I don’t know what he hopes to achieve by wanting closure from her.
As I told him, seeing her or talking to her will only reopen wounds that have not healed with time.
What does he expect her to say after over 30 years of no contact? As you said above, it’s like trying to heal in the same place you got sick.
With the abusive ex-boyfriend I had, I continued to return to him, hoping to win his love, hoping he would see my worth.
And I continued to be destroyed by his verbal and emotional abuse, but it was all I knew.

I had to learn to walk away and to never lower myself again for ANYONE.
This is what I need my husband to understand about his unrequited love for the ex-girlfriend. His heart still wants to know “why”?
But what he doesn’t see is that her rejection of him had nothing to do with him.
She was a girl who wanted to explore life outside of their small town. Their relationship might have been great while it lasted, but him wanting to revisit the source of pain is only hurting him more.

Freedom comes with understanding that the narcissist is not who we thought they were.
Once we stop idealizing them and see them for what they are, we can finally move forward.
Once we don’t expect anything from them, we can heal. We can turn that pain into power. We don’t have to remain “stuck” or still holding onto false hope. We don’t have to prove anything to that person.

Also, what Bec said above reminds me of my husband! She stated that “the hurt and the desire for resolution won’t leave”.
I think my poor husband can relate to what she’s feeling. It takes a LOT of work and self-care (and self-reflection) to overcome that feeling. I thought I would never bounce back from how that ex-boyfriend treated me, but I finally did it.
My wish for my husband is that he can truly heal from this. He will never be at peace until he accepts that it was a part of his past that shaped him. It wasn’t meant to be a life sentence, and he can take back his power.

this is wonderful stuff! I was “addicted” to a narcissist many years ago in my teens and early 20’s. He is now dead, but it took me a long time to heal from the trauma of his abuse.
What I learned is that I needed to love myself more. My abusive family and general environment had set me up to accept abuse, so I fell into bad situations with bad people.
When I finally healed from the addiction to that evil person, I was relieved. I don’t hate him anymore…I’m indifferent now. That chapter of my life is over.

My husband, however, is still somewhat “addicted” to an ex-girlfriend he had in high school 35 years ago.
He feels that he never got closure after she broke up with him. It makes me sad…not only for myself, because no wife wants to come second to another woman, but also because I know that he is still hurting in some way. I think there is a part of him that is unhealed and traumatized by her, and possibly childhood issues that keep him “stuck” in this toxic loop of not being able to get over her.
I want to be supportive of him if he will do the work to heal. But I’m not sure that he wants to. He wants closure (or perhaps more than that) from a person who broke his heart decades ago, and never looked back.

I’ve tried to tell him that closure is an inside job. After 35 years, he is allowing thoughts/memories of this woman to affect him, and it is now an issue for me because he is feeling nostalgic about her.
He seems to feel a sense of loss, although frankly it was HER loss.
From what his mother told me, this girl hurt him deeply…yet he still wants to reconnect with her as part of some unfinished business.

Hi Melanie,

It’s my pleasure.

This inner work is the durable real way for you to heal.

http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp and http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/thrive are my most powerful suggestions for you.

I hope that this helps.

Mel 🙏💞🦋