When You Miss Them
Here's the thing nobody wants to admit out loud: you miss them. You left someone who hurt you, who manipulated you, who dismantled your sense of self piece by piece - and you miss them. I missed mine. And the shame of that missing nearly swallowed me whole - because I couldn't reconcile it. I knew what he'd done. I knew why I left. And I still lay awake some nights reaching for the version of him that used to exist, or the version I thought existed, or maybe just the version I needed him to be. The shame of that felt almost worse than the missing itself. Because what kind of person does that make you?
A normal one. A human one. A person whose brain is doing exactly what it was wired to do after years of intermittent reinforcement, trauma bonding, and emotional addiction. Missing them doesn't mean you made the wrong choice. It means you were deeply entangled with someone - and untangling doesn't happen just because you change your address.
What You're Actually Missing
Let's get honest about this. Because when you say "I miss them," what you're really missing is usually more specific than the whole person. And naming it takes away some of its power.
You might miss the good version of them. The one from the beginning. The one who made you feel like the center of the universe, who said exactly the right things, who held you in a way that made you feel safe for the first time in your life. That version was intoxicating. And the fact that it wasn't real - that it was a performance designed to hook you - doesn't change the fact that it felt real. Your heart doesn't care about the psychology behind the love bombing. It just remembers what it felt like to be chosen.
You might miss the familiarity. Even when it was terrible, it was yours. You knew the rhythms. You knew the routine. You knew what to expect - even if what you expected was chaos. And now everything is unfamiliar. The new space. The new schedule. The new silence. And unfamiliar feels unsafe to a nervous system that's been in survival mode. So it reaches for the known, even when the known was dangerous.
You're not missing the abuse. You're missing the absence of uncertainty. Because chaos you can predict still feels safer than freedom you can't.
You might miss being needed. This one is harder to admit. But in a narcissistic relationship, you had a purpose - a constant, consuming, all-encompassing purpose. Manage their moods. Fix the crisis. Hold the family together. And as exhausting and soul-crushing as that was, it gave your days a structure. An identity. A reason to get up. Without it, there's a hollow space where the purpose used to be - and it's disorienting to realize that the thing you thought was your job was actually your cage.
And you might just miss having someone. A body next to you in bed. A voice in the other room. The illusion of partnership, even when the partnership was one-sided. Because loneliness after abuse isn't just sadness. It's the sudden withdrawal of constant stimulation - and your brain treats it like a drug leaving your system.
The Guilt That Follows
The missing is one thing. The guilt that wraps around it is another.
I should be relieved. I should be celebrating. Everyone told me to leave and I finally did and now I miss them - what's wrong with me? Does this mean it wasn't really abuse? Does this mean I overreacted? Does this mean I'm the messed-up one?
No. It means you're detoxing. And detox is ugly and uncomfortable and full of contradictions. You can know someone was terrible for you and still crave them. You can be relieved you left and heartbroken at the same time. You can understand intellectually that the relationship was abusive and still have your body ache for the comfort of it.
These are not contradictions. They're the reality of leaving someone your brain was chemically bonded to.
If it was really that bad, I wouldn't miss them. If I miss them, maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn't abuse. Maybe it was just a bad relationship and I threw it away. Maybe I'll never find anyone else. Maybe I left the one person who actually loved me - flaws and all - and now I'm going to be alone forever.
Every single one of those sentences was planted by the trauma bond. Not one of them is the truth. But they sound true at 2am when you're alone and scared and reaching for your phone.
What to Do When the Missing Hits
Don't fight it. Resisting the feeling makes it louder. Let yourself miss them. Sit with it. Cry if you need to. But don't act on it. There's a crucial difference between feeling the pull and following it. You can feel the ache without picking up the phone. You can miss the sound of their voice without calling to hear it.
Get specific. When the missing hits, ask yourself: what exactly do I miss? The real them or the mask? The relationship as it actually was or the relationship I imagined? The way I felt at the beginning or the way I felt at the end? Getting specific disrupts the romanticizing. Because when you break it down, you usually find that what you miss is a version of the relationship that only existed about 10% of the time - and you're willing to erase the other 90% to get that hit again.
That's the addiction talking. Not your heart.
Finish the memory. When a good memory surfaces - and it will, your brain has a highlight reel ready to go - don't stop it. But don't stop there either. Play the full tape. Remember the night they held you. And then remember what happened the next morning. Remember the trip that was perfect. And then remember the fight that happened on the way home. Remember the apology. And then remember the thing they were apologizing for.
Your brain wants to show you the trailer. Make it play the whole movie.
Talk to someone. Not to someone who will judge you. Not to someone who will say "why do you miss them after everything they did?" To someone who gets it. A therapist. A support group. A friend who understands that healing isn't linear and that missing someone doesn't mean you belong with them.
Write to yourself. Write a letter from the woman who left to the woman who misses them. Let the stronger version of you talk to the grieving version. Remind her why she left. Remind her what she was like at the end - the insomnia, the anxiety, the flinching. Remind her that missing someone is not the same as needing someone. And that the ache she's feeling right now is temporary. But going back would make it permanent.
The Missing Doesn't Mean You Were Wrong
I need you to hear this as many times as it takes to believe it: missing them does not invalidate the abuse. It does not mean you exaggerated. It does not mean you should go back. It means you are a human being who formed a deep, complicated, neurochemically reinforced attachment to another person - and breaking that attachment hurts. Even when the attachment was unhealthy. Especially when it was.
The missing will ease. Not on your timeline. Not on anyone else's. But it will. The waves will get smaller. The space between them will get longer. And one morning you'll wake up and realize you went the whole previous day without thinking about them - and that absence of obsession will feel like the sun coming out after a long, dark winter.
You're not there yet. That's okay. You don't have to be there yet.
If you're in the missing right now - if you're reading this through tears because every word landed and you're holding your phone like a lifeline and wondering if you should just call them - put the phone down. Not forever. Just for tonight.
And instead of calling the person who broke you, call the person who held you together. The friend. The sister. The therapist. The one who saw what was happening and stayed anyway. Call them.
Because the person you're missing wouldn't answer the phone the way you need them to. They never did. And the person who would? They're already on your side.
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