The Closure Trap: Why Waiting for an Apology After a Breakup Could Be Keeping Your Heartbreak Alive

Waiting for an apology or explanation after a breakup can prolong healing and even hold us back from moving forward.

Psychologies (UK) 23 August 2026 Source: Psychologies (UK)

After a breakup, it's common to want answers from our exes, but holding out for an apology or explanation can do more harm than good.

Najwa Zebian, an activist and author, suggests that we don't need someone else's apology to find closure. She argues that the myth of closure is that we think understanding why someone hurt us will make our healing easier.

However, Najwa believes that this understanding doesn't actually make betrayal or heartbreak hurt any less - it just extends it.

When we try to understand someone's behavior, we might feel vindicated, but it won't take away the pain or trauma that already occurred.

Waiting for closure keeps us in a state of putting our healing on hold until we get the reason, and this can accumulate emotional debt that we will have to pay for in our future relationships with others and ourselves.

Najwa recommends taking the following steps to move on without closure:

1. Cry in the places you once laughed. This is the poetic definition of grief, and it's essential to be gentle with ourselves to accept reality as it is.

2. Let go of your need for the last conversation. There is nothing you can say to help them understand how they hurt you, and it's essential to make the decision that the last conversation is what they did.

3. Don't wish for their suffering or wait for it to move on. Seeing them get their punishment won't heal what they broke inside of you.

Najwa also reminds us not to get into the habit of blaming ourselves for staying in the relationship or seeking closure.

She says that the version of us that stayed in the relationship was just trying to survive, and we didn't stay because we wanted to be hurt or abused.

We stayed because we saw in them the version they worked hard to convince us they were at the beginning.

Najwa Zebian is an activist, TEDx speaker, and bestselling author. Her new book, The One Who Broke You Can’t Heal You, is published on 25th August 2026.

The Myth of Closure

Najwa explains that humans have a fundamental need to be seen and understood, especially by the ones we trust to love us. When there has been a breakdown in trust or love, it's hard to let go of the version of our partner we have in our minds.

However, a sense of finality to a chapter in our lives doesn't need to come from someone else. Najwa believes that we believe this is the only way because it's simply human nature.

Looking for the 'Why'

Especially if a breakup or a loss of trust came out of nowhere, it can leave us reeling, wondering how and why things went the way they did. But Najwa says that reaching for this understanding doesn't actually make betrayal or heartbreak hurt any less - it actually just extends it.

There is no amount of understanding their behavior that will make your pain any less intense, Najwa says. It's not your job to excuse or justify their decision to hurt you.

Sometimes all that does is keep you bonded to the version of them you never thought would hurt you in that way. Your healing is made "less" when you tune into yourself and your pain and give yourself the right to feel it.