Waiting for closure from someone who won’t forgive you? In this episode I’ll show you how finding closure really works, so you can move forward with less stress and drama. So, Let’s Talk About Mental Health!

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Episode Overview:

Trying to find closure from someone who won’t forgive you? This week on the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast, I’m talking about finding closure when the other person won’t even meet you halfway; no apology, no forgiveness, no neat ending, and often no answers at all. And while closure might seem impossible, it’s actually more possible than you might think.

If you often find yourself replaying an unresolved conflict, stuck in a relationship breakdown, or grieving losing a relationship (including family estrangement), this episode will help you stop living in that ‘appeal process’ headspace and show you how to start creating closure that protects your peace. I’ll explain how to approach finding closure in a grounded way: closure without an apology, closure without forgiveness, and how to move on without closure when you’re living without answers. We’ll cover why it hurts so much to feel misunderstood, what emotional closure actually looks like in real life, and the simple shifts that reduce stress and anxiety without drama… so you can move forward with self-respect, even if the situation is never resolved with the other person. 

👉 Ready to find your own closure and reclaim your peace? Then let’s talk!

💡 TL;DR: Still waiting for closure from someone who won’t forgive you? In this episode I’ll show you how finding closure really works — even with unresolved conflict, family estrangement, and no apology — so you can get emotional closure and move forward without drama. 🙂

New here? Hi! Let’s Talk About Mental Health is your weekly dose of practical mental health advice for real life. I’m Jeremy Godwin (hello! 👋) and I keep things simple, honest, and doable so you can feel more in control of your life and your mental wellbeing. If you’re not already a free subscriber, sign up below to have episodes and transcripts land in your inbox every Sunday:

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Episode Transcript:

Finding closure when they won’t forgive you

Finding closure when someone won’t forgive you can make you feel like you’re stuck in a never-ending, unfinished story… especially after losing a relationship that mattered.

Today I’m going to show you how to create closure without their permission, so you can stop living in that loop and start moving forward.

Because you can’t progress in your healing journey while you’re still waiting for closure.

So let’s talk about… finding closure when someone won’t forgive you.

Hello and welcome back to the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast! I’m Jeremy Godwin, and this show is all about practical mental health advice for real life.

This week I’m talking about that horrible feeling when a relationship of any kind has ended, or you’ve had a falling out, and you’re struggling to find closure because the other person refuses to talk. You know what it feels like: you replay the last conversation that you had, you rewrite your own words and try to find ‘the right way’ to say things, you try to find the perfect explanation that will finally make them soften and actually listen to you… but none of it makes any difference. It feels awful. But it doesn’t mean that you cannot find closure. Because you can.

Now, you might be sitting there thinking, “Uh, OK, but how do I actually get closure when the other person refuses to give it to me?” And that’s a very good question… and I promise that you will have the answer to it by the end of this episode!

Because this is one of those situations that a lot of us experience that can quietly hijack your mental health; not always in a dramatic way, but at least in the background. It can drain your emotional battery, and it’s something that you need to approach in a considered and thoughtful way.

It doesn’t matter whether they’re a friend, or a relative, or someone that you were romantically involved in, or even someone that you worked with… thinking about it gives you that tight feeling in your chest; that little punch of dread. Maybe you catch yourself rehearsing a message that you know you’re not going to send. Maybe you think to yourself, “If I could just explain it properly… if I could just get them to see my side of things… if they could just acknowledge that I’m not a complete monster.” And even if you’re doing fine in other parts of your life, this one thing often keeps pulling you back and it keeps hanging over your head… because being unforgiven can feel like you’re stuck.

Just quickly, if you’re new here, then Hi! I’m Jeremy and I’m a counsellor, and I also know far too well what it’s like to carry unresolved relationship pain and have it echo for years and years if you don’t address it properly.

And yes… professional support here, as always, can be really helpful if you have access to it. But you are, of course, still going to need practical tools that you can use in your day-to-day life, especially when you’re overwhelmed and just trying to make it through feeling this way. So that’s what we’re going to do today. So… we’re not trying to force forgiveness, we’re not trying to ‘fix’ the relationship somehow, but we’re finding a way that you can create your own closure, especially if this is tied to something like estrangement, family dynamics, or a relationship that’s ended in a way that feels unfair or unfinished.

So, in other words, what we’re talking about is finding closure without needing forgiveness. To learn how to do that, we first need to understand what it’s all about and why it affects your mental health so much.

So let’s talk about…

What is finding closure without forgiveness?

Alright, so really what we’re talking about here is you getting to a place where you’re able to stop needing the other person to agree with you, understand you, or apologise, or somehow release you in order for you to move forward with your life.

Now, of course, this doesn’t mean just pretending that you’re fine. It doesn’t mean that what happened didn’t matter either, right? What it means is that you’re choosing to stop organising your life around someone else’s refusal to repair the situation.

The need to do this shows up in a few very specific ways. Sometimes it’s a relationship breakdown where the other person says, “I’ll never forgive you!” and they mean it. Sometimes it’s estrangement, like with a parent or sibling or adult child or close relative, where something happens, for whatever reason, contact is cut off, and you’re left holding questions that you just cannot answer. Sometimes it’s a friendship where you’ve been quietly demoted, or completely fired, and you never get told why. Sometimes it’s messy because you did make mistakes… but the punishment maybe doesn’t match the crime, and you can feel shame eating away at you.

What makes this topic so brutal is that a lot of us were raised with the idea that closure is something the other person gives you, like a special stamp that you get that says, “OK, now you’re allowed to feel better.”

But in real life, people don’t always play fair. People avoid. People punish. People cling to a storyline because it protects them from looking at their own behaviour. And when you’re the one stuck outside the door, it can turn into this ongoing mental habit of trying to earn your way back in to being ‘acceptable’.

I’ve had this a few times in my life with former friends, especially after leaving the city and moving to the country over a decade ago. I’ve been dealing with it for the past couple of years now as well with two of my aunts because I terminated contact with my mother, their sister. Uh… my mother was extremely abusive physically and emotionally, and there’s a whole long story here that I will not get into; I’ve talked about it in other episodes. But suffice it to say I didn’t make the choice to not talk to my mother lightly. It takes a lot, and I’m going to talk about family estrangement in a future episode, but… when I did make that choice, for my own protection, I was then punished well after the fact by both aunts for it, and then for pushing back when I was attacked about my decision. And so I’ve ended up having to really work through how to find closure myself in what was an incredibly difficult situation. So I’m coming at this professionally, but it’s also personal experience.

And when I say ‘finding closure’, what I mean is this: it’s about creating an internal ending, one that doesn’t depend on someone else’s cooperation, so that your nervous system can finally stop scanning for the next update, the next message, the next potential opportunity to repair things. Because if you’re constantly waiting for a different outcome, you’re not living your life… you’re waiting on someone else’s decision.

So now let’s talk about…

Why unresolved endings mess with you

I’m definitely going to show my age here; I’m also going to give a really silly example, so I don’t mean to undermine the seriousness of this topic, but you know… I just said some heavy stuff before!

I remember how sad I was in the nineties when the TV show Models Inc. was cancelled. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it was a spinoff from Melrose Place, which itself was a spinoff of Beverly Hills 90210, and Melrose Place was my favourite show… don’t you dare judge me!

Anyway, the finale of Models Inc. left so many cliffhangers that I honestly thought helicopter search and rescue was going to have to be called in. Then it got cancelled and we never found out what happened.

Now, unresolved endings on TV are one thing… but when they happen in real life, they can really mess with your mental health because your brain is a meaning-making machine. What it wants to know all the time is: What’s happening? What happened? Why did it happen? What does it say about me? Am I safe? Am I good? And so when someone won’t forgive you, or when you’re shut out with no real explanation, your brain does not cope well. It tries to close the gap by replaying and re-analysing everything. Now, that’s not you being obsessive; that’s your brain trying to create certainty.

At the same time, internally, this stuff can trigger feelings of shame and self-doubt. You start thinking, “Maybe I’m the problem?” or you start making your whole identity about one event or one conflict.

Externally, it can impact how you relate to other people. You might find with different people that you suddenly become more guarded, or that you start overexplaining or people pleasing, or maybe you avoid conflict entirely because you’re terrified of being cut off again.

And here’s the hard part: when you don’t get forgiveness, it can feel like you’re still in trouble, like you’re waiting for the detention to end. That keeps your stress response simmering away. It can affect your sleep, concentration, mood, motivation… and really it can make you emotionally unavailable here in the present, because part of you is stuck in the past in that unresolved relationship.

The answer, however, is not to try to seek closure from the other person… because the moment you start chasing their forgiveness or their explanation as proof that you’re OK, you hand them the steering wheel of your mental health; you put them in control, and that’s just too high a price to pay.

Closure is not something that someone else gives you. It’s something you give you.

Just a very quick note here: if there is estrangement involved, family estrangement especially, this can stir up grief as well, because you’re not only losing the person, you’re losing the version of the relationship you wished you could have had.

So yes, you can feel sad and angry and relieved and guilty, sometimes all in the same hour. Very normal, very exhausting, and very fixable… not by forcing an ending, but by building one. And we’re going to talk about how to do that right after this quick break.

[AD BREAK]

And welcome back! So now let’s talk about…

How to find closure, even if they won’t forgive you

So… let’s start with the things you can do immediately. And the first one is…

Name what you’re waiting for.

Now… when Gwen Stefani asked, “What you waiting for?” back in 2004, she may not have realised it at the time, but she was definitely on the right track when it comes to finding closure for yourself!

Because the first thing to do is to get really, brutally honest about what it is that you’re actually waiting on. Because most people think they’re waiting for closure, but what they really are waiting for is permission to stop feeling guilty, or hurt, or both. So… grab a note on your phone, or a piece of paper and a pen, and finish this sentence: I am waiting for them to blank so I can finally feel blank. Obviously you fill in the blanks!

So that’s it. It’s simple, but it’s really incredibly powerful. Because once you can name the real thing you’re waiting for… the apology, the forgiveness, the acknowledgement, the verdict of “you’re not a bad person”… that’s when you can stop arguing with yourself in the dark. If you can name it, you can deal with it. If you can’t name it, it deals with you. Next…

Reset your nervous system.

Now let’s take the pressure off your brain for a moment. Because if your body is in threat mode, then your mind will keep trying to ‘solve’ things like it’s an emergency… because its main job is to keep you safe.

So before you think through the unpleasant situation again, do a quick grounding reset… and I really do mean ‘quick’ here. You could do one minute of slow breathing, or take a short walk, splash cold water on your face, put your feet firmly on the floor, name five things you can see… whatever works for you. Then I want you to add the sentence that you’re going to repeat whenever your mind starts to spin, and it is: “I don’t need to solve this right now. I need to settle first.”

This isn’t avoidance; it’s you taking back control of your system. So for example: if you notice yourself drafting that message to the person for the 10th time, don’t negotiate with the spiral that you’re in; you ground yourself first, and then decide what’s actually needed and what’s actually healthy. Because most of the time what’s needed isn’t a message. It’s relief. Next…

Stop preparing your appeal.

Alright, this one is a bit of tough love and I’m going to say this as kindly as I can: for the next 48 hours, you need to consciously stop wasting your energy on preparing your ‘case’. No drafting messages that you won’t ever send. No rehearsing speeches in the shower. No rereading old messages like you’re searching for hidden meaning, or the special clue that will finally explain everything.

When you do that sort of stuff, what you’re actually telling your brain is, “Ooh, this outcome is still changeable if I just try a bit harder.” And that does absolutely nothing… other than keep you stuck. So for two days, you are not allowed to be your own defence lawyer or defence team. Because you don’t get closure by arguing better.

If you need something concrete to do with all of that emotional energy, instead give yourself a replacement behaviour: so when you catch the replay starting, say to yourself, “Not today!” and do one small action that brings you back to your life; make some tea, tidy one surface, reply to one message… unrelated! Step outside for a bit. Right? Nothing fancy, but just a really simple pivot away from the mental courtroom drama. Alright?!

OK, so next I’m going to talk you through some quick actions to work on over the next couple of weeks. They take a bit more effort, but they’re going to help you to process the emotional reality of the loss… rather than just surviving it in the moment when you feel that way. First…

Choose the right person to talk with.

If you’re going to talk about this… which is a really healthy thing to do, by the way, because the more you talk about it, the easier it gets… you really need to choose someone who can understand nuance and also, most importantly, be objective. In other words, you do not want to speak to someone who’s going to pour fuel on the situation with outrage. And also you don’t want to speak to someone who just shuts you down with, “Well, you just need to move on!”… there’s a huge difference between moving on and moving forward, right? ‘Moving on’ just means ‘get over it’, and that doesn’t actually work; ‘moving forward’ means doing the work to process things. You want to talk with someone who will genuinely listen and who can say things like, “That’s really painful… and also, you can’t force someone.” That’s the sweet spot that you’re looking for.

Now… if you don’t have that sort of person in your life right now, that’s where structured support can help, whether it’s a counsellor, a therapist, or even a well-chosen support group. The goal here is to be able to tell your story to someone in a way that helps you to finish it… because processing pain requires you to actually work through your pain. Next…

Grieve what you lost.

This is the part a lot of people often skip because it kind of sounds like too ‘soft’… and people tend to focus on what happened at the end. But grieving what you’ve lost is actually incredibly practical, and it’s extremely important.

If you’re losing a relationship, you’re not just losing the person as they are the last time you talked to them… you’re losing your history. You’re losing the hope that things could have been different. And grief needs somewhere to go, or it turns into rumination.

So here’s a simple thing to do. Write two short lists for yourself: one, “What I miss” and two, “What I don’t miss”. Fill it out, keep it real, and keep it honest.

And then, underneath all of that, add one sentence: “The part I’m grieving most is…” and then fill in the rest.

That sentence is really important, because it often reveals the deeper wound: rejection, unfairness, betrayal, abandonment, being misunderstood. You know, for example, you might realise that you don’t actually miss them… you miss the idea of being seen and chosen by them. And that changes what your healing journey looks and feels like.

This is basically the emotional equivalent of realising that you weren’t actually missing going to nightclubs, you were really missing being 22 and being able to get back up easily when you got down without making noises. Hate to break it to you, it happens when you get to your forties! Different thing, same sadness… just minus the sore back!

Alright, so now we’re going to zoom out and talk about longer term changes for you to work on over the next few months and beyond. These are not quick fixes by any means; they are the changes that make it harder for you to feel derailed in the future, because your sense of self won’t be hanging off someone else’s approval. So, first…

Stop outsourcing your worth.

When you feel rejected or hurt, your brain will often try to negotiate with thoughts like: “Well, if I could just get them to forgive me, I’ll finally be OK.” But your self-worth isn’t something another person gives to you… and it definitely shouldn’t be decided by someone who’s committed to misunderstanding you.

So the longer term practice here is building self validation; the ability to say, “I can own what I did and learn from it, and still respect myself… even if they never change their position.” Their forgiveness is not your identity.

If you want to dive deeper into building self-worth in a way that actually sticks, Episode 305 fits beautifully here because it strengthens that whole “I can stand by myself” piece. Next…

Learn healthier conflict repair.

So the goal in all of this isn’t “How can you win them back?” The goal is to make sure that this experience doesn’t leave you feeling terrified of conflict forever.

When someone won’t forgive you, it can train your nervous system to think that disagreement equals rejection and abandonment… which can then lead to people pleasing, over-explaining, or shutting down. So, over time, learning healthier conflict skills will help you to feel safer in your relationships going forward. It gives you a framework for repair when repair is possible, and boundaries for when it’s not. I covered healthier conflict in Episode 309, so if you’d like practical tools for repairing conflict in relationships that are actually worth keeping, go and check that one out next. It’s linked in the description.

The whole point of learning to manage conflict in a healthy way is that nothing changes if nothing changes. If your conflict patterns are built around fear, you’ll keep recreating the same pain over and over again… just with different people. Remember: your job is learning how to be there for yourself even when other people aren’t. To paraphrase the Spice Girls, your brain and nervous system just want to know, “Will this deja vu never end?!” So, stop going round in circles and say you’ll be there for yourself!

And with that deep piece of philosophy, those are the tips! Work through them one by one, and please be kind to yourself while you do. Don’t rush yourself; just give yourself time and space to work through one by one.

You can always find all of the tips I share in the episode transcript on my website at ltamh.com/ episodes. If you join my free mailing list, you’ll get it in your inbox every Sunday… and it’s linked below.

Conclusion

So here’s what I want you to take away from this episode: You can’t control whether or not someone forgives you, but you can control whether you spend the rest of your life waiting for their verdict.

Finding closure is not about getting the perfect ending. It’s about choosing an ending that protects your peace, that lets you learn what you need to learn, and that frees you to move forward with your self-respect intact.

So… what would change in your life if you stopped waiting for someone else to make things OK?

Because when you boil it all down, closure is you deciding that your life is allowed to keep going… even if someone else refuses to come with you.

Each week I like to finish up by sharing a quote about the topic, and I encourage you to take a few moments to really reflect on it and consider what it means to you.

This week’s quote is by an unknown author, and it is:

Find clarity in actions, not words.

Unknown

Let me repeat that:

Find clarity in actions, not words.

Alright… that’s it for this week. Support my show by giving it a like and sharing it with someone who will find it helpful. And join my Patreon for early ad-free episodes and extras; it’s linked below.

Thank you very much for joining me today. Look after yourself and make a conscious effort to share positivity and kindness out into the world… because you get back what you put out. Take care and talk to you next time!

Join me next week to talk about how to deal with difficult people. Plus, check out my episode on healthier conflict next. It’s linked in the description. And follow or subscribe to never miss an episode.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health is an independent program. Discover more at ltamh.com.

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Find more content at www.ltamh.com

Let’s Talk About Mental Health.
Making Mental Health Simple.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health. © 2026 Jeremy Godwin.

The information provided in this episode is for general awareness on the topic and does not constitute advice. You should consult a doctor and/or mental health professional if you’re struggling with your mental health and wellbeing. You’ll find additional information on the Resources page of this website.