Friendships and romantic relationships that never had a chance to fully develop or ended abruptly are the ones that linger in our mind the most. I often wonder what draws us so strongly to interrupted or incomplete stories—those that lack a clear and reasonable ending. From a scientific perspective, this phenomenon can be explained by our tendency to remember unfinished tasks more vividly than completed ones, also known as the Zeigarnik effect. Closely related to this effect, the Ovsiankina phenomenon describes our compulsion to complete interrupted tasks in order to achieve closure (Ghibellini & Meier, 2025; Ongchoco et al., 2023).
The human brain is inherently driven towards completion. Anything left unfinished creates psychological tension, which we unconsciously attempt to reduce. As a result, we frequently resort to fantasy—filling in the gaps, constructing alternative scenarios, and imagining how a relationship might have evolved had it not been disrupted (Zhang et al., 2025). This mechanism serves a fundamental survival function by motivating us to seek resolution. Modern tactics such as the so-called «ghosting» exemplify this dynamic, as they create a loop of uncertainty according to which the mind relentlessly attempts to interpret silence, answer unresolved questions, or replay memories. All the persistent rumination and agonizing thoughts that arise from the silence of unfinished situations explain why our memory clings so tightly to the latter. By actively bringing a real or symbolic ending to an unresolved story, we allow ourselves to move forward and grow beyond experiences that keep us emotionally trapped.
But how can we practically detach ourselves from such conditions? How do we utter the final goodbye? During a discussion on grief management, a professor of mine once suggested a simple yet surprisingly therapeutic exercise—writing down anything we wish we could confess to that person, reading it out loud, and then burning the paper. This ritual engages all our senses and allows us to confront repressed emotions directly. By consciously acknowledging and releasing these feelings, we create our own sense of closure—an essential step towards healing and personal growth.
References:
Ghibellini, R., & Meier, B. (2025). Interruption, recall and resumption: a meta-analysis of the Zeigarnik and Ovsiankina effects. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05000-w
Ongchoco, J. D. K., Wong, K. W., & Scholl, B. (2023). The “unfinishedness” of dynamic events is spontaneously extracted in visual processing: A new ‘Visual Zeigarnik Effect.’ Journal of Vision, 23(9), 4974. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.23.9.4974
Zhang, Y., Soydaner, D., Koßmann, L., Behrad, F., & Wagemans, J. (2025). Finding closure: A closer look at the gestalt law of closure in convolutional neural networks. Computational Brain & Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42113-025-00251-x
