Most relationships and groups do not end, they lapse. The text goes unanswered, the dinner stops being scheduled, the book club simply stops meeting. In the Well newsletter, Jancee Dunn puts the alternative case, via the conflict resolution facilitator Priya Parker: that endings should be named, reviewed and marked — a practice Parker calls “the connected goodbye,” defined as “the refusal to allow the slow fade or the quiet exit.”
Dunn’s opening example is her sister, who moved out of a house she had lived in for 28 years after a divorce, with both daughters grown. The family was ready for the next chapter and also, in her sister’s phrase, “feeling a little gut-punched.” Before packing, they walked every room taking photos, with attention to “the little places that were part of my daily life for decades that I’m never going to see again” — the notches in a door frame marking the children’s heights, the worn patch where the coffee pot sat. Then they each said what the house had meant.
Endings as a thing to do rather than avoid
Parker’s argument, from her new book The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict, is that a connected goodbye “acknowledges the ending in the relationship, but also that it mattered. And it allows a group to pause and metabolize change together.” It applies to a book club that has run its course, a friend group split by a divorce, or two people ending a romance or a friendship.
There is a thin evidence base behind the intuition: a series of studies found that endings where participants felt that “all that could have been done was done” and that closure had been reached were followed by fewer regrets and easier transitions. Parker’s account of the avoidance is blunt: “We avoid endings with all our might, even though we need them desperately. It’s easy and fun to start a group, and it’s actually really complex to end a group.”
The method, in three steps
Acknowledge the ending. Name it openly and truthfully. From the book: “Ambivalence saps everyone’s energy. Drawing a finish line, counter-intuitively, pulls people forward.” This step has a precondition — Parker says a true connected goodbye has to be mutual, and that “certain endings are too painful or raw, or one person’s not up for it, or there’s a power imbalance.” Where the group is aligned, draw a boundary around the end and mark it, clearly and respectfully.
Take stock. Say what the relationship or group meant and what its ending costs. Reminisce, thank people where it applies, and where it fits, separate ending from failing: things have life cycles, and “just because it’s over doesn’t mean it wasn’t good.” Parker’s framing is that this clear space for whatever comes next.
Say goodbye. Some ritual, not necessarily a solemn one. Parker suggests a last supper club where everyone brings a favourite dish from the past decade, or a final kickball game at sunset. Humour is allowed.
Dunn also asked for something practical: a template for ending therapy. Parker’s version opens by naming what was valued — “I’ve really valued working with you” — states the decision plainly, “I’m moving in a different direction,” and closes the loophole that ghosting leaves open: “because I respect you and your work so much, I wanted to give you a proper heads-up rather than avoid or ghost you.” She suggests adding one specific thing the therapist taught or helped with.
Dunn’s own connected goodbye was with a group of parents she had seen five days a week for years, whose children were leaving the same elementary school for different middle schools. They had a dinner, reminisced, and “regretfully confirm[ed] that things were going to be different, but that our time together meant something to all of us.” Her summary is the least sentimental argument in the piece: “It was necessary. And sad. And sweet, too.”
What this is and isn’t
The studies behind the claim show an association between felt closure and easier transitions; the newsletter does not describe their design, samples or effect sizes. The advice itself comes from a facilitator’s practice plus the author’s own anecdote, not from clinical trials of ritual. And the mutuality requirement is a real limit, not a footnote: for endings with a power imbalance or an unwilling party — the ones most likely to go badly — the method is explicitly not on offer, and no alternative is proposed for them.
Read the full story at The New York Times.