When You Reach Out to An Ex, Be Careful You’re Not Doing THIS

When someone says they want “closure,” I tend to be wary—often what they really mean is they’re still obsessively in love with someone and are looking for any opening to reopen the situation and win that love back. Saying “I want closure” can be a softer cover for asking, “Please give me another chance.” It gives them plausible deniability: they don’t want to reveal that they’re clinging, consumed, and unable to accept rejection. Rather than admitting they want to try harder to get reciprocation, they dress it up as a need for closure. That said, true closure does exist—especially when a real relationship ends with no explanation. The person who was left behind deserves to know what happened so they can stop wondering and move on. So how can you tell if your craving for closure is honest or just a way to manufacture another opportunity at love? How do you know if you’re genuinely seeking an explanation or just trying to get another shot?
I’m not a clinician; I’m someone who healed from trauma-driven patterns in relationships and now teaches that process. Today’s letter is from a woman I’ll call Narissa. She writes: hello Anna I have recently texted a former classmate of mine one that I had limerent feelings for that I had a crush on him back in high school oo okay his response was Curt diplomatic and polite ouch all right I’ve got my fairy pencil I’m going to go through and circle things I want to come back to on a second reading but let’s see what’s going on in nissa’s life here I know I should probably leave it alone but I really want to text him to make sure things are all right between us is there anything I could text that would be appropriate to send something that can provide me closure but would not be off-putting or harmful to them I made the impulsive decision to reach out to this person now a few years after high school because I realized that the guilt of the limerent feelings I had were lingering guilt okay so liant feelings limerance is an obsession with somebody else that you can’t have like a romantic Obsession and it can be like an addiction can be like a flight from reality and it leads to a lot of compul of behavior sometimes so that’s what narissa is calling herself she has guilt over the liant feelings that were lingering I thought by sharing with him that I once liked him it would end the obsession instead unfortunately the obsession has returned very strong I feel guilty now for telling him how I once felt as if I’m sure it made him uncomfortable but I feel that I can’t just leave it that way the way that it is I want to reach out at least one more time just to ease things a bit especially because there’s a fair chance I’ll see this person again as our families are somewhat connected and we’re former classmates I grew up in a seemingly healthy home but I now realize I had an emotionally unavailable mother my dad was busy often and we did not spend a lot of time together and even now although my relationship with my dad is functional he struggles to be present and when we talk he’s always in a rush to end the discussion I’m a highly sensitive person and the Gap left by my mother who was emotionally vacant and disregulated continues to hurt me I regret now reaching out to this boy I had liant feelings for in high school and I don’t wish to dig myself in De in a deeper hole by texting him again however leaving things as they are feels especially uncomfortable especially because I will most likely meet him again I don’t wish at this point to continue communication with him but I would like an ending that’s more than a Curt response uh-huh I feel I need uh some closure after my confession to him narissa okay narissa I think I can help you say you want closure but I’m not hearing closure closure you’ve already got closure closure is you told him how you felt and he was very politely rejecting I think is what you’re saying you know Kurt like not interested you got your closure and it feels bad right it feels bad to now face facts that he didn’t feel the same way and all you’ve done is tell him how you feel and you didn’t get it reciprocated what I’m proud of you for is that you went ahead and you said something because now you got a chance to get that information back now your limerance you say your obsession has gotten stronger since then um but it’s just so interesting from the outside like you want to text him again now and I’m just going to like invite everybody in the community to try to uh tell you this don’t text that man don’t text that man he’s already to you know let you know in the nicest way he can that he’s uncomfortable if you escalate and continue to try to make contact it won’t be perceived as a quest for closure or any kind of amendment on what you said what you said is what you meant you told them how you used to feel right so there’s not really a way to change that probably if you’re liant your mind will sit there and obsess this is what we do we obsess on the perfect thing we could say to try to turn things in a better direction for us like where maybe they reciprocate and you say you don’t want reciprocation but you want them to think well of you and you don’t need him to think well of you I’m here to tell you I’m not just being like you know arbitrarily hardass here you really don’t need him to approve of you it is uncomfortable when someone says they liked you and it’s uncomfortable when they come out of the blue it would be extra uncomfortable to have somebody persist in texting which would probably necessitate saying hey look stop texting me blocking that kind of thing that’s what people feel the need to do when somebody doesn’t get their polite boundary signal so he’s giving you a boundary signal you’re just trying to manage your own Feelings by managing his feelings if he would be nicer to you and be like oh ha I guess you didn’t mean it then you wouldn’t feel so ashamed you say guilty but I think you’re talking about shame um you know and there’s there’s a slight difference just you know you feel like somehow inherently your feelings are bad and shameful they’re not shameful it’s not shameful to have a crush on somebody it it happens all the time and uh I admire people who are able to express how they feel about others and be able to handle that it’s not always reciprocated that’s what people who do the asking on going out for dates they face that every time they ask a new person out for a date it takes a bit of Courage it takes a bit of centeredness in yourself to be like I’m interested in you are you interested in me oh no okay no probs and then the totally gracious thing to do is to just let go if you run into him again this is what you do H that’s all you don’t have to do anything you’ve turned into somebody who makes him uncomfortable right now if he ever wants to talk to you in a friendly way he will but can I just suggest to you narissa don’t try to make that happen literally there’s nothing you can do right now to change the meaning of what you said just take it from me and the community good job you said how you feel now if you’re ever thinking again about telling somebody a seeing if you can sort of stir up a romance uh the one boundary I would really put up there is if they’re already in a relationship don’t do that that’s really disrespectful to them to the person they’re in a relationship with and it’s kind of it’s just really bad karma for your future in relationships of um how would you feel if people showed up in the past of somebody that you really loved and were committed to and was like Hey you know can we stir things up again it’s a it’s a betrayal and so even though we haven’t met the partners of people we once felt had feelings for we betray them if we you know interfere with present– day relationships now what if you don’t know if they have a relationship you know what the that answer is there you don’t do it if they might have a relationship it could be so hurtful and disruptive to be a woman from the Past who comes back and is sort of putting out feelers for you know hey did you ever feel the same way about me the the meaning of that can’t be misconstrued and um I’m sure people will say no there’s an exception okay fine there’s an exception somewhere but basically when we show up and when we show up and send a text to somebody and say by the way I really liked you it means one thing it really does and have you ever gotten a text like that I have and uh you know if I welcomed it great it was very exciting I got one though since I’ve been married and I ignored it I just shut it down by not even responding that’s what I did and that’s a totally okay thing to do no harm no foul that’s what people get when they reach out to married people or people who might be married so what we want to do in our healing because so much of the reason why we ended up with trauma in childhood is because of unstable relationships in the generation before us right or relationships with people who who were abusive or hurtful or not good to the kids and so we’re going to change the cycle and how we’re going to do that is we’re never going to be the one to D stabilize a relationship if we can help it so help us right we don’t want to be the ones to destabilize we want to be the people who support people in having healthy stable relationships feeling safe in their relationships at last that they can let down their guard so we become people who support that experience and when you are supporting that experience you can hardly help but have that experience yourself you you earn the the trust and support of the people who in your life by being that kind of person and take it for me who’s somebody who’s been on the other side of it always on this one you know I’ve been betrayed I’ve been the person sort of like flirting I’ve been the person who got horribly hurt by other people doing it and then I’ve been the person who was immune to it and that’s the one I like I like being immune to it I like having having a husband I can trust and you know the this is just not a worry for us anymore so I just want to tell you that’s how I landed in a relationship with no worries is I stopped being a worry and so that’s what I’m going to invite you to put your focus on is not your shame you know not thinking you did something wrong anymore but just going ah now you have your answer you can you have your closure that is closure closure means it’s not going anywhere else and uh there’s nothing you need to change about what you did we’ve all done it there’s all kinds of like songs about it everybody plays a fool not that you’re a fool but that’s what it that refers to is when you like somebody and they don’t like you back right everybody has to go through that sometimes I’m trying to think do I know anybody who’s never been through it well they’d have to be very young and very amazing I think it’s just part of life and the more that we can make peace with the fact that feelings are not always reciprocated the Freer we become to feel our feelings to express ourselves to hang out with people that we think might like us you know and then be able to handle the rejection and Carry On Now rejection is so painful for people who were neglected as kids basically if you were neglected or abandoned it can kick up Old Wounds of Abandonment malange that’s that like toxic cocktail of of of fear and and rage and shame all at once it’s so strong that you feel like you’re not even in the human race do you ever get that I get that that’s kind of what we’re running from right but if you know that there’s a word for it it’s a thing that happens to traumatize neglected people when they grow up when you encounter it when you get rejected you can be like ouch oh here comes that feeling Ah that’s a nervous system sort of echo that’s an echo of something that happened when I was a kid I don’t need to go there right now and then we can take like really good self-supporting healthy actions to handle you know feeling embarrassed feeling a little bit embarrassed we can face the shame you know what shame is shame is resentment at yourself and so I teach a method where we get our fearful and resentful thoughts and feelings on paper so that we can release them or ask for them to be removed depending on you know what you believe is the nature of reality asking for it to be removed is for people who sort of believe in a higher power releasing it yourself is the alternative if you feel like your higher self can do that and so when we can name what we’re feeling we can release it so much easier and releasing doesn’t mean denying it it doesn’t mean smashing it down it doesn’t mean refusing to feel our feelings it just means like releasing it having a relaxed posture towards the fact that we have these feelings and making space for them to evaporate evolve move Downstream or inform us some feelings are important to sort of inform us hey you need to speak up or hey you need to get out of Harm’s Way so feelings are there for us to be in a very conscious relationship with but not for us to be drowning in not for us to be suppressed by driven by locked in a cage by right which is what happens when you feel ashamed of of feeling romantic attraction to somebody that didn’t like you back that is a cage and so we you want to process that shame you want to be able to turn that shame into just a piece of information and then gently have your tears gently let them fall out of your eyes and be okay with it it’s okay it’s really okay I’ll tell you what makes it so much more okay is when you have friends when you have friends and you can go guess what I told him and they go what happened what happened he didn’t like me back and they go oh oh that hurts okay well good you told him good that’s what it’s like to have friends and that’s what makes it ever so much more bearable when we put our necks out there to say who we like so I hope that helps you narissa I hope that helps everyone if you think that you have been affected by trauma in your past and it’s changing the way that you feel attracted to people or that you handle dating or meeting them or forming a relationship I have a free download and you can check the common signs that early trauma has affected your relationship life and see if you have them and see if there’s anything that’s going to become your priority to heal in yourself you can download that free guide right here and I will see you very soon [Music]