When you don’t get closure: Grieving the pain of Unfinished Goodbyes

The Counselling Cove
Nov 10, 2025
3 min read

Some endings don’t come neatly wrapped. A relationship might vanish overnight, a friendship fades without a word, or someone you love becomes distant - physically present but emotionally gone. These are moments that leave you suspended, grieving something that feels unfinished.

Many people describe this as grieving someone who’s still alive. It’s a form of heartbreak that doesn’t have an ending. You may catch yourself replaying moments, hoping for answers, or wondering how something that once felt solid could disappear so suddenly.

Grieving when we don't get closure

When we don’t get closure - no explanation, no goodbye - the mind can loop endlessly. What did I do wrong? Could I have changed this?

This uncertainty is what makes this kind of grief so disorienting. The relationship still exists in your mind, but the person is gone in practice. You might still feel their absence everywhere - in songs, places, or small rituals that once connected you. And yet, you can’t fully mourn what hasn’t been clearly lost. It's an ache that hovers, refusing to settle.

There’s a name for this: Ambiguous Loss

Family therapist Pauline Boss calls this kind of experience ambiguous loss - a loss that has no clear boundaries, no certainty, and no social script for how to grieve.

Ambiguous loss can take many forms:

When someone disappears suddenly, such as in a breakup or ghosting, and you’re left with no explanation.
When a loved one is physically present but emotionally or psychologically absent - as can happen with dementia, brain injury, depression, or addiction.
When you’re separated from someone by circumstance - distance, illness, estrangement, or life changes - and the connection you once had feels suspended in time.
Or when you lose an identity, a dream, or a hoped-for future that shaped how you saw yourself.

If it feels uncomfortable, confusing, or hard to explain - that’s because it is. Ambiguous loss is known to be one of the most challenging forms of grief, precisely because there’s no clear way to mark it, mourn it, or move forward from it.

Why it’s so hard to move on

Closure gives our brains a story to finish - a way to understand what happened. When that story remains unfinished, our minds keep searching.

You might find yourself:

Replaying memories, trying to fill in the gaps
Feeling angry one day, sad the next, numb the day after
Struggling to trust again
Wondering if you imagined how much it mattered

None of these reactions are “wrong.” They’re your heart’s way of trying to integrate a loss that never got a clear ending.

Finding gentle healing

Even without closure, healing is possible. It doesn’t mean forcing yourself to “move on.” It means finding steadiness in what is true now - and learning to live with what can’t be answered.

Counselling can help by offering a safe, grounded space to:

Name the loss and acknowledge its impact
Understand your emotional patterns without judgment
Soften self-blame and find meaning beyond the unanswered questions
Reconnect with your sense of identity and self-worth

In time, the focus shifts from why it ended to what you need to heal. The ache may not vanish, but it can settle - becoming something you can live with, rather than live inside of.

Making space for your pain that is valid

If you’ve been ghosted, blindsided by a breakup, caring for a loved one who no longer recognises you, or quietly grieving a connection or future that’s slipped away - please know that your pain is valid. You are grieving something real, even if the world doesn’t always recognise it. There may be no funeral, no goodbye, no single moment that marks what was lost - but your heart feels it all the same.

You don’t need closure to begin healing. You just need space to be heard, to name what hurts, and to honour the love, meaning, or identity that once lived there.

Counselling offers that space - a gentle place to make sense of what feels unresolved, and to begin finding steadiness and meaning again, even in the grey.

If you would like to explore this further, I offer counselling from my private practice in Caringbah, Sutherland Shire, through Walk & Talk Therapy across southern Sydney, or via Telehealth Australia-wide.