Estimated Reading Time: 15–17 minutes

There is a familiar story we tell ourselves about broken relationships. Two people become separated by conflict, betrayal, misunderstanding, distance, or years of silence. Eventually, one of them reaches out. They meet, speak honestly about what happened, apologize for the pain they caused, perhaps cry together, and finally understand each other. The relationship is repaired, the past is placed where it belongs, and both people leave the conversation feeling lighter. In films, novels, family stories, and even some popular discussions of healing, this is often where the story ends. The reunion itself becomes evidence that closure has finally arrived.

Real relationships rarely resolve themselves so neatly. A daughter may reconnect with an estranged parent and discover that although the parent wants a relationship, they still cannot fully acknowledge what happened in the past. Siblings may begin speaking after years of silence only to find their old rivalry appearing within weeks. A former partner may finally offer the apology someone waited years to hear, yet the apology produces sadness as well as relief. Childhood friends may reunite with genuine affection and gradually realize that the friendship they are trying to recover belonged to versions of themselves who no longer exist. Sometimes reconciliation is warm, sincere, and worthwhile while also reopening emotions that seemed settled during the years of separation.

This does not necessarily mean reconciliation has failed. It may mean we have expected reconciliation to accomplish something that no single conversation, apology, or reunion can reliably provide. Psychological research distinguishes between forgiveness, trust, reconciliation, and relationship repair rather than treating them as interchangeable processes. Forgiveness can involve changes in a person's motivations and emotions toward someone who caused harm, whereas reconciliation involves the relationship itself and therefore requires some degree of participation from both people (McCullough et al., 1997, 1998). Trust is another process again, often requiring repeated evidence that vulnerability is now safer than it was before. Research on close relationships has shown that post-transgression trust is closely related to forgiveness, highlighting how repairing a relationship involves more than simply deciding not to remain angry (Strelan et al., 2017).

The expectation of closure adds another layer. We often imagine that if we can have the right conversation, hear the missing explanation, receive the apology, or meet the person one more time, the emotional story will finally feel finished. Pauline Boss (2021) has challenged this culturally powerful idea of closure, arguing that significant losses and ruptures do not always resolve into a clean psychological endpoint. Sometimes adaptation means learning to live meaningfully with what remains incomplete. Reconciliation can certainly create opportunities for understanding, accountability, affection, and repair, but it is not a psychological reset button. In many cases, the reunion is not the end of healing. It is the beginning of a different and sometimes more demanding stage of it.

What You Will Learn

• Why reunion, forgiveness, reconciliation, trust, and closure are related but psychologically different processes.

• Why people often idealize a future reunion during periods of estrangement or separation.

• Why receiving an apology can be meaningful without completely resolving the original injury.

• How old family roles and relationship patterns can return after contact resumes.

• Why trust usually requires repeated evidence rather than one emotional conversation.

• How to recognize when reconciliation is meaningful, limited, premature, or potentially harmful.

• Why repairing a relationship does not necessarily mean returning it to what it once was.

• How to move forward when a reunion provides answers but not the closure you expected.

Why We Imagine the Reunion Will Fix Everything

During estrangement or separation, unresolved pain often becomes psychologically concentrated around an imagined future moment. A person may think, One day we will talk about this properly. One day my mother will understand why I needed distance. One day my brother will admit what happened. One day my former partner will explain why they left. Gradually, the imagined reunion becomes more than a conversation. It becomes a symbolic solution to everything that remains unfinished. If the rupture created confusion, the reunion is expected to provide clarity. If it created rejection, the reunion is expected to provide validation. If the relationship ended without accountability, the reunion becomes the place where justice is finally restored.

This expectation is understandable because interpersonal injuries often leave questions that appear to require the other person's participation. If your father repeatedly dismissed your feelings, hearing him finally acknowledge your experience may seem capable of changing something fundamental. If your sister blamed you for a family rupture, perhaps you imagine that one honest conversation will correct the story that has followed you for years. If a former partner disappeared without explanation, you may believe that learning why will allow you to put the relationship permanently in the past. In imagination, the reunion becomes the missing final chapter that will make everything before it coherent.

The difficulty is that imagined reunions usually occur under ideal psychological conditions. Both people have reflected deeply, defensiveness has disappeared, everyone remembers important events accurately, responsibility is acknowledged without qualification, and each person finds precisely the language the other has needed to hear. Real reunions bring real people instead. A parent may apologize and then add, “But you have to understand how difficult things were for me.” A sibling may genuinely remember childhood events differently. A former partner may provide an explanation that is truthful but emotionally unsatisfying. Someone may deeply regret hurting you and still be unable to understand the experience from your perspective.

The reunion therefore brings two psychological narratives back into contact, and those narratives may not fit together as neatly as either person hoped. The more realistic goal is not always to reach perfect agreement about the past. Sometimes it is to discover whether two people can acknowledge that their experiences differ without trying to erase one another's reality. That is less dramatic than the perfect reunion, but it is often far more important for lasting repair.

Reconciliation, Forgiveness, Trust, and Closure Are Not the Same Thing

One reason reunions become emotionally overloaded is that several different psychological processes are treated as though they should occur simultaneously. We imagine that if people reconcile, forgiveness should follow; if forgiveness occurs, trust should return; and if trust returns, closure should finally be achieved. In reality, these processes can unfold independently and at very different speeds.

Research on interpersonal forgiveness has commonly conceptualized forgiveness as involving changes in motivations toward a person who committed an offense, including reductions in avoidance and revenge motivations and, in some circumstances, increased benevolence (McCullough et al., 1997, 1998). A person can therefore work toward forgiveness without restoring the relationship. You may understand why a parent behaved destructively, release some of your anger, and still decide that close contact is not healthy. You may forgive a former partner without wanting them back. You may stop wishing that your sibling would suffer for what they did while still recognizing that you cannot trust them with personal information.

Reconciliation is different because it concerns the relationship between two people. One person can forgive; one person cannot reconcile alone. Reconciliation requires some form of mutual willingness to reenter or reconstruct the relationship. Even then, reconciliation does not automatically restore trust. Trust concerns whether it feels reasonable to become vulnerable again, and that judgment usually depends on what happens after contact resumes. Research suggests that post-transgression trust plays an important role in forgiveness processes within close relationships (Strelan et al., 2017). This makes intuitive sense: a person may genuinely want to forgive while remaining cautious because they have not yet seen enough evidence that the behavior that caused the injury has changed.

Closure is more elusive still. It is not a clearly defined final stage through which every repaired relationship must pass. Boss (2021) argues that the cultural pursuit of closure can be misleading because some meaningful losses remain psychologically significant even after people have adapted to them. Applied to relationships, this means you may forgive, reconcile, rebuild trust, and still feel sadness about what happened. The persistence of that sadness does not necessarily mean the repair was unsuccessful. It may simply mean that human beings can heal without erasing the emotional significance of their histories.

An Apology Can Matter Without Erasing the Injury

Many imagined reunions revolve around an apology. Someone has waited years to hear a parent say, “I should have protected you,” a sibling say, “I treated you unfairly,” or a former partner say, “What I did was wrong.” When an apology finally arrives, it can be deeply meaningful because it validates an experience that may have been questioned, minimized, or denied for a long time. Research on forgiveness supports the importance of apology and related interpersonal factors, while also showing that forgiveness is influenced by the severity of the offense, empathy, relationship closeness, rumination, and other contextual and dispositional factors (Fehr et al., 2010).

Yet an apology cannot reverse history. Imagine an adult son who grew up with a father who constantly criticized his intelligence and achievements. At forty, after several years of limited contact, he finally explains how those experiences shaped his confidence. His father listens, becomes emotional, and offers a sincere apology. The son believes him and perhaps feels compassion for the stress his father was experiencing during those years. At the same time, he may leave the conversation feeling unexpectedly sad because the apology confirms that something important really was lost. He cannot return to childhood and experience the encouragement he needed then.

This is one of the paradoxes of reconciliation: validation can bring relief while simultaneously deepening grief. For years, a person may have been focused on proving that the injury was real. Once the other person finally acknowledges it, the need to prove it decreases, leaving more room to feel what the experience actually cost. The adult daughter who finally hears her mother admit to favoritism may feel vindicated and then grieve the relationship she might have had with her siblings. The former partner who finally learns why the relationship ended may stop blaming themselves but begin grieving the years they spent believing a different explanation.

A meaningful apology is therefore not a magic phrase that removes emotional consequences. Its deeper value lies in creating different conditions for the future. This is also why behavior after the apology matters so much. If someone apologizes for violating boundaries but continues violating them, the words and behavior contradict each other. If they acknowledge being controlling but become defensive whenever the other person makes an independent decision, repair has not yet become behavioral. Sometimes the most convincing part of an apology is not what happens during the reunion but what happens repeatedly in the months that follow.

Why the Answers You Wanted May Not Feel Like Closure

People sometimes spend years mentally preparing questions for someone from whom they are estranged. Why did you do it? Did you know how much it hurt me? Why didn't you contact me? Did you ever miss me? Why did you believe them instead of me? Why did you leave without explaining? These questions can become emotionally charged because the mind assumes that somewhere inside the missing information lies the key to resolution.

When the conversation finally occurs, the answers may be surprisingly ordinary. A sibling may say they were too angry and proud to call. A parent may admit they did not realize how much their behavior affected you. A former partner may say they avoided explaining themselves because they were confused and afraid of confrontation. The answer can be sincere, believable, and still feel inadequate in comparison with the years of pain created by the situation.

This reveals an important difference between explanation and emotional resolution. Understanding why someone behaved a certain way can reduce confusion without removing grief. You can understand that your parent was overwhelmed, emotionally immature, or carrying unresolved trauma and still believe you deserved something different. You can understand why your former partner withdrew without accepting the way they handled the ending. You can understand that your sibling was responding to their own pain while continuing to feel hurt by what they did.

Sometimes people expect an explanation to transform the emotional meaning of an experience, only to discover that information and emotion operate differently. The missing answer may have been one part of the distress, but humiliation, abandonment, lost trust, anger, or grief can remain after the mystery is solved. A reunion may therefore close an informational gap while opening an emotional one. For the first time, you know what happened, and now you must decide what that knowledge means for the life and relationship that exist today.

Trust Returns More Slowly Than Contact

Two siblings can reconcile in an afternoon. Trust usually takes much longer. They may meet after five years of silence, talk for hours, acknowledge their mistakes, cry together, and leave the conversation genuinely wanting to rebuild their relationship. During the first few weeks, they may message constantly and feel that the years of estrangement have finally ended. Then one sibling fails to return a phone call, forgets an invitation, or makes a comment that resembles something from the past. Suddenly, the other person feels the entire history of the relationship rush back.

This reaction does not necessarily mean reconciliation was a mistake. It may mean that trust has not yet caught up with intention. Trust involves expectations about future behavior. When someone has repeatedly hurt, betrayed, abandoned, or disappointed us, one emotional conversation provides evidence of their current intention, but it does not immediately provide evidence of how they will behave over time. Research on close relationships has found that post-transgression trust is closely connected with forgiveness, illustrating how confidence in another person's future behavior matters to the repair process (Strelan et al., 2017).

This is why statements such as “I apologized, so why don't you trust me?” misunderstand what trust requires. An apology can justify giving someone an opportunity to demonstrate change, but trust itself develops through repeated experiences. The parent who previously ignored boundaries may need to respect them consistently. The sibling who shared private information during family conflicts may need to demonstrate that confidences are now safe. A partner who lied may need to behave transparently long after the initial conversation has ended.

Healthy reconciliation therefore allows caution. It does not demand immediate intimacy as proof of forgiveness. If someone genuinely wants to repair a relationship, they need to tolerate the fact that the other person may initially move more slowly. Trust rebuilt gradually may ultimately be stronger than trust demanded prematurely.

Old Relationship Patterns Often Return After the Reunion

One of the surprises of reconciliation is how quickly old dynamics can return. A forty-year-old woman who is confident and decisive in every other part of her life may spend an afternoon with her mother and suddenly feel like an insecure teenager. Two adult brothers may reconnect warmly and then discover that the older one has immediately resumed giving unsolicited advice while the younger one has resumed becoming defensive. Childhood friends may reunite after twenty years and fall naturally into a pattern where one person talks and the other listens, even though both have changed dramatically elsewhere in life.

Familiar relationships contain familiar roles, and people often return to those roles automatically. Families in particular can preserve identities long after they have stopped reflecting reality. The responsible child remains responsible, the sensitive one remains “too emotional,” the successful sibling is expected to manage everything, and the younger sibling is still treated as though they need guidance. During estrangement, each person may have developed in ways the other has never witnessed. Reconciliation brings those changed adults into a relationship whose emotional blueprint may still belong to the past.

For this reason, a successful reunion cannot simply ask whether people want to reconnect. It must eventually address what needs to be different if they do. A daughter may want a relationship with her mother but no longer accept daily questioning about her marriage. Siblings may decide to reconnect while refusing to use one another as messengers in conflicts with their parents. Friends may rediscover affection while recognizing that the intense closeness they had at twenty is no longer appropriate at forty-five.

The healthiest goal is therefore not always restoration. Sometimes the old relationship needs to remain over so that a new relationship can be created. Trying to reproduce the previous closeness can reactivate exactly the patterns that made distance necessary, while allowing the relationship to take a new form creates space for both people to meet as they are now.

Reconciliation Can Reopen Grief You Thought You Had Finished

Estrangement can be painful, but over time it also creates a new emotional structure. A person adapts to the absence. Holidays develop new routines. They stop expecting certain phone calls. They learn which subjects not to discuss with mutual relatives. They gradually construct a life that does not depend on the relationship returning. Even when sadness remains, the absence becomes familiar.

A reunion disrupts that adaptation. The disruption may be welcome, but it is still psychologically significant. A daughter who stopped hoping for her mother's approval may suddenly feel that hope return when her mother reaches out. A man who believed he had accepted the end of a friendship may discover how deeply he missed his friend once they are sitting across from each other again. Siblings who reconcile after a parent's death may begin grieving not only the parent but also all the birthdays, holidays, births, illnesses, and ordinary conversations they missed during their years apart.

This is where the idea of closure becomes particularly inadequate. Boss's (2021) work emphasizes that significant losses can remain integrated into our emotional lives rather than reaching a point where they become completely finished. A relationship can be repaired in the present while the years of absence remain genuinely lost. Reconciliation cannot retroactively create the experiences that did not happen.

In fact, renewed closeness may make those lost years more visible. Two sisters who reconnect after a decade may discover that they still understand each other's humor instantly. The warmth is real, but precisely because it is real, they may become painfully aware of what they missed. One did not attend the other's wedding. One never met a beloved grandparent before they died. Their children grew up without knowing each other. The reunion creates something beautiful while simultaneously revealing the cost of the estrangement. Healing may therefore require allowing gratitude and grief to exist together rather than interpreting grief as evidence that the reconciliation is failing.

Rumination Does Not Always Stop When the Missing Conversation Happens

Another expectation attached to reunion is that it will finally stop repetitive thinking. If you have spent years replaying an argument or wondering why someone betrayed you, it seems logical that obtaining the missing information should quiet the mind. Sometimes it does. But rumination can persist even after answers arrive because repetitive thinking is not maintained solely by a lack of information.

Research by McCullough, Bono, and Root (2007) found that rumination about interpersonal transgressions was associated with changes in forgiveness over time, illustrating how repeatedly returning mentally to an injury can influence emotional recovery. A person can therefore leave a reconciliation conversation with more information and immediately begin analyzing the reunion itself. Did the apology sound sincere? Why did they hesitate before answering? Why did they remember that event differently? Why did they apologize for one thing but not another? Should I have asked more? Did I forgive too quickly?

The reunion becomes new material for an old mental process.

This does not mean reflection should be avoided. Thinking about an important conversation can help integrate new information and clarify boundaries. The difference is whether thinking is producing new understanding or simply recreating distress. A useful question after reconciliation is, What am I hoping another hour of analyzing this conversation will give me? If there is a concrete unanswered issue that needs another discussion, further communication may be useful. If the mind is searching for a level of certainty that no human conversation can provide, continued analysis may simply keep the wound psychologically active.

Forgiveness Does Not Require Forgetting What the Relationship Taught You

The mythology of perfect reconciliation often assumes that once forgiveness occurs, all previous boundaries should disappear. If two people are “really okay again,” the injured person is expected to stop being cautious, stop referring to the past, and restore the same level of emotional access that existed before the rupture.

This expectation misunderstands both forgiveness and learning. Forgiveness does not require forgetting what happened, denying the seriousness of an offense, or abandoning reasonable self-protection. A person can become less angry while remaining wiser about what a particular relationship can safely hold. The experience may have permanently changed what they are willing to risk.

Imagine a brother who repeatedly borrowed substantial amounts of money, lied about why he needed it, and failed to repay it. After several years of estrangement, he takes responsibility, apologizes sincerely, and demonstrates substantial changes in his life. His sister may forgive him and genuinely enjoy having him back in the family while deciding that she will never lend him money again. The financial boundary does not prove that forgiveness failed. It may demonstrate that she has learned from the relationship without needing to punish him for the rest of his life.

The same principle applies to emotional boundaries. Someone may rebuild a relationship with a volatile parent while choosing shorter visits. Two friends may reconcile but no longer share every private detail. A couple recovering from betrayal may establish forms of transparency that were unnecessary before trust was damaged. Healthy reconciliation does not always restore previous access. Sometimes it creates a relationship with clearer, more realistic limits.

Closure Becomes a Trap When Another Person Controls It

The desire for closure becomes especially painful when we make another person's behavior a condition for our own emotional future. I cannot move forward until my father admits what he did. I cannot heal until my sister apologizes. I need my former partner to tell me the truth before I can finally let go. These desires are understandable because accountability, truth, and recognition matter. The difficulty begins when our ability to live fully becomes dependent on someone else's willingness or capacity to provide them.

Boss's (2021) critique of closure is useful because it redirects attention from achieving a perfectly resolved ending toward developing the capacity to live with what remains unresolved. Applied to relationship repair, this means that another person's apology can be valuable without being responsible for repairing every internal consequence of what happened. Their explanation can add clarity without needing to make the past emotionally simple. Reconciliation can become part of healing without becoming the source of healing itself.

This distinction restores agency. Instead of asking, What must this person finally give me so that I can be okay? we can ask, What can I do with what I now know, including what I may never receive? Perhaps the parent will never fully understand. Perhaps the sibling will remember the childhood differently. Perhaps the former partner's explanation will always feel incomplete. Those realities can be disappointing without requiring permanent psychological suspension.

Sometimes closure is less about receiving the perfect final answer and more about no longer organizing your life around the search for one.

Sometimes Reconciliation Reveals That the Relationship Still Cannot Work

Not every reunion leads to renewed closeness. Sometimes reconnecting provides clarity, but the clarity is that the relationship remains unable to support healthy intimacy. A daughter may meet with her estranged parent and discover that the parent still denies events that are central to her experience. Two former friends may realize that affection remains but compatibility does not. Siblings may attempt reconciliation only to encounter the same contempt, manipulation, or boundary violations that contributed to their original separation.

This can feel like losing the relationship twice. During estrangement, the person may have preserved an imagined future in which reconciliation would eventually become possible. Once the attempt is made and fails, that imagined relationship may disappear too. Yet painful as this realization can be, it may also provide a form of clarity that years of speculation could not.

The person may finally understand that distance was not simply the result of pride, stubbornness, or misunderstanding. They made a sincere attempt to create something different, and the necessary conditions were not present. In that sense, reconciliation does not have to culminate in permanent reunion to be meaningful. Sometimes its purpose is to answer a different question: Can we build a healthier relationship now? If the answer is no, that knowledge may eventually allow someone to stop waiting for a version of the relationship that neither person can actually create.

Reconciliation Is Not Always the Healthiest or Safest Goal

Family culture often places reconciliation above almost every other relational outcome. “You only have one mother.” “He is still your brother.” “Life is too short.” “You will regret it if something happens.” These statements may come from genuine concern, but they can oversimplify relationships in which distance serves an important protective function.

Reconciliation should never automatically take priority over safety. Relationships involving violence, coercive control, severe emotional abuse, stalking, ongoing exploitation, or repeated serious boundary violations require a different standard. Forgiveness, if a person chooses to pursue it, can remain an internal process without giving someone renewed access to their life. Even outside clearly dangerous circumstances, one person's desire for reconciliation does not create an obligation for the other person to participate.

There are also less dramatic situations in which limited contact is healthier than intense closeness. Some relatives function reasonably well when they meet occasionally but become destructive when deeply involved in one another's lives. Some parents and adult children can maintain warmth when certain topics remain private. Some siblings can participate peacefully in family gatherings without rebuilding the intimate relationship they once had.

The goal should therefore not be reconciliation at any cost. It should be determining whether a relationship can exist in a form that respects the dignity, boundaries, and psychological well-being of the people involved.

What Meaningful Reconciliation Actually Looks Like

If the perfect reunion is a myth, meaningful reconciliation is still possible. It simply tends to be quieter, slower, and more behavioral than the version we imagine during estrangement. A healthy reunion does not require two people to leave one conversation completely healed. Instead, it establishes conditions under which something different can happen next.

Meaningful reconciliation often begins with acknowledgment rather than perfect agreement. A person may say, “I remember that period differently, but I understand that my behavior affected you deeply.” This allows two realities to coexist without requiring one person to surrender their entire interpretation. Accountability becomes specific enough to mean something, boundaries are respected rather than treated as punishment, and neither person expects years of mistrust to disappear immediately.

Most importantly, reconciliation becomes visible through behavior. The sibling who says they want greater closeness begins showing up consistently. The parent who claims to understand a boundary stops challenging it. The partner who wants to rebuild trust behaves differently when difficult conversations arise. Relationship repair is therefore less a single emotional event than an accumulation of experiences that gradually create a new expectation: perhaps this relationship can function differently now.

A meaningful reunion also allows the relationship to become smaller if smaller is healthier. Siblings may become friendly without becoming confidants. A daughter may speak to her father monthly rather than daily. Former friends may reconnect occasionally and appreciate one another without attempting to reproduce the intensity they shared in youth. We often evaluate reconciliation using an all-or-nothing standard, but a limited relationship can be more genuine than a supposedly close relationship maintained through obligation, fear, or resentment.

When Reconciliation Goes Well but Closure Still Does Not Come

Perhaps the most confusing outcome is when reconciliation actually succeeds. The apology is genuine. The difficult conversation is respectful. Both people take responsibility. Trust gradually returns. The relationship becomes warmer and more stable. Yet certain memories still hurt, and the person who wanted reconciliation wonders why they have not achieved the complete emotional resolution they expected.

The answer may simply be that reconciliation changes the present without rewriting the past. You can be grateful that your sister is part of your life again while grieving the ten years you spent apart. You can have a loving relationship with your father today and still feel sadness about what you needed from him at twelve. You can forgive someone who betrayed you and recognize that the experience permanently changed how you understand trust. These emotions are not necessarily evidence that something remains psychologically wrong.

Healing does not require emotional amnesia. A scar does not prove a wound is still open; it shows that something happened and became part of the body's history. Relationships can work similarly. The memory may remain significant without continuing to control current behavior.

Perhaps the most realistic form of closure is therefore not a feeling that everything is finished. It is the ability to remember without requiring the past to become different, to remain connected without denying what happened, and to make decisions in the present that are no longer controlled by the hope of rewriting history.

Conclusion: The Reunion Is a Beginning, Not an Ending

We are drawn to stories of perfect reconciliation because they promise something deeply human: the possibility that broken relationships can be made whole and painful histories can finally make sense. Sometimes people really do return. Parents apologize. Siblings reconnect. Friends find one another again. Partners rebuild trust. These moments can be profound, and reconciliation can create opportunities that years of distance could not.

But a reunion should not be burdened with the expectation that it will erase every consequence of what came before. The person who returns is still the person who was absent. An apology cannot restore the years that were lost. An explanation may answer a question without removing its emotional history. Forgiveness can soften anger without automatically rebuilding trust. Renewed contact may create joy while simultaneously awakening grief.

None of this makes reconciliation meaningless. It makes reconciliation human. A healthy reunion is not one in which people pretend the rupture no longer matters. It is one in which they become capable of acknowledging what happened without allowing it to dictate every future interaction. It makes room for trust to return gradually, for boundaries to remain where they are needed, and for the relationship that emerges to be different from the one that existed before.

Sometimes that relationship becomes close again. Sometimes it remains smaller and more carefully defined. Sometimes an attempted reunion confirms that distance is still necessary. And sometimes reconciliation is genuinely successful while a certain sadness remains because healing does not require us to become indifferent to what we lost.

Perhaps closure, then, is not the moment when every loose end is tied or every painful memory stops carrying emotion. Perhaps it is the point at which we no longer require another person to make the past perfect before we allow ourselves to live fully in the present. A reunion can open a door to accountability, understanding, affection, and a second chance, but it cannot return us to the moment before the relationship was broken. What it can sometimes offer is something more realistic and more valuable: the opportunity to meet one another as we are now, acknowledge what happened, and decide with greater honesty what kind of relationship can exist from here.

References

Boss, P. (2021). The myth of closure: Ambiguous loss in a time of pandemic and change. W. W. Norton & Company.

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Johnson, S. M., Makinen, J. A., & Millikin, J. W. (2001). Attachment injuries in couple relationships: A new perspective on impasses in couples therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 27(2), 145–155. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0606.2001.tb01152.x

McCullough, M. E., Bono, G., & Root, L. M. (2007). Rumination, emotion, and forgiveness: Three longitudinal studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(3), 490–505. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.3.490

McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K. C., Sandage, S. J., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Brown, S. W., & Hight, T. L. (1998). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships: II. Theoretical elaboration and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(6), 1586–1603. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.6.1586

McCullough, M. E., Worthington, E. L., Jr., & Rachal, K. C. (1997). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(2), 321–336. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.2.321

Strelan, P., Karremans, J. C., & Krieg, J. (2017). What determines forgiveness in close relationships? The role of post-transgression trust. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(1), 161–180. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12173