Most of us have experienced relationships that were truly bad for us. Some might have been codependent, others may have been neglectful, imbalanced, or even emotionally and/or physically abusive.
So why do we miss them? Do we take temporary leave of our senses when these feelings arise? Or are there valid reasons why these feelings arise?
It may surprise you that it isn’t just nostalgia that fuels these feelings. According to psychology, there are a number of reasons why you might miss a toxic partnership.
8 psychological reasons you might miss a toxic relationship:
1. You’re in love with potential.
Many of us have experienced this type of relationship. Let’s say you meet someone and have incredible chemistry with them, and maybe a strong emotional bond too.
Even though they may be going through a rough patch, or they don’t treat you particularly well, you see their potential — the person they could be, if only they were shown enough unconditional love and support.
Hypothetically.
I’ve been in this situation on more than one occasion, and I still wonder sometimes what might have been, decades later.
Even though those men treated me poorly, I wore myself down trying to help them become I could see the versions of themselves they were capable of becoming, but they never did.
Psychology teaches us that it’s the potential that we miss.
We miss the daydreams of what might have been. Not the reality of the fights, betrayals, the stress, or the very real damage they caused.
2. There’s comfort in familiarity.
A lot of us find comfort in familiar relationship dynamics, even if they’re unhealthy ones. It’s why so many of us end up repeating patterns that we grew up with.
For example, people may unintentionally seek out partners with whom they can re-create the dynamics they witnessed between their own parents, even if that partnership was a terrible one.
Venturing beyond one’s own comfort level can be scary for numerous reasons, not least of which is the fact that there’s no road map for negotiating unfamiliar territory.
If you had a relationship that was genuinely bad for you, but felt comfortable, then you might miss that sense of familiarity rather than the individual you dated.
3. You miss the exhilaration of emotional drama.
Some people really love the rollercoaster experience that comes with dramatic emotional highs and lows. There’s something exciting about fighting with someone, getting really sad about it, and then reconciling passionately.
And popular media doesn’t help things by glorifying this type of romance.
As such, if you had a tumultuous relationship with someone who inspired intense feelings in you, then other relationships may seem boring in comparison.
Even though a current or potential partnership may be truly loving, supportive, stable, and wonderful overall, it might feel like subsisting on unsalted food after experiencing a symphony of flavor.
4. You’re still held in a trauma bond.
If you experienced a terribly toxic or abusive partnership, you may have a trauma bond with your former partner.
This is a seriously unhealthy, intense attachment that develops between an abuser and their victim.
Basically, the intense highs and lows that hormones cause, i.e., cortisol during periods of stress and dopamine during happy periods, cause the same cycles associated with drug addiction.
Another common definition of a trauma bond is when people find comfort in one another because they’ve gone through an intense, traumatic experience together. This isn’t the psychological definition of a trauma bond, but it is used often in online discussions.
Whichever is the case for you, the intense emotions you experienced may be clouding your judgement and preventing you from accepting the reality of that relationship.
You may feel a sense of loyalty towards a person you survived a harrowing experience with, for example, or you may feel like you’ll never have the same intense emotional connection as you had with someone who alternated between treating you well and abusing you terribly.
5. Being with them was somehow better or easier than life without them.
Let’s say you were in a relationship that was honestly terrible for you, but that granted you a comfortable existence.
For example, if you were with someone who provided for you financially, but disrespected and neglected you.
Now that you’re no longer with them, you may be exhausted from working two jobs, you can still barely pay your rent, and the bills keep coming.
In a situation like this, it’s unsurprising that you look back on that relationship and think about how much easier life was with that individual rather than without them.
6. You’re still longing to be acknowledged by them.
If your relationship was codependent, you may have revolved your entire life around this individual.
You likely sacrificed your happiness and well-being for their benefit, and received very little in return.
In fact, you might have spent the entire relationship feeling anxious and uncertain, perpetually trying to prove your worth to someone who used you, took you for granted, and never reciprocated.
Even though you haven’t been with your ex for a while, you may find yourself missing them, not because you sincerely miss how they treated you, but because you miss the opportunity to finally experience acknowledgement from them.
You may feel that if only you’d stuck it out a bit longer, or if they hadn’t split up with you, then they might have woken up and realized just how amazing you are. Instead, you were denied the appreciation and validation you always hoped for, and that’s a hard thing to accept.
7. Your memories are selective.
Our memories can be fickle things at times. Studies show that memories can change every time we recall them, so no matter how sure we are, we may be remembering things inconsistently.
Similarly, we can choose to omit certain memories — either consciously or subconsciously — as a self-defense mechanism.
Essentially, our minds choose to protect us from harmful memories by fixating upon the positive ones.
As a result, you may be fondly remembering the positive aspects of your relationship while repressing all the negative ones.
For example, you might wear a piece of jewelry that your ex gave you because it’s beautiful and you remember how happy you were to receive it, despite the fact that it was actually given as an apology for them punching a hole in your wall.
8. You’re negotiating the sunk cost fallacy.
If you spent a significant amount of time with this person, you may feel that all that time and effort was wasted, since it didn’t result in a permanent partnership.
Because of this, you may choose to set aside the mistreatment and toxicity of this relationship and try to focus on all the things that actually worked within it.
And there may, in fact, have been many positive aspects that allowed you to stick around as long as you did.
By focusing on these, you may try to convince yourself that the bad stuff really wasn’t “all that bad,” and that if you gave it another try, it would work this time around and your previous efforts won’t have been in vain.
Deep down, however, you likely know full well that wouldn’t be the case. Things really were genuinely bad, and they would be far worse if you gave it another go.
Final thoughts…
If you find yourself missing that toxic relationship, do yourself a favor and write a long pro/con list in which you note everything that was bad or otherwise harmful in it.
After you’ve reminded yourself about just how awful it was, reassure yourself that you haven’t lost your mind in missing someone who treated you so badly, but that there are likely very valid psychological reasons why this is happening.
Just keep reminding yourself that things ended for a reason, and you’re in a much healthier and more stable position now. You can miss something and still move on.
