3 Psychological Reasons Why You Miss People Who Hurt You

Understanding the science behind emotional attachment can help you stop romanticizing what caused pain.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | January 2, 2026

Despite the havoc that some people can wreak on your development, your well-being and perhaps even your sanity, you might still find yourself missing them. This can be a jarring and confusing experience, especially when you're intellectually aware of how damaging the relationship was.

You may even surprise yourself by wondering how they're doing, whether they think about you too or whether they miss you in the same way. For some, these thoughts can evolve into daydreams about what might have gone differently — what you could've done to avoid the breakup, whether you were too harsh or whether, somehow, you could make it work if you tried again.

But, often, reality quickly intervenes. You remember how badly things ended. You remember the emotional chaos, the exhaustion, the sadness and how small it made you feel by the end. And with that clarity, most are still able to recognize that rekindling things would definitely be the wrong thing to do.

Yet, even with that awareness, you can still miss someone you know was terrible for you. Here are three reasons why this happens, according to psychological research.

1. You Miss Them Because You Were Trauma Bonded

Trauma bonds can form in relationships that are characterized by cycles of emotional pain followed by brief moments of relief, affection or reconciliation. One of the key features of these dynamics is that both distress and comfort come from the same person. This, in turn, gives rise to a form of attachment that is both incredibly powerful and confusing.

With enough time for that cycle to perpetuate, your nervous system will start to associate this person with both threat and safety. And as 2022 research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships emphasizes, this is a combination that can be extraordinarily hard to break away from.

The study notes that even victims of severe and cruel forms of abuse often report feeling bonded to, missing or longing for their abusers; in some cases, they even maintain their relationship with them. This occurs precisely because of trauma-based attachment patterns, wherein love is something built by conditioning, rather than compatibility or affection.

It's important to note that trauma bonding doesn't require physical abuse. Relationships that are emotionally abusive, emotionally volatile, unpredictable or chaotic can produce similar effects. If love, validation or calm only arrived after intense conflict, emotional withdrawal or distress, then your brain would have learned to cling harder to those than moments of pain.

The bitter irony of these trauma bonds is that they don't deepen despite the suffering, but because of it. This is exactly why missing someone after a destructive relationship isn't actually you missing them in the true sense of the word; "missing" is just the closest word to what your brain can think of to describe the process of healing the attachment wound they left behind.

This sense of craving or yearning can feel incredibly similar to missing them. But, in reality, it's just one of many symptoms of your nervous system fighting tooth and nail to fix itself after prolonged dysregulation.

2. You Miss Them Because Of Intermittent Reinforcement

Intermittent reinforcement is a conditioning pattern where rewards are given inconsistently. In relationships, this is marked by affection, kindness or intimacy appearing sporadically, without warning and often after periods of emotional deprivation. And often, it can be hard to predict how long both the periods of intimacy and deprivation will last, or when the next will begin.

If this sounds familiar to how a gambling addiction begins, that's because it is. Slot machines wouldn't be so popular if they paid out consistently; they hook gamblers in precisely because they reward them unpredictably.

As a 2019 study published in Nordic Psychology explains, intermittent reinforcement schedules (where rewards only sometimes follow behavior) are especially effective at creating persistent, compulsive engagement. This is why occasional big wins in gambling create a coercive conditioning effect. This is what keeps people coming back — even in the face of repeated losses, and even when their finances are in ruins.

In unhealthy relationships, those "wins" are the good days that come once in a blue moon. They're the days characterized by tenderness, apologies or closeness that feel intoxicating precisely because they're so rare. And, for many, it only takes one of these good days to sustain their hope for weeks or months.

In time, the brain learns to chase those moments like a gambler chases the next jackpot. And the harder it clings, the easier it is to withstand all the gloom until the next emotional payoff. However, even after the relationship ends, this conditioning doesn't immediately disappear.

In this sense, what you might be interpreting as missing them may actually be your brain craving the dopamine rush associated with finally being "chosen" or soothed. And, in hindsight, those rare good days will loom much larger than they deserve. The truth is, the good only felt so good because the bad was so bad. Without that contrast, the "highs" would've been unremarkable, if not totally insufficient.

3. You Miss The Fantasy, Not The Person

Partner idealization refers to the tendency to hold overly positive beliefs about a partner or relationship that aren't supported by objective evidence. This means that when you're highly emotionally invested in a partner or a relationship, your mind will fill in the gaps with imagination and wishful thinking. And, often, those gaps are their most conspicuous flaws.

A 2011 review published in the Journal of Family Theory & Review explains that people can develop positive attitudes and perceptions of their partner that exceed what actual independent assessments of that partner's actual traits would justify. In other words, we can believe in a version of someone that exists more in our mind than in reality.

This idealization often extends into the future. You may not necessarily have fallen in love with who they actually were as a person, but instead with who you believed they could have become. In this sense, the end of the relationship will leave you grieving the life you imagined for yourself with them: the healed version of them, the stable version of the relationship, the version where everything finally made sense.

This kind of grief is complex. Psychologically, it can actually function incredibly similarly to traditional grief. It can distort your thinking, intensify your longing and even lead you to bargain. It will leave you with thoughts such as, "Maybe if I'd tried harder," or, "Maybe now they're different now."

And in these moments of grief, the brain won't concern itself with bringing memories or feelings to light that appropriately encapsulate the relationship. All it cares about is soothing the pain, and to do that, it often relies on your old, idealized fantasies.

It's important to remind yourself when this happens that missing them doesn't mean that you lost the right person. You are simply grieving the future that you certainly deserved, but which never truly existed. Grieving that loss can be just as disorienting as grieving something that's genuinely gone.

Still miss your ex more than you expected? This science-backed test can help you understand how deeply the breakup is still affecting you: Breakup Distress Scale

If you miss someone who no longer belongs in your life, your Spirit Animal Test results might reveal the emotional strengths helping you move forward.

A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.