On the surface, it makes no sense: someone lies, cheats, abandons, or emotionally abuses us – and yet our mind still drifts back to them. We replay conversations. We stalk their social media. We catch ourselves hoping they will finally “wake up,” apologize, and become the partner we needed them to be the whole time.
From a trauma-informed and Jungian lens, this is not a sign of weakness. It is not proof that we “still love them more than we love ourselves.” It is the predictable result of a nervous system wired for survival, and a psyche that is trying desperately to complete a story that never had a healthy ending.
We don’t only miss the person. We miss the promise, the fantasy, and the parts of ourselves we projected onto them.
This page is the first in my Trauma, Healing & Relationships series. Here I explore why we miss people who hurt us through three main lenses:
A trauma bond forms when a relationship cycles between harm and “repair” in a way that keeps the nervous system on high alert. There are moments of affection, connection, or intense intimacy, followed by periods of withdrawal, coldness, criticism, or emotional violence. Instead of consistent safety, we get intermittent reinforcement.
In behavioral terms, intermittent reinforcement is the strongest way to train a behavior. Slot machines use it. Unpredictable texting, love-bombing and then disappearing, threatening to leave and then coming back with declarations of love – all of these keep the brain chasing the next “hit” of relief.
For someone with a trauma history, this pattern does not just feel familiar. It feels like home.
This is why we can know, intellectually, that a relationship was abusive or unsafe – and still experience cravings for contact. The craving belongs to the bonding pattern, not to the person’s true character.
Attachment theory gives another layer to the question of why we miss people who hurt us. When our early caregivers were inconsistent, intrusive, emotionally absent, or unpredictable, our inner child learns:
When we meet an emotionally immature or narcissistic partner later in life, they often fit these old patterns perfectly. The adult part of us may say, “This doesn’t feel right.” But the younger, wounded parts think: this time I will finally fix it.
The longing is not just for them; it is for a rewritten childhood – a wish that this person will finally give us the safety and attunement we never received.
So when the relationship ends, our grief is layered:
The nervous system remembers patterns of threat and safety. If “love” in our past was fused with fear, unpredictability, yelling, silent treatments, or emotional walking-on-eggshells, then our body can mistake dysregulation for connection.
In this state:
This is not because we are dramatic or broken. It is because our system has been imprinted with the idea that love = vigilance. When the abusive or emotionally chaotic partner leaves, the body is not simply missing them. It is missing the regulation strategy it developed: scanning, fixing, managing, predicting.
Healing requires slowly teaching the nervous system that:
Carl Jung wrote often about how our psyche projects inner images onto outer people. We do not just fall in love with a person; we fall in love with what Jung would call an inner figure – an image of the ideal partner, savior, mother, father, or child that lives in our unconscious.
When we attach to someone who hurts us, we are often relating to a powerful inner image:
Jungian writers sometimes describe a phase of grief as a kind of inner death: the death of the fantasy self (“the one who finally gets chosen”) and the fantasy other (“the one who will rescue me from my loneliness and pain”). This inner death feels brutal because it asks us to let go of:
We are not just mourning a relationship. We are mourning an entire inner mythology of who we thought we were and how love was supposed to save us.
The gift – if we can move through this grief instead of collapsing into shame – is a step toward individuation: the Jungian process of becoming more fully ourselves, less dependent on projections, and more rooted in an inner source of value.
Psychiatrist Robert Firestone uses the term fantasy bond to describe relationships where the image of connection replaces actual intimacy. In abusive or emotionally immature relationships, the fantasy often looks like:
Letting go of this fantasy bond is not a one-time decision. It is a daily practice of turning back toward ourselves with honesty and softness:
Over time, the fantasy loosens its grip. We start to feel less like someone abandoned by “the one,” and more like someone who chose to walk away from a place that kept wounding them. Missing them becomes less of a command and more of a passing weather pattern in the psyche.
If you are in the active grief of missing someone who hurt you, these questions are not homework. They are invitations. You can hold them lightly and come back when your nervous system has capacity.
None of these questions are meant to shame you. Missing someone who harmed you is not a failure. It is a reflection of how deeply your nervous system and psyche tried to survive, love, and make meaning in impossible conditions.
The work now is not to bully yourself out of missing them, but to become the steady, honest, and compassionate presence you always needed – for yourself.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books. https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/john-bowlby/a-secure-base/9780465097161/
Firestone, R. (1985). The fantasy bond: Structure of psychological defenses. Human Sciences Press. https://www.psychalive.org/the-fantasy-bond/
Herman, J. L. (2015). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror (Revised ed.). Basic Books. https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/judith-l-herman/trauma-and-recovery/9780465061711/
Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and his symbols. Doubleday. https://archive.org/details/manhissymbols0000jung
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking. https://ia601604.us.archive.org/35/items/the-body-keeps-the-score-pdf/The-Body-Keeps-the-Score-PDF.pdf