In your life, you have known beautiful and long love stories that have had an end point. And yet, curiously, the one that comes back in mind regularly is this meeting which could not really succeed, for lack of a good timing. Or this crush that has never really been invested. But why do we give more importance to these unfinished stories?
What is not left more traces
The answer is in a strange formula: the Zeigarnik effect, designed by Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. In 1920, it observed that the servers held up the orders not yet settled than those already paid. A bias of thought that also adapts to romantic relationships. The more unfinished a story, the more it has the power to haunt us. Sometimes for years. (While the person was not so “phew”, let’s face it). Does that speak to you?
For Amélie Boukhobza, clinical psychologist, this importance that is given to unfinished stories, is however logical. The unfinished, the story where we have not gone to the end, will haunt more than another. “”Of course, one might think that it is the big stories that mark the most, those that upset a life, which leave deep scars. Which is also true. But unfinished stories are another problem. “
Constantly redo the story with “and if”
According to her, in fact, our brain retains better what is interrupted than what is finished. “”As if the absence of an end prevented the case in a drawer. The backrest remains open, it turns in the background, again and again. And cannot be checked ”.
This is why an aborted flirt, a relationship never started, an appointment arrested too early can disturb us more than real and successful history. “”Because there is still “and so”. And the “and if” is a powerful fuel for the imagination. “
Turn the page, Mission Impossible?
In this context, rethinking a bluette of youth with nostalgia and wondering “and if it had worked” may seem charming. But it also happens that a story of the past prevents us from moving forward. As an outstanding question, on our ability to commit us.
So how do you get rid of it? Sometimes you just have to give an end. “Writing, putting words, allows you to give yourself a conclusion” advises Amélie Boukohbza.
Sometimes it is simply a question of accepting that there will be no follow -up, and mentally close the file. And if it is too invasive, therapies like EMDR can help finally pose an end point on this page that has never been written.
“Because in substance, it is not the story that weighs … it’s the void it leaves.”