Divorced people: did you feel closure after it was over?

I was relieved, but I don’t know that I felt closure.

It’s certainly been chutes and ladders for me so far and I expect that to continue for a while.

I have been divorced twice and at this distance from both divorces, over 35 years, I feel indifference

” Closure. ” One of those meaningless buzz words of the era. What one feels differs from one to the other, so you will feel something, but I do not think closure is something you can feel.

Apparently not—I still periodically have angry dreams many decades after an extremely acrimonious divorce.

Having commented on this question, I’ll probably have one tonight. ;-)

Between support payments and custody issues, it is a lot better but it sure isn’t closed. And now I have to help her get her car out of impound by helping her pay off her three year old fines so she can get her license so she can get her car. (I’m doing that because otherwise it will completely mess my kids lives.)

15 years after my divorce and I still don’t think I have “closure”. I don’t think I ever will. But I really think that has a lot to do with my PTSD issues (from childhood, not my ex marriage)

I lived with my ex-husband for 3 months before I moved out. Another year and a half went by before the divorce was final. I was relieved about the closure of the divorce proceedings, but I continued to grieve the loss of the marriage that I wanted. It did help, though.

My divorce was under different circumstances than yours, but even though I gave him the ultimatum to quit drinking or leave, and eventually a judge gave him the ultimatum to quit drinking if he wanted to see our son, I still didn’t have emotional closure when he died a year later. I bawled at his funeral, and he popped-up in my dreams from time to time for years. This month is 15 years since he died, and I still get sad at the tragedy of his life, and that our son never really knew him. I don’t recall the last time he was in a dream, but it was within the past couple years.

I believe that love doesn’t die. Our feelings that we had for the person we married are permanent, even though that person may have changed or perhaps was never really the person we perceived them to be when we fell for them. “Closure” to me isn’t getting to a place where you no longer feel anything, it’s getting to a place where you accept that it’s over and you genuinely wish the best for your ex. Closure means you’ve learned valuable lessons and have unloaded the baggage from that relationship.

@hearkat Very well said.

“Closure” came when I realized I was married to a personality/character disordered person who would never be capable of a truly healthy and honest relationship. I was in love with my own projections, not the real person.
Understanding that the leopard doesn’t change its spots made it all the easier to box up the pain and betrayals and move on about 10,000 lbs. lighter.

I was absolutely floating when that release came.
I forgave him a decade ago, he still hates me because I refused to prop up the illusion anymore.

“Closure” comes in degrees, for me. At different times and stages of the process and its aftermath, something clicks and moves me another step forward. It’s been 9 years, and I just experienced another click-and-step about a month ago.

Maybe it’s different for divorced people who have no children together…they really can go their separate ways. Maybe they feel ‘done’ at some point. But when you have kids together, the process never really ends until one of you dies. It just gets better as you learn to deal with one another in new ways. (Well, often it gets worse, too. But the overall trend seems to be toward better.)

No, my ex wife is a deadbeat who still owes me child support.

Never felt any closure at all, because I never could understand why my wife lied and cheated on me for six years and that I were too stupid to find out the truth. I only found out a few weeks after the divorce settlement from her lover’s ex wife that she were cheating on me. The worst part is our baby that died at birth five years ago was not even my child, it may have been her lover’s baby!

@antimatter That’s awful!
I’m so sorry..I hear ya, me too…how could I not know what had been going on forever? That’s always the worst part, the feeling of ” WHO the hell ARE YOU?”
You can’t blame yourself for anothers fatal flaws, and character disturbances.

Closure came on gradually then sped up after my second wedding. lol No; it took a few years for closure and , each time I’d hear of a girlfriend calling 911 on him, it would speed up. I see him once or twice a year now with family members at birthday parties and it’s all about the kids. He will make remarks about our kids. It’s cool. He looks really old ; like Robert Redford looks now.
You’ll know when nothing is left when the day comes that you wish him peace.

I got divorce two years ago, and I was thinking that my world completely collapsed, I was never expecting, that something like that can happen to me, and for probably 6 first months I was still thinking that this is not really happening.
However all of the people close to me were very supportive and kept telling me, that one day I will be sitting thinking back about all of it that have happened and will feel and know that it was a good reason and I will feel a closure-after almost two years and with me not believing it at all that moment came –that I felt healed.
I will always be scared, but I am extremely happy and to all of the people that do feel like their world just ended-please do not give up, please remember there is a happiness, there is a rainbow and amazing people around you, even if right at the moment you feel like you want to be invisible or you want to hide or seeing happy people makes you cry. I promise it gets better, I will never forget a friend of mine that that told me that –it gets better every single day, I did not believe in that, but it did
It was worth it-because it changed my life!

I felt closure from the divorce itself. It was the finale to that book. I was no longer prey to that person’s ideals or delusions in regards to my personal life, hobbies, skills, favorite colors.
We still have to communicate, unfortunately, and that leaves open windows and doors for it all to come back, but I’ve got the broom to sweep it right back out.

Closure is a healing process.
It usually takes some time and the right conditions.
It doesn’t make memories go away but you can feel good again, you can feel relief from the pain of loss.

I think closure is a shift in peace of mind, as returning comfort is to an injury as it heals.

You could end up good as new, but it will be hard to pin a moment on the finished healing.
Instead you’ll feel closure events when you can do something you couldn’t while the injury and pain were still there.

The one who initiates the break-up is likely to feel closures earlier there can be tipping points in a relationship from which there is no return. When decisions are made to end the relationship, it’s part of the path to closure for that person.
The initiator could feel a closure kind of experience when someone moves and the spouses are in separate residences, someone’s stuff is moved to another address.
Another might be a legal separation judgement prior to a divorce that help free a spouse from financial abuse along with separation from physical abuse.

If you have kids it must be a milestone when they are old enough to not need either of your supervision, reducing the requirement of regular communication.

When the other one starts dating someone else, or marries someone else, or moves to another city.
When you start dating someone else, or marry someone else, or move to another city.
If support payments stop that’s a real milestone and would be some real closure for the payer.

If you’re good friends after the divorce then a lot of these things will be shared milestones not closure events.

I got closure while I was still married. I don’t mind the person my ex-husband is, he’s an interesting person, but he feels like a complete stranger to me and began to feel that way
really early on.

I still don’t have closure and probably never will on the loss of my second (otherwise known as my “real”) husband, who died seven years ago. He was never a stranger to me even when we were mad at each other. Dang.

I have moved on but I don’t think what I feel is closure. Life keeps on going and I am determined to live it and enjoy each moment as much as I can.

But everything that has to do with our children is bittersweet, school, sports, chorus, their friends, medical/health issues, holidays.

When I think of the moments we will share in the future, graduations, college, more graduations, friendships, jobs, marriages, grandchildren, it bothers me that I will have to share those moments with the person that destroyed our family.

If you had kids together… no you never do

Also it depends how long you were married. The longer , the harder it is to feel closure, especially if you spent the best years of your life with that person ( i.e your youth)