Dear Michelle: How Do I Get Closure If There Was Nothing Wrong?

Does it matter if you don't feel the same way about each other? Do feelings need to be equal or should I keep waiting?

Hey friends! Welcome to my monthly column ‘Dear Michelle’. I’ve always dreamed of being an agony aunt and having a column, so I created one myself! If you would like to ask me a question, then either leave it as a comment or email ‘inallhonesty@mindsetforlife.co.uk’. I love receiving voice notes so that I can include your voice in the voiceover but a written question also works too! The more context you can provide, the better and either include your name or make up a fun pseudonym. Do you remember how they used to end agony aunt queries with “Signed, Forever Obsessing” or something like that? Well, have fun with it! Throw any of life’s queries my way and let’s get you some answers

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Dear Michelle,

Firstly I just want to say thank you so much for everything you share on your Instagram account and also for your book. It’s been really really helpful for me as a recovering people pleaser so thank you so much for sharing all that wisdom and I’ve recommended it to pretty much everyone I know including my therapist. My question is about closure. I recently broke up with someone who I was seeing for about 6 weeks. I haven’t been in a relationship for years, I’m talking more than 10 years. I wasn’t expecting to meet someone quite so soon that I really really liked and saw myself having a longer-term relationship with and it was making really happy and everything was going really well. There was kind of signs fairly early on that I was more into him than he was into me and that he felt uncomfortable with that. Eventually, he told me that he was going away for 3 weeks for work and essentially he didn’t say he would miss me back, and that was a sign to me that he didn’t have the kind of feelings for me that I had for him so I said to him “I feel like I’ve been quite honest about my feelings and I want to know where you are at because this feels a little bit one-sided” and we had the conversation and he said that he’s not where I am feeling-wise and it was probably better if we both went our separate ways romantically and I agreed to that and think that was the right decision. Since then, I have struggled to get that sense of closure because it just feels like it had only been 6 weeks, it was early to have that conversation about feelings and in a way, I wonder if it really mattered that I felt more strongly for him than he did for me and whether we could have made that work if he could find a way to not be uncomfortable with it and I could find a way to be OK with it and we haven’t spoken for the last two weeks but I’m just thinking about him all the time and thinking that if only when he gets back, I can see him, maybe things could be different. I guess what I’m asking is how do you really get your head around the fact that your relationship is over when you don’t really know that the person’s feelings won’t change and so you don’t have that sense of something was really wrong and it needed to finish?

Thank you,

Sarah

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