Why Do I Miss Someone Who Treated Me Badly?
Missing someone who hurt you is a normal and predictable response to the end of an attachment bond, not evidence that the relationship was good or that you should return to it. The longing is real. So was the harm. Both things can be true at the same time.
There is a particular kind of confusion that comes after leaving a relationship that hurt you. You know, clearly, that what happened was not okay. You have probably explained it to friends, maybe to a therapist, maybe to yourself in the middle of the night in careful, precise language. And you still miss them. You reach for your phone to tell them something and then remember. Their name comes up and your chest does something unexpected. You dream about the good version of them. You wonder, in spite of everything, whether you made the right call.
Most people assume this means they are weak. Or that what happened wasn't really that bad. Or that the missing is a signal — that the pull back is telling them something true. It is telling them something. But probably not what they think.
What you are actually missing
When a relationship ends, you lose more than the person. You lose the version of the future you had imagined. The rituals — the way evenings went, the shorthand, the small ordinary things that made up the texture of the relationship. The hope that it was going to get better. The version of them that appeared at the beginning, or in the good stretches, or in the moments when things felt like they were going to work.
In a relationship that involved emotional abuse or gaslighting, those good moments were real. They are part of why leaving is so hard. The relationship was not painful every single day. It cycled. And the nervous system, which is wired for attachment and connection, holds all of it — not just the harm, but the warmth, the early days, the moments of genuine closeness that existed alongside everything else.
What you miss is often not the person as they actually were across the whole arc of the relationship. It is the person who appeared when things were good, or the possibility of that person becoming permanent.
Why the body keeps reaching for them
Attachment is not a feeling. It is a biological system. The research on this, developed primarily by John Bowlby and then built upon extensively, describes attachment as a system designed for survival — one that drives us toward proximity with those we are bonded to, especially under threat or distress.
When an attachment bond forms, the nervous system incorporates the other person as a source of regulation. Their presence becomes associated with safety, at a physiological level — not because they are safe, but because proximity to them has been the relational norm. When that bond is severed, the system responds the same way it would to any threat: it wants to restore proximity. That pull is not a reasoned conclusion. It happens below the level of thought.
This is why grief after a painful relationship can feel so physically urgent — the restlessness, the reaching for the phone, the inability to concentrate, the way certain songs or smells trigger the whole thing again. The body is doing what attachment systems do when the bond is disrupted. It is not making a character judgement about whether you should go back. It is doing what it was built to do.
In relationships that involved intermittent reinforcement — where the painful pattern cycled with warmth or reconnection — the bond can be particularly difficult to dissolve. The unpredictability of being sometimes hurt and sometimes close can strengthen the attachment rather than weaken it, because the nervous system keeps orienting toward the possibility of the good version returning.
The grief that has no social permission
One of the specific difficulties of leaving a harmful relationship is that the grief often lacks social permission. When a relationship ends because someone was unkind or controlling or gaslighting, people around you may be relieved you've left. They may not understand why you're still sad, or why you keep mentioning the relationship, or why you are not simply grateful to be out.
In Singapore, where there is often cultural pressure to manage emotional experience privately and to arrive at resolution relatively quickly, this can feel particularly isolating. There is no clear template for grieving someone who hurt you, the way there is for grieving a bereavement or a clean, mutual ending. The grief gets pushed inward, or becomes confused with self-doubt — maybe I shouldn't be this sad, maybe that means it wasn't as bad as I thought.
The grief is real regardless of how the relationship ended. You can miss someone and know that returning would not be good for you. You can grieve what was lost without that meaning you made the wrong decision. Missing is not the same as choosing.
What the missing is not saying
It is worth being direct about what the pull back does not mean. It does not mean the relationship was actually fine. It does not mean you exaggerated what happened. It does not mean leaving was the wrong call. It does not mean you still love them in the way that would make returning a reasonable idea.
The nervous system is not a “moral policeman”. It will reach for the familiar even when familiar was harmful. It will grieve an attachment bond even when that bond was formed with someone who consistently made you feel smaller. The physiological response of missing someone is not evidence about whether that person was good for you.
This is one of the hardest things to hold after leaving a painful relationship — to let the grief be real without letting it be an argument. To miss someone and to know, at the same time, that the missing is not information about what you should do.
How therapy helps
Working through grief after an emotionally abusive or gaslighting relationship involves more than just processing the hurt. It involves making space for the full complexity of it — including the love, the good moments, the genuine connection that existed alongside the harm. Trying to resolve the grief by deciding the relationship was only bad, or only good, tends not to work. The nervous system holds the whole of it.
Therapy in this context also involves rebuilding the capacity to tolerate the missing without acting on it — to feel the pull without following it, to grieve what was real without losing clarity about what was also happening. And, over time, to understand the attachment pattern underneath — why this particular bond formed, what it repeated, what would need to be different for things to go differently in the future.
The grief eventually moves. It does not disappear, but it changes — from something urgent and destabilising into something that can be carried.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it normal to miss someone who hurt you? Yes. Missing someone after a relationship ends is a response to the disruption of an attachment bond, not an evaluation of whether the relationship was healthy. The longing is produced by the attachment system, which does not distinguish between bonds formed with people who were good for you and bonds formed with people who were not. Missing someone does not mean you should return to them.
Why do I miss my ex even though they were toxic? The nervous system incorporates attachment figures as sources of regulation over time. When a bond breaks, the body responds by seeking to restore proximity, regardless of whether that person was actually safe. In relationships that cycled between harm and warmth, the bond can be especially strong because intermittent positive reinforcement strengthens attachment rather than weakening it. What you are experiencing is a physiological response to the loss of an attachment bond, not a verdict on what you should do.
How do I stop missing someone who was bad for me? Trying to stop missing someone by deciding they were entirely bad tends not to work, because the nervous system holds the full picture of the relationship, not just the painful parts. What tends to help more is allowing the grief to be real while maintaining clarity about what happened — not using the grief as evidence that you should return, and not suppressing it until it resurfaces sideways. Therapy can provide a space for this kind of holding that is hard to find elsewhere.
Does missing someone mean you still love them? Not necessarily. Missing is a response to the loss of an attachment bond. Love, as most people mean it, involves something more — ongoing regard, desire for the other person's wellbeing, wanting a future with them. These can coexist with missing, but missing can also exist without them. Feeling the pull of a broken attachment bond is not the same as choosing to love someone or wanting to return to them.
Why does grief after emotional abuse feel so confusing? Grief after emotional abuse is confusing partly because there is no clear social template for it. The loss is real, but the relationship that was lost was also painful, which can make it feel illegitimate to grieve it. There is often pressure, internal or external, to simply be relieved it is over. When relief and loss exist simultaneously, the result can be a kind of disorientation that is hard to explain to others and hard to sit with alone.
If something here resonated and you're wondering whether therapy might help, you can read more about how I work and book a session on the Services and Booking page.
You might also want to read
Narcissistic Abuse & Toxic Relationship Recovery
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Tags missing someone who hurt you, emotional abuse Singapore, gaslighting Singapore, attachment counselling Singapore, relationship trauma Singapore, trauma bonding Singapore, relationship counselling Singapore, counsellor Singapore, narcissistic abuse Singapore
