I've quit dating." She's like, before that, people would say something like, "I'm taking some time for myself right now," or "I am working on my career right now," or "I'm working on my friendships," but it's become more of this identity of "I've quit dating. I am a person who has quit dating."
That, to me, seems like it fits this; that maybe that's been driven by this permanence tendency, or maybe the urgency tendency, I'm not sure which, and maybe that could be encouraged by just the loudness and stressfulness of online information coming at us so much more quickly.
Dedeker: Yes, online dating in general.
Jase: And online dating, yes, where it's like, "I've got to make these big--"
Dedeker: I think the speed at which you could be going on so many dates with people and getting rejected, and having all these questions, and having an escalation, and getting your hopes up, and then it doesn't work out, I think that that could very easily dump somebody, increase their need for closure.
Jase: Yes. No, that makes sense.
Dedeker: I think if I was going to draw any conclusions from this research, it's that it is important to find this type of closure, this seeking answers, seeking the lessons, finding a helpful narrative after a relationship ends, but trying to get there too quickly can have consequences, right? I think trying to really clinging on to the first answer that crosses your path essentially can--
Jase: Yes, it'll make you rush to get an answer. Then also, you feel like you have to stick to it, and so then you'll-- Yes, that's really interesting.
Emily: I do understand wanting to feel better immediately or try to stave off the pain that is just very constant or feeling very unpredictable. I will say, even though I was the one who broke up with my last two partners, I am shocked at the amount of times when, out of nowhere, I would just feel really shitty or feel really sad. I think it does make sense to want to look at these things and find the reason why something happened so that you can have that as an emotional touchstone when you are in a place of distress.
I agree with you that it's important to allow for the prospect of nuance, I guess, because, as time goes on, we're able to go back and say, "Wait a minute. There was more to that story than meets the eye," or "There was more to that situation than I first thought." I think the goal is hopefully to be able to find not just the things that make you feel better, but the things that will give you clarity for your future relationships and hopefully move you into a place where you're more healthy for what's to come in the future.
Dedeker: I think if you're someone who identifies with this high need for closure, or if you're listening like, "Oh, yes, that sounds like me and my past few breakups or whatever," I know for myself, there was a turning point where I had to let myself just sit in the discomfort of knowing there are some questions about this relationship I will never know the answer to. Even if I could conjure up my ex and ply them with all these questions, it doesn't mean that the answers would be satisfactory or even that he'd be telling me the full truth, right?
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: I think that's another factor here that I see this play out sometimes when people get ghosted or if someone rejects them, and then they want to do a feedback session essentially, or try to be like, "Hey, can you tell me why?" or whatever, and maybe that could be helpful for some people, but also it doesn't mean the person's going to be honest with you, really.
Jase: Yes, not even know the honest answers themselves.
Dedeker: Yes, exactly. If this sounds like you, maybe your area of growth is learning to tolerate more of that ambiguity, or figuring out "What do you tell yourself when something is just going to be a mystery and there's not going to be an answer? How do you integrate that into your story about how this relationship fit into your life?"
Jase: We need to go on to talk about the other type of acceptance, of how do we find--
Dedeker: We're going to get on our donkeys and go over to the other city next door.
Jase: Okay. I didn't realize we were doing this trip on donkeys, gosh.
Emily: I didn't realize that this was way back in the day, before cars or mass transit, or automobiles or anything.
Dedeker: No, this is medieval. Oh, wow. We've just arrived in the bustling city of processing and acceptance. Time to--
Emily: Look at it here
Jase: Tie the donkey to the post here and--
Emily: Some water.
Dedeker: Make sure the donkeys get some water and wash off our feet, and we can all sit down and have a little snack, so this particular closure city: processing and acceptance. In this context, I found myself wondering, is closure really just another term for moving through the grieving process? Because I think that when we say things like closure, the image that gets conjured in my brain is almost like we've hit the button, we've crossed the gate into the city, and therefore it's done. We got closure. It's binary. Now we can move on when--
Emily: Wouldn't that be nice?
Dedeker: That would be really nice, but that's not how it works, right? I guess I'm wondering about that, that this type of closure seems like it's referring more to a longer-term process.
Emily: Yes, for sure, because we know that grief and the stages of grief are not necessarily linear. I do think that it's important to understand that you may have moments of acceptance, and then you may go back into moments of anger, moments of hurt, betrayal, trying to figure out what the heck is going on, or just even having an emotional breakdown, which I was shocked happened to me even six months after my breakup happened, just like, "Why am I crying? Why can't I talk about this? Why do I have to basically sit with myself for a while and just be sa,d and can't really do anything other than that?"
We all talked about this in my breakup episode, my specific one, 479, Grief, Breakups, and Hope for What Comes Next, where we were going through the non-linear stages of grief and then also talking about the fact that your own healing needs to be something that is proactive, as opposed to avoiding or numbing or distracting. A colleague of mine recently went through a breakup, and I saw her just going out every single night to get really, really, really drunk.
That was, clearly, her way of coping. Then she would come in the next day and be just completely annihilated and feeling awful and terrible. To me, that is just a huge amount of numbing, but not really fixing the problem. I sent her actually your episode, Dedeker, on when you had your big breakup that you've been referring to for this episode, because I went back and read that transcript over before I sent it to her, and I was like, "Damn, there's some really wonderful words of wisdom in here."
If you go back and listen to Episode 365, Heartbreak and Recovery, that's the episode where Dedeker talks about her breakup. That was probably your last very big breakup of a relationship that had been many, many years, and the challenges that you went through there, but also the science behind heartbreak and recovery, and a lot of the things that you did to help yourself feel better through that.
Dedeker: Talking about that, going out on a bender to get through grief over a breakup, whether it's a substance bender, or it doesn't have to be substance-related necessarily. It could be any of the things we turn to to numb ourselves out. That's so interesting. To me, it feels distinctly American to want to just hit the fast-forward button through grief. I think that's why these adages about the best way to get over someone is to get under somebody.
Jase: Interesting.
Dedeker: And the way that we can egg each other on, encourage you, they're like, "Yes, fine. Come out, let's get you drunk," or "Let me hook you up with this person that I know, or whatever," that we are uncomfortable not only with grief, but we're also uncomfortable with slow grief, I suppose.
Jase: It's also why we jump on to thinking we're supporting our friend or family member by, "Oh, yes, let's all pile on and talk about what a piece of shit this person was, who you used to be with." Regardless of who broke up with whom, it's like, "Oh, let's pile on them so that you can move on and feel your closure," and whatever. It's like, "Let's take the nuance away."
Dedeker: It's funny that, at least from what I could find, there isn't a need-to-grieve scale out there. It's not like, as human beings, we fall into this category of, "Oh, this person really doesn't have to go through a grieving process, and this person really does." It's like, "No, we have to. We do have to go through a processing and acceptance chapter as we're getting closure." It's like we really can't avoid that, even though I'm sure many of us would like to.
Jase: I do think it's worth acknowledging that there's a balance to be struck, though. This was something that I actually found really helpful when my therapist was talking to me about this a year ago or so, where we were talking about not using things to just numb, like drinking or something like that. She was like, "Yes, that's good to not do that and to process your feelings and not rely on that."
She's like, "But if you do sometimes, that's also okay. You haven't failed because you've done that." It's like sometimes we do need to find ways, ironically, or maybe not ironically, to slow ourselves down a little bit. Instead of diving into this deep end of processing thinking, "Oh, I'll just white-knuckle through all this bad feeling, and then I'll be fine." It's like, "No, you can maybe distract yourself, play some games, hang out with friends, drink a little, something like that, but to not go too hard into that side of just avoiding it."
I thought that, at least for me, was helpful to not feel like it has to be this all uncomfortableness and all suffering, being just a Buddhist monk about it, who's never escaping any feelings that are coming up.
Emily: In that Heartbreak and Recovery episode that I've been referencing, you found, through research, that 11 weeks tends to be the time at which you turn a corner and begin, really, the process of moving on and not maybe constantly thinking about this person or constantly feeling down in the dumps about this person. That's almost three months, which is a long amount of time.
Jase: Especially while you're in it, it feels like forever.
Emily: It does feel like forever. I will say, if you're looking at that against the backdrop of a seven or a nine-year relationship, that's actually not that long of an amount of time. I am trying to think back to last year. Maybe about three to six months is when I actually started feeling better when I had less episodes of, "Wow, I can't freaking get out of bed today because I'm feeling so shitty about this," or "I'm trying to do things to numb the pain," or "I'm throwing myself into work so much so that I don't have to think about it." Those kinds of things, that it just became a little bit more easy to move on in a way that it hadn't before that.
Dedeker: In my breakup, I do think it was around that three-month mark where it wasn't like that was when I was completely out of pain, but that was the first time that I noticed, "Oh, I just went half a day without thinking about the situation." I actually was able to be present. I remember it was when we were at Disneyland with my family.
Emily: Oh, I love that.
Dedeker: With my niece and nephew, that was when I was like, "Oh my God. I actually just had a really wonderful day where I was present with everybody, and my mind didn't slip back into thinking about this painful situation."
Emily: That's great.
Dedeker: I think there's something about that particular time period, but it does still come down to time, which is so hard. It's the same way as when you're recovering from illness. Again, we live in a culture that loves to just fill you up with over-the-counter cold meds and get you back to work, and just get you allegedly "healthy" as fast as possible. The same thing here that you have to treat yourself like you might if you were sick and just waiting for an illness to pass, where you could try to create everything that you need, right? Like being able to try to take it easy on yourself and to get rest, and to get fluids. I think, really, it's just a lot of the same stuff.
Jase: That's an interesting way to look at it, like a physical illness that's something we might take more seriously than an emotional one.
Emily: It took me a while, but I went back to therapy after my big breakup and move last year, and I think that that was so, so beneficial, just the ability to talk to a therapist, somebody who's getting paid to listen to you, wax poetic about how awful your ex was, a loved one, anyone. I think that that time and space to cry, to complain, to vent without judgment is really, really important because it's sometimes just getting it outside of yourself.
Also, Dedeker, you journal a lot, and I've been doing that more as well. I think even in processing feelings about new relationships, for instance, just being able to get something out of your brain and onto a piece of paper is really, really beneficial for so many reasons, and having that opportunity to hold time and space for you to grieve and to process.
Dedeker: I don't know if this is bad or not. The two of you can tell me if this is bad, but in my journaling recently, because, okay, here's the deal is every time I've had to process the end of a relationship, I found it so helpful to go through my journals, so, so helpful to get perspective on the past and things like that. Now I have started tagging my journal entries with-
Emily: Tagging them how?
Dedeker: -the names of the people that I write about so that-
Jase: So you can search someone easily in the future.
Dedeker: -in the future, should I need to go back and process something-
Jase: Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
Dedeker: -I can more easily find the entries I wrote about a particular person. Is that too Type A?
Emily: It's extremely Type A, but I would expect nothing less from you, Dedeker. It is just interesting. I don't know. I've tried to not necessarily worry so much about the end of something and just take it one day at a time. I think that the only problem that I would potentially have with that is that it is somewhere in the back of your brain, setting up the possibility that this might end. I understand what you--
Dedeker: I love thinking about that. I love catastrophe.
Emily: I don't like thinking about that. I am just like, "Let's pretend that's never going to happen." I understand where you're coming from, too.
Jase: Maybe there's a balance to be found.
Emily: Yes, some middle ground.
Jase: I would also hope that maybe these tags in Dedeker's journal could also be used when you want to look up all the great things that you wrote about me.
Dedeker: I do. Exactly. No, Jase, you have a special tag that's specifically not just tagging you, but also tagging good things for my stash. For when one, a little reminder of-
Emily: That's sweet.
Dedeker: -the good parts and the wonderful things you said to me.
Jase: When you're real mad and you need to remember that I was good once.
Dedeker: I don't just use it for evil, I promise.
Emily: That's good.
Dedeker: To talk about this particular flavor of closure, I really liked what Dr. Alexandra Solomon had to say. She runs the Reimagining Love Podcast. She calls this the pain-to-pang transition, and she really reiterates that closure doesn't mean a total absence of pain, and closure doesn't mean that you finally feel positive about your ex or even that you finally feel neutral about your ex or about the relationship.
I really liked this quote. She says, "You're moving toward closure when the edges of your grief become a bit less jagged, when there are longer stretches of calm between your bouts of deep emotion and when you are looking more through the windshield than in the rearview mirror." I think this really sums up this particular flavor, city of closure, this processing acceptance.
Jase: Flavor of the city, Flavortown. Did we go to Flavortown just now?
Emily: Oh.
Dedeker: No, Jase. I guess we did.
Emily: That's an unfortunate link.
Dedeker: Yes, this idea that we're not necessarily aiming for "Everything just feels good again," or "When I think about this relationship, I feel nothing but positivity and gratitude and perspective and things like that." It's that there's a pang, but it's different from being an active pain.
Jase: I like that. I like that with both of these, it's about looking at how you have some power to help find healthy closure for yourself, how to not hold on too firm to the answers that you first assumed, like realizing there's some space for ambiguity there and that you don't need to rush to come to a conclusion, and then also that the grieving process takes some time, and it's not something that you need that ex to do for you. I think that's a key part here.
Dedeker: Yes. Don't make your ex the king or queen of closure town, right? Or maybe your ex is not the donkey. Don't ride your ex into closure town.
Jase: Oh my goodness.
Emily: Uh-oh, wow.
Dedeker: Just the closure, it's in your hands; it's not in your ex's.
Emily: Indeed.