When You Miss People Who Hurt You

If you miss people who hurt you, you might feel ashamed. You might think, “What is wrong with me,” “Why do I still care,” or “Why do I miss them after everything.” You might even use the longing as proof that you should reconnect, or as proof that you are weak.

Neither is true.

Missing someone who hurt you is one of the most normal, confusing parts of healing, especially for queer people who had to leave family, faith spaces, or communities to survive. The grief does not mean you were wrong to go. It means you were attached, and attachment does not dissolve on a timeline that makes sense.

In this post, we are going to talk about why you can miss someone who harmed you, how to hold grief without reopening the door, and what to do when longing shows up.

Why you can miss people who hurt you

You do not miss the harm. You miss the connection. You miss the good moments. You miss the version of them you hoped they could be. You might miss a smell, a sound, a kitchen, a laugh. You might miss a version of yourself that felt tethered to something, even if that something was painful.

Here are a few reasons the longing can stick.

Attachment does not turn off on command

You can choose distance. You can choose boundaries. You can choose no contact. But attachment is not a switch. Attachment is a bond that formed over years of shared meals, arguments, inside jokes, and seasons. So your body can miss someone even when your mind knows they were unsafe. That is not weakness. That is neuroscience.

Your brain remembers intermittent love

If love was inconsistent, your nervous system learned to chase the good moments. Researchers sometimes call this an intermittent reinforcement pattern, and it is part of why leaving can feel like withdrawal. Your body got trained on the unpredictable reward. The good times felt better because they were so rare. And your nervous system keeps reaching for them long after you have gone.

This can show up in small, disorienting ways. You hear a song they loved and feel a pull in your chest before your mind even registers what is happening. You pass a restaurant you used to go to together and feel sad before you feel relieved. You do something you are proud of and your first instinct is still to want to tell them. That is not evidence you made the wrong choice. That is just how deep the grooves run.

Missing someone can be grief, not desire

Sometimes longing is not a sign you want them back. It is a sign you are grieving what you did not get. You might be grieving the parent you needed, the partner you hoped for, the friend you thought you had, or the community that promised love and delivered shame. Grief is not a vote for reconciliation. It is a process of acknowledging loss. And what you lost was real, even if what you lost was the idea of someone rather than who they actually were.

You might be lonely, and your brain reaches for familiar

When you are lonely, your brain looks for the nearest known connection, even if it was harmful. Familiar can feel like safe, even when it never was. If nights are the hardest, What to Do When You Feel Lonely at Night.

You might be grieving a whole world, not just a person

For a lot of queer people, the loss is not just one individual. It is an entire ecosystem. A church where you grew up. A family holiday that no longer has a place for you. A hometown that never knew who you really were, or knew and made clear you were not welcome. You might miss the feeling of belonging somewhere, even if that somewhere was never actually safe for your full self. That kind of grief is layered and enormous, and it rarely gets named as grief at all. It gets called homesickness, or nostalgia, or being dramatic. But it is grief. You are allowed to name it that.

When missing them was the only thing you had

I want to say something that does not get said enough, because I have lived it.

There was a time when I was queer and homeless in the South, without much of a net to catch me. And even then, even in the middle of that, I missed the people who had made it clear I was not wanted. I missed people who had hurt me. I missed people who had chosen their comfort over my safety. I missed people I was angry at. And I felt confused and ashamed about all of it.

I remember thinking that if I still missed them, it meant I had not moved far enough. That my grief was evidence of weakness, or worse, evidence that I should crawl back. I kept trying to talk myself out of the longing by replaying everything they had done wrong. And when the longing came back anyway, I turned it against myself.

What I know now is that the grief was not a verdict. It was a response to real loss. I had lost people who were supposed to show up for me. I had lost a version of my life I thought I was going to have. I had lost the fantasy of being known and kept. That is worth grieving. It does not matter whether the people involved deserved the grief. The loss was real.

If that resonates with you, I want you to know it does not mean something is wrong with you. When you have nothing, the people you have lost become enormous. The heart goes looking for what it knew, because the unknown is terrifying and the familiar, even the painful familiar, at least has a shape you recognize.

You can read more about that chapter of my life in Growing Up Queer and Homeless in the South. I share it not because I have everything figured out, but because I know what it is like to grieve people who were never safe, and to feel like that grief made you foolish. It did not. It made you human.

One authoritative reality check about trauma bonds

Some people call this a trauma bond. That term is used in different ways, but the core idea is that intense, unstable relationships can create strong attachment. The unpredictability, the highs and lows, the moments of warmth followed by harm, all of it can wire your nervous system to keep reaching back.

If you want an authoritative explanation, the U.S. Office on Women’s Health has information on unhealthy relationship dynamics and why leaving can be hard, including patterns like abuse cycles: cycle of violence and why leaving can be difficult.

I am linking this because longing does not equal safety. Longing is a nervous system echo. It is your body doing what it learned to do. It is not evidence that you should go back.

What to do when you miss someone who hurt you

You do not need to shame yourself out of the feeling. You need a plan for when it arrives.

Name what you actually miss

Try finishing this sentence: “I miss _.” Is it their laughter. Is it the feeling of being chosen. Is it routine. Is it a sense of home. Is it the version of yourself that existed inside that relationship. Once you name it, you can start to look for it elsewhere. You can look for laughter with someone who is safe. You can look for the feeling of being chosen in spaces that will not punish you for being who you are.

Separate longing from action

Longing is a feeling. Reconnecting is an action. These are not the same thing, and you do not have to treat them as if they are. You are allowed to feel longing without acting on it. A sentence that has helped some people is this one: “I can miss them and still protect myself.” You do not have to choose between the feeling and your safety. You can hold both.

Make a reality list

When longing is loud, your brain can idealize. You remember the best version of someone and forget, or minimize, what actually happened. Writing a simple two-column list can help. What was good. What was harmful. Do not write this to punish yourself or to punish them. Write it to stay honest with yourself when your memory is trying to soften things into something more bearable.

Build your aftercare

Missing people can arrive like a wave, without warning, in the middle of an otherwise fine day. Plan for that. A warm shower. A walk somewhere that feels safe. A text to a friend you trust. A journal entry. A comfort show. Whatever grounds you back into your body and the present. If you need chosen family support to help carry this, How to Build Chosen Family When Trust Is Hard.

If you do reach out, do it with intention

Sometimes people do choose to reconnect. That is a valid choice, and only you can make it. If you do reach out, do it with your eyes open. Ask yourself honestly: What do I want from this. What am I willing to tolerate. What will I do if it goes poorly. What has changed, if anything. You deserve to enter that door with clarity, not just longing. If boundaries feel hard to hold in that kind of conversation, Boundaries That Don’t Burn Bridges has more on how to stay grounded when someone from your past is involved.

Tender and protected

If you miss someone who hurt you, it does not mean you imagined the harm. It does not mean you were naive. It does not mean you should go back. It means you are grieving, attached, and human. It means you are someone who loved, even when love was not returned the way you needed.

You can hold longing without reopening the door. You can grieve what you deserved and did not get. You can build something safer with the life you have now.

You do not have to choose between being tender and being protected. You can be both. And the fact that you are still here, still trying to understand yourself with this much care, already says something important about who you are.

Grief is not a detour from healing. Grief is part of it. The longing you feel is not pulling you backward. It is asking you to acknowledge what you lost so you can stop carrying it like a secret. You are allowed to miss people who hurt you. You are allowed to be angry at them and still feel their absence. You are allowed to be in all of that without having to explain or justify or resolve it quickly.

You are healing. And healing is not linear, and it is not quiet, and it does not always feel like progress. Sometimes it feels like missing people you know were not good for you. That is still healing.

Safe Enough Love: What Queer Belonging Feels Like in the Body