closure Archives - Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue

If They Won’t Cosign To The Truth, It Doesn’t Invalidate It

March 3, 2015 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

I talk to so many people who feel frustrated by the fact that they see the truth but others don’t or choose not to, because it feels as if the truth isn’t the truth unless everybody agrees to it. It’s as if they’re not allowed to have their own perspective. In reality, our perspective is our own perspective based on our own experiences, outlook, beliefs, values, assumptions, education, fears, experienced etc., and theirs is theirs.

It’s critical to have an authentic relationship with ourselves and to be able to distinguish between ‘image’ versus reality. We don’t need to be BS vigilantes leaving no BS stone unturned. It’s most important for us to know what we know.

A couple of years ago, I attended a funeral. After the service, despite staying in the background, people kept coming over and asking who I was. I told them that he was my mother’s father and then they were falling over themselves to talk about me being his granddaughter and basically rewriting history on the spot. I didn’t feel away about it but I also didn’t need to feed it either so when the many people who expressed surprise at my existence expressed their condolences, I thanked them but also said that I didn’t really know him. Actually, I didn’t know him at all.

The funny thing is that this experience helped me to realise that a lot of the reason why we cosign on to untruths is because 1) we think the truth is “not very nice” and feel guilty or bad about it, and/or 2) to make others more comfortable. What this has the unfortunate side effect of, is shaming us about the truth.

Within families in particular, there can be codes of silence and lies, where a family will clan together and refuse to admit the existence of the truth of certain events. After a while, they believe the lies and in fact, the lies are no longer lies to them because they’re all singing from the same hymn sheet. What happens if we deviate from it? We’re frozen out, ostracised, or even called a liar and shamed, and this in itself can be incentive enough to tow the line.

We can feel as if we’re being penalised for being honest or we struggle to fathom why everyone would want to go along with the lie.

‘But it’s a lie! They know it is! They should want to tell the truth!’

We can’t handle the lie so why can they?

Unless we’re going to play along, we are a threat. If we know that we would not be able to remain silent, we have no choice but to leave them to their devices or step back, because the alternative – riding their arses like Zorro to see things our way – is a painful vocation that’s better left alone.

Do you have Dater’s Block?

January 10, 2014 By NATALIE Reading Time: 3 Minutes

After a breakup or a period of being single, many people struggle with getting back out there again, ‘there’ being into the dating pool. Whether it’s because they’re unsure of themselves after a period of grieving or that the last time they dated was pre-internet and booty calls, or they’ve gotten very used to their space and are fearful of risking it in a new ‘venture’, or just that they have their newfound boundaries or even assclown radar turned up on high, these people are struggling with the dating equivalent of writer’s block.

Dater’s Block is when you end up with a sort of paralysis about proceeding with dating. Primary concerns are wondering whether you’re ready to date again, being fearful of getting it wrong, and even more pressing, whether you’re going to get burned again. It’s actually at the point where you’re reaching readiness, or where you’ve already tentatively dipped your toe in or have even met somebody, where Dater’s Block is most likely to strike. Dater’s Block runs on fear. It’s fear of change possibly including fear of being done with your previous relationship. It’s fear of effing up and disappointment, fear of using up the one chance you’ve given yourself, fear that the next relationship might go somewhere and you might not be ready or perfect enough, or that if you go ahead with this person you haven’t even met yet, that you could end up missing out on something better, or that in twenty years time it might be over and you might kick yourself.

The Replacement Mentality: But WHY did they go back to their toxic ex when they could have had me?

November 25, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Sometimes we spend a little too much time wondering why someone who we gave so much of ourselves to, would return to somebody who mistreated them and gave so little in comparison and we forget to empathise, in spite of the fact that if we did, it would actually provide the true answers about why they left. We remember their hurt, we remember the stories, we recall all that we did to show them another way and really, if it comes down to making a straight choice between which side their bread is buttered on, there’s no way in hell that they should leave us for pain, so of course when it appears that they’ve left us to go to pain, we wonder what the hell was wrong with us.

The thing is, when we get into the whole comparison thing in general, it’s a confidence depressor anyway where we judge ourselves as inadequate against our own imagination, assumptions and generalisations, and maybe what we believe is the information that we know. When we compare ourselves to our ex’s toxic ex when we have been The Great Girlfriend / Boyfriend, we’re so busy viewing things through the What’s Wrong With Me? / After Everything I Did Filters that we actually fail to see that person and reality.

Think about abusive relationships and how many people leave and yet despite knowing that that person and the relationship is toxic, they go back or cave when they hear from that person. They’ll even go against their own restraining order. They’re still hoping that this time things will be different and that they can change the person. They might latch onto an occasion such as a birthday, Valentine’s, or Christmas, convincing themselves the ‘magic’ of these will slot everything into place, only to wind up disappointed.

Faux empathy and backdated empathy: When it feels like you’ve been ‘jacked’

October 2, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

I was laughing with a friend recently about feeling emotionally jacked by somebody. Many moons ago, she’d shared a painful experience with her mother, only be to met with derision and a lack of support. Feeling ashamed and as if her feelings and experience didn’t matter, she felt momentarily validated when her mother appeared to express belated or ‘backdated’ empathy a number of years later, until the whole thing got turned around to her mother only appearing to be empathetic because she wanted my friend’s support and empathy. “She jacked me! TWICE!”

Faux empathy is when a person gives the appearance of being empathetic – so thoughtful, caring, considerate etc – but is doing it in a surface way to extract something from you. If you’ve ever had what appeared to be empathy only for that person to say or do something not long after that left you with your head spinning in confusion, you’ve experienced faux empathy.

One better (or even two, three, four or whatever) ’empathisers’ will take what you’re going through and raise you a ‘I’ve been through it too… and it was much worse…’. They can be emotional and even situational hijackers as you end up forgetting your own feelings and perspective and comforting them. You may even feel guilty or belittle your own experience to inflate theirs.

In its most innocent form, the one better empathiser isn’t intending to hijack but they forget to circle back to you because they’re getting and giving empathy to themselves. They may catch themselves and apologise or feel embarrassed afterwards. In its dodgier form, the ‘one better’ empathiser does what they do because they have to reassert this grandiose notion that nobody’s feelings or experiences are as important as their own. For a few moments you’re a victim and they’re not so they have to snatch back the limelight.

I’ve come across so many people who are still affected by their experiences of abuse, bullying, rape, harassment, and loss because their experiences were compounded by insensitive and sometimes downright awful comments and actions of people from whom they’d expected some level of support and understanding. Backdated empathy can be a good thing depending on the context.

With backdated empathy, the person is letting you know that they didn’t recognise your feelings and position back then but they are doing so now. They might explain why they said or did what they did and express remorse and regret. It can pave the way to deeper discussions and mending relationships. Even if you don’t need their support (or validation) any longer, what they express can give you a renewed sense of peace and closure.

Where backdated empathy gets pretty dicey (and like a double smack in the face) is when it happens because they’re now experiencing similar (or just going through a very difficult time) and they want your empathy (and possibly sympathy) and they’re even ‘one-bettering’ you too. You always know when this has happened because in spite of any initial feelings of validation, you feel used and possibly worse than you did before. It’s likely that they won’t want mention of the previous incident and will get defensive if you do.

When we’re stuck on the hurt after confiding in somebody who proves to be untrustworthy & why we sometimes confide to preserve a fantasy that keeps us ‘safe’

July 1, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

Life in its trial and error way of teaching us lessons, gradually helps us to learn which people in our life are safe to confide in. This is when we trust someone enough to share a private matter, believing ourselves to be safe in the knowledge that it won’t be repeated and/or that it won’t be used against us. When we do confide in someone and it comes back to bite, it can affect our trust, both with others and ourselves plus it can create a great deal of shame.

I know who I can confide in and some people are better at certain subjects in the way that if we were to go on a quiz show with a team, you’d know each person’s strong subjects. I’ll take absent Mr Unavailable father for £1000 please!

People in your Circle of Trust are in effect your team members.

Over the years I’ve also learned through the process of setting boundaries, about the importance of not having a loose mouth. They do indeed sink ships or at the very least, give shady folk the blueprints to eff you over.

I’m lucky that I have longstanding friendships but I have been guilty in the past of oversharing, especially with men. I’m not guarded in a walled manner now but I am more boundaried, in that I’m not someone wearing my problems and insecurities on my sleeve who is also trying to ‘warn’ people about or off me in my own cackhanded way.

I say all of this because a lot of readers do the equivalent of confiding in a stranger that they just met or with someone who has already shown that they cannot be trusted and then spend months or years struggling to recover from the disclosure.

Sometimes we’ve got to do remorse on our own time

April 22, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

In our significantly more connected world, it’s so much easier to respond to feelings of remorse in an instant with very little consideration about what we’re doing, why, and the potential ramifications of our actions. When I receive emails from people who recognise themselves in my posts or in reader comments and they say something like, “I’ve been reading Baggage Reclaim for a few days and I realise that I’ve been Mr/Miss Unavailable – do you think I should get in touch with my ex?”, my first thought is, What makes you think that this person wants to hear from you after months or even 1/5/10/15/20 or even 50 years?

Sometimes we’ve got to work things out on our own time. It’s too much to assume that when our conscience strikes us, we can just pick up from whatever point suits us and expect that whoever we’ve wronged will put aside time to make us feel better.

When you’re feeling tempted to try and turn back time it’s because in recognising where you’ve erred and feeling bad about it, you may want to attempt to make things right. It’s having a sense of regret and possibly assuming that the way to move past it is to ‘go back’. Of course the problem with this is that while right now your past deeds may be burning a hole in your mental pocket of remorse, it’s presumptuous if not a tad self-involved to assume that what you’re thinking about is the other party’s burning agenda.

Sometimes we don’t conduct ourselves in the best of ways. Sometimes we make choices and are so caught up in how things suit us that at the time we don’t really give enough due consideration and respect to the other person’s needs, wishes and expectations. Sometimes we miss out on an opportunity and essentially look a gifthorse in the mouth and then maybe when we hit one too many bumps in life’s road, we suddenly think that that was the perfect opportunity or our lives would have been so much better if only we’d done X/Y/Z with the person who we now believe we’ve wronged.

Getting Closure On Closure: We Cannot Always Get ALL Of The Answers

December 7, 2012 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Part of the reason why unhealthy relationships and their even unhealthier breakups drag on long past their sell-by-date, is because there is this idea that the other person holds the key to ‘closure’, this sense of resolution at the end of the relationship or post breakup and this sense that it’s been ‘resolved’. This can mean resolving the questions that the relationship may have brought up or still be bringing up, or attempting to understand the other person, or attempting to understand every last thing that went on in the relationship and in the worst of cases, it’s basically like attempting to seek 100% of the answers before we feel that we can put the relationship down.

The trouble is, that if you imagine the day you broke up as the end of the relationship and then you don’t go through the grieving process and work through your feelings and process what happened, and instead you choose to keep engaging with them, breaking up and getting back together, trying to get their attention and validation, doing things to stem the perceived rejection that you later come to view as at best embarrassing, and other such things, it’s like you’ve got the meter running. At some point you’ve got to know when to exit from this closure quest and turn the meter off before you overinvest in it.

Closure becomes increasingly hard the more stuff you pile onto it to leave you feeling like there are so many unanswered questions.

The chief source of closure issues is blame, most likely to be of the self-blame variety that stems from having an ‘overactive blame thyroid’. If you keep making everything about you and essentially holding you responsible for Other People’s Behaviour, then yeah, you’re going to have closure issues because by not only taking away their responsibility and effectively erasing them out of the picture by making what happened all about you and your ‘flaws’ or ‘eff ups’, how can you reach a resolution? You’ll think, “Oh if only I hadn’t been X or I hadn’t done Y, then they would have done Z or A wouldn’t have happened”.

Who moves on when they’re stuck in their own self-imposed prison living out a sentence they’ve determined from a distorted perspective?

You Don’t Have To Gain Agreement Or Acknowledgment In Order To Let Go & Move On

August 22, 2012 By NATALIE Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Forgiveness and closure is something that many struggle with, often because it feels like any other parties involved ‘need’ to be in agreement about our perception of things and to acknowledge where they’ve gone wrong. When there are unanswered questions or a vacuum where they existed either because they’ve disappeared, moved on, or passed away, and it feels like they just don’t get why we’re so angry/hurt and unable to move on, it can feel like we’ll never get past it.

What I discovered about forgiveness and closure recently, is that you definitely don’t need to gain agreement from the other party about your perspective on things and that your own acknowledgement and validation travels a hell of a long way.

You move on when you stop invalidating yourself.

It’s a decision – it’s a choice between being in the pursuit of, in some cases, a lobotomy and a personality transplant, or processing your feelings and supporting you, including not blaming yourself for other people’s behaviour.

In the month before my wedding, everything I’d put behind me about my relationship with my father – the first Mr Unavailable in my life – was severely put to the test when we had massive falling out (we’ll save that story for another day). Why? Because it became apparent as the clash unfolded that me being ‘easy going’ and seemingly ‘forgiving’ had been taken for granted or misinterpreted as permission to press the Reset Button.

We’ve had an OK relationship but in recent years, as my unwillingness to allow hot and cold, Future Faking and disappointments to happen became apparent, distance has grown between us. I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t bothered me initially (you may remember that I addressed my disappointment a few years ago) but I’ve found that expecting people to be different from who they’ve consistently shown themselves to be is a great source of unhappiness that I’d rather forgo.

It’s easy to get comfortable and sucked in by the warmth of a ‘hot phase’ and then fall into the old trap of thinkingThings will be different this time. You may think enough time has passed for you not to be affected and then you get hurt when old dynamics are revisited.

I know that I am not alone in having been affected by the behaviour and/or absence of one or both parents. I’ve read and heard so many stories that I know if you had an absent or very emotionally distant father, or a highly critical mother, or over arching parents who didn’t chip in much emotion but expected you to live up to high standards, or were witness to or experienced physical abuse, or were emotionally abused, or were treated as if your feelings and needs were not important and the list goes on, you are highly likely to have not only been in unavailable relationships, but you’ll no doubt have self-esteem issues and possibly perfectionist issues.

When Your Ex Returns AGAIN, It’s An Opportunity To Do Right By You

April 13, 2012 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Five years ago, a reader got in touch after her Returning Childhood ‘Sweetheart’ breezed back into her life after nearly 20 years, Future Faked and Fast Forwarded her off her feet, gradually started to blow lukewarm, then cold, and then unceremoniously dumped her for a woman closer to home because he couldn’t handle the long distance…even though she was moving there. Devastated, as she thought this was her second chance after nearly a decade long dating hiatus, she couldn’t comprehend how he could bust her heart into a million pieces all over again. Yet would you believe it, just like Mike Myers in Halloween, this man is back for a third attempt.

Now at this point, there are two paths to choose between: the path of least resistance, or change? So what do you think happened next?

She went down the path of least resistance, re-engaged, and started contemplating a third future with him. He admitted that he has issues (no sh*t Sherlock) but then made no indication of whether he is dealing with them and in fact seems resigned to them. When he got in touch the second time, it was after his divorce and this time, he’s got in touch after his relationship with the woman he left he for has ended. Flattering, not. He doesn’t really have anything to offer, he hasn’t dealt with the issues that broke their relationship, he doesn’t like to be alone, and he’s basically looking for a quick fix from the woman he can always rely on to get a good reception.

I was horrified that she would actually even contemplate putting her hand back in the fire again, not least because this man has had her heart and her hurt for all of her adult life. Where does this end? She’s not alone – I heard from a reader who has been doing this for fifty years.

As I was shoving stuff into the washing machine, I thought of this woman’s mother who passed away recently and made her promise that she’d go and live her life. I then thought of some of the very heart-wrenching comments and emails that I read from so many others in the same situation and then it came to me:

When your ex who broke your heart for whatever reason, comes back into your life, it’s an opportunity, just not for what you think.

As I said to her “He could equally be back to give you an opportunity to make things right with you and knock this whole palaver squarely on the head. It’s a test of your resolve, your emotional backbone, and an opportunity for you to gain closure, not so much on him (although this will be gained), but also on the things that have rumbled around in your head all of these years. You have an opportunity to grab your regrets and knock the wind out of their sails.” This could be you.

The Futility of Pursuing the Last Word

September 30, 2011 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

During the summer I had a run-in with a bonkers lady in my local shop. Like a typical convenience store, it has wide aisles but she yelled at me in front of customers staring in disbelief, for not saying “Excuse me” to her as I walked past. I didn’t see her, nor did I touch her and said this calmly to her and even apologised, which didn’t calm her. After telling her to stop shouting at me a couple of times and her gesticulating widely at me, I said “Please go home and take out your real problems on someone else” and walked away while she was yelling “What-e-ver darling”. Shaken, I went home and after venting to the boyf and thinking of a couple of things I wished I’d said, it was soon forgotten (until now!).

Just like in any other situation where you seek to have the last word, you have to wonder: What are you going to do? Have a stakeout? Keep calling/emailing/texting or showing up until you can speak to them? Tie them to a chair and force-feed them your opinions? Programme them to have anterograde amnesia where they only remember right up to the moment where you had the last word?

In the past it has bugged the hell out of me that I didn’t have the upper hand in a situation or get to have the last word, or I’d worry about what ‘everyone’ thought of me. A situation like the shop incident would have had me stewing or even wondering what she’d seen in me to behave like that, but to be honest, her disproportionate reaction had nothing to do with me. This was only further cemented by the fact that I’m not the only customer she’s had a go at…

With one particular ex, we both kept trying to have the last word for several months until I realised that each of these revisits to the ghosts of relationship hell past was only creating more questions not closure. It turned out that my ego didn’t need him to tell me that he was a dipstick no more than I needed everyone who had ever known the two of us together to think well of me.

They say they love / like you but… you’re the ‘wrong’ religion, colour, age etc

September 20, 2011 By NATALIE Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Katie was surprised when her boyfriend of six months told her that he thinks she’s great and “likes her a lot” but that he could only see himself settling down with someone that’s younger and black – they’re both in their forties and she’s white.

When someone says that much as they love / like you, that they can’t be with you, or you have to be kept a secret, or it’s never going to progress into something more serious, you’ve actually been declared incompatible. It’s stuff like:

“My parents wouldn’t approve.”

“My kids can’t cope with me being in a relationship” – sometimes these ‘kids’ are adults with their own children.

They don’t believe in something that they’ve known you always believe in.

You’re the ‘wrong’ colour, religion, race, background.

One or both of your parents have the ‘wrong’ type of problems.

One time many moons ago before they were in your life, you did something that they don’t like.

You’re not a virgin…even though you’re both pushing fifty and they’re not one either…

You’re too young or too old.

You don’t have enough money or you don’t handle your finances, career etc in a way that they ‘approve’ of.

You don’t ‘look’ the ‘right’ way.

You have the same kids that you showed up to the relationship with.

They blindside and confuse you because more often than not, whatever it is that they’re deeming you as ‘incompatible’ with, existed when you became involved. This begs the question:

If you can’t be with me because of this, what the frick are you doing with me and why did you get involved in the first place or continue once it became apparent?

What’s incredibly difficult to deal with in these situations is feeling like you’re being ‘penalised’ with a reason that’s beyond your control while at the same time being made to feel that if you win ‘enough’ of their love, they might see their way to changing their mind and letting you into the ‘winner’s enclosure’.