Episode 0Sep 17, 2026· 13:29

Listener Question (Chloe from Toronto): How Do You Heal From a Breakup Without Closure?

▸ Show notes from the creator

After six years together, a listener's relationship ended when her partner went through a major life change, emotionally shut down, and ultimately walked away. More than a year later, she still loves him, misses him, and wonders how she's supposed to move forward without the closure she never received. In this listener question episode, I share my thoughts on grief, letting go, and what happens when the person you want closure from may not be capable of giving it to you. Send me Fan Mail! Email CT: [email protected] Connect on social (Instagram/TikTok): @TheMindfulSPX Check out the website: TheMindfulSPX.com

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About this episode

After six years together, a listener's relationship ended when her partner went through a major life change, emotionally shut down, and ultimately walked away. More than a year later, she still loves him, misses him, and wonders how she's supposed to move forward without the closure she never received. In this listener question episode, I share my thoughts on grief, letting go, and what happens when the person you…

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Full transcript

00:03

SpeakerWelcome back or welcome to the Securely You podcast. My name is CT, and I help you understand why you love the way you do. Today we have a listener question. I'm just going to read her email and then we'll get into it. Hi, CT. My name is Chloe. I'm from Toronto, Canada. I was together with my ex for six years before we broke up about a little over a year ago. Our love was incredible, and I thought he was my person. He was furloughed from his job before he was ultimately laid off, and everything went downhill from there.

00:34

He lost his sense of purpose, his identity, and his ego was bruised. All of a sudden, this emotional wall went up. He wasn't communicating like he used to, and there was a loss of intimacy. I let it go for a while, and when I eventually brought it up, he started talking about his how his feelings had changed and how things didn't feel the way it used to. He said how he had doubts about me and continued to not communicate how he was feeling.

01:00

He ultimately ended the relationship. When he came by to collect his things, he looked like a shell of a person, and that broke my heart. It was difficult to watch him go through this, and I wanted to be there for him and support him. Before the breakup, I had even suggested he get help for depression, but he was unwilling. You can't force someone to get help if they don't want it. My question is, how can I heal from a breakup without closure?

01:23

It ended without any logical reason and with very irrational thinking. I still love him and I miss him every day. I haven't had a day where I haven't cried and I don't know how to let go and move on. I'm seeing someone now and he's a great guy, but it's not fair to him when my heart still feels broken. A part of me won't let it go because I feel like maybe things will turn around for him. Maybe he would come to see what damage he caused and would want to fix it.

01:48

Any insight or encouragement would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. First of all, Chloe, I'm sorry that you're going through this. Like I can I can feel, I felt it immediately when I when I read your email. There was uh trying to think of the right word. There was uh depth was the word that's coming, but that's not the right word. There or I maybe maybe it is. There was substance to it. There was maybe it'll come to me later because I feel like there's a better word.

02:18

That's not coming. But like a strong, like that there was a strong bond there between you two. And so like I could just feel the the importance to you in that connection. The the thing that immediately came to me that just like kept echoing in my head was that there's nothing that you could have said or done differently, because this is literally all on him. So, like you you talked about in there how you know you tried to offer support and suggest that he get help, but he but he wasn't willing.

02:52

And so just just like you said, like you can't force someone to get help if they don't want it, just like an addict, you can talk to them to their boom in the face, you can you can explain all the reasons why they shouldn't be doing what they're doing, but until they have come to grips with it, until they have come to the understanding of it that they need help or they can't fix it by themselves, or however that unfolds, until they decide that for themselves, we can all just talk until we're blue in the face.

03:21

So there's nothing here that I think you could have or should have done differently, and I should caveat all this by saying I'm not a therapist, I don't play one on the internet. This is just for informational purposes and my understanding of what's going on based on what you have described. And if you were sitting across from me on the couch, I would be telling you the same thing as a friend would. I think that the way that it unfolded where there was obviously a really good connection, and then it all, for lack of a better term, it blew up once some challenging moments in his life had come up, that I think that uh going through that uh maybe just sped up the process.

04:19

So this would have happened in two years from now, or five years from now, or 15 years from now, or whatever. It would, in my opinion, it would have still happened. It's just that it happened in this time frame or duration of time uh because of those those circumstances. But what you laid out there, him losing his his sense of purpose, identity, and and putting up those emotional walls, that that to me is a sign that there's something deeper there that he hasn't worked through.

04:49

And obviously, I don't know you or know him, and so I have no way of knowing the context or the backstory of any of that, but just by the words used makes me think that there's a deeper there's deeper things there that that really don't have to do with you, and it's more just him internally that he hasn't worked through, and then it just manifested in the way that he uh you know that it did. I think there's also probably part of you that's grieving when you when you talk about uh uh when he came to collect his things and then he, you know, he didn't even look like himself, uh, or you know, a shell of himself and and like seeing the decline of that.

05:34

I think there there's probably it's like a double whammy because you're you're grieving the loss of the connection, the relationship, but also him as a person and the connection that you felt, you know, between each other as human beings. I think that's very natural. Uh it may just be a little bit more heightened because of the connection that you guys shared, the relationship that you had created. Doesn't this doesn't sound like it was some casual fling.

06:04

Uh sounds, like I said before, like there was depth um to it, substance to it, and something that you felt you know could have could have been uh forever, forever lasting. The part on you dating somebody else, um, but kind of feeling maybe the the weight of the last relationship, or that that person kind of still um pulling on your heartstrings, I think that that's a very tough uh situation. The the thought that comes to me is it's not that this person that you're currently with is not your person, or that this person that you're currently with is not great for you.

06:51

I wonder if they're if it would be helpful or beneficial to talk to a therapist or counselor or somewhere in that demographic to uh help to I really feel like the grief is like a big word that that comes to me during this whole thing. And you you didn't I don't know if you if you said that in here, but just uh in in my mind, that so it's it's like a grieving at death. Obviously, he's not passed away, but the relationship, him as a person kind of you know, you you saw him going a certain way and he's kind of going the other way, and so there's a lot of grief between all of that.

07:35

And so maybe being able uh to seek professional help that would also help it would help in both ways, help you to kind of overcome those uh negative feelings that you have, and then kind of the how you uh feel around this current connection. I I I would ask yourself if do you uh feel uh that this current person that you're with, did you did you get into that relationship to fill a void? Did you uh seek that out to to fill uh some void or emptiness within yourself because of the last relationship?

08:21

Are you in this current relationship to mask something that uh you know that you you haven't overcome from the last relationship? Um there's there's probably many layers, and we can talk about this for a long time, and kind of like a spider web and different different things, but those are like my immediate uh thoughts and feelings as as I as I read this. I think the the biggest uh thing that I felt initially when I read it, and the biggest uh thing I want you to know is we we all want uh closure in a nice pretty packaged bow.

09:00

But I think a lot of times that doesn't that's just not possible. And that's not that's not a indictment on our worth. It's just where the two human beings in that connection are at that given time, and it maybe in months as months go by that that that could have been different, but in the the way that your relationship unfolded and then how it ended, be because of the way that that was for whatever the reason the reasons that you you may not know ever that it happened that way because because it did and it couldn't happen any other way, uh, as difficult as that that might be.

09:49

And sometimes the ones that we want closure from the most are the ones that are completely unable to give it to us. So maybe my my my ask to you would be to uh the professional help would be would be one route. Not that you can't do this on your own, but just to like speed up that that process. I think there's a weight uh with all of this. That weight may that you feel, the heaviness that you feel, maybe that was the word from very early on.

10:23

There was just that there's a heaviness uh with your email, not in a not in a bad way, just that I could feel feel that heaviness as I was reading it. Uh talking to someone professionally may be able to help you release that weight. And then I think uh every aspect of your life, whether it's socially, work, romantically with this new person, whatever, uh in all facets, it would help to just kind of go through life with a little bit of of of a lightness to you.

10:52

And uh the the other side of just the kind of a self-awareness piece, because that's just like always where my my mind goes, is I I would love if there was some kind of journaling component um just to get your your thoughts and feelings out. I'm I'm uh based on this, I feel like you're pretty self-aware, and maybe you've already done that uh yourself. Even writing, writing that person a letter that you never send them, but just again, being able to get those those thoughts out on paper.

11:21

There's something about like we have that monkey mind, we have all these thoughts and feelings and things in our in our head, but being able to actually write it down can really help to just to release it, to release it. One one thing that I have heard from a spiritual practitioner that I uh look up to is the idea of putting putting all those negative thoughts, feelings, the burden, the weight, putting that all into, like metaphorically, visually, I'm putting that all into a suitcase and letting it, you know, putting it at the end of your driveway and letting that go.

11:58

And uh just kind of like a like a cleansing ritual in a way. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. I I'm no guru, but um just I like that visual um to be able to kind of release it, just being able to take the energy, the weight, the heaviness, all of those feelings, being able to kind of let that go through and release that, I think would be helpful as well. I wish that I had specific concrete, do A, B, and C, and then sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns will appear.

12:33

But I think we're all as humans, uh we all we all want the same thing, I believe, uh deep down, but the way that we work through things is very different. And so what works for one person may not work for the for the next. So I don't necessarily want to give super um blanket statements, but some of those ideas hopefully that resonated. I hope that was helpful. I wish you all the best, and please uh stay in touch. Let me know how you are doing and how things progress.

13:06

If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, everything is in the show notes. You can send me fan mail, you can email me, connect on social, whichever is easiest. Look forward to hearing from you as well, dear listener. Until next time, take care. Thank you for being here. We'll talk soon.