Three weeks after he blocked me on everything, I caught myself driving past his apartment.
Again.
The same apartment where he screamed at me for “breathing too loud” during his video games. Where he made me sleep on the couch because I “ruined his mood” by asking how his day went.
But there I was, 11:47 PM, sitting in my car like some kind of emotional masochist, missing toxic ex behavior that nearly destroyed me.
What kind of broken person misses their abuser?
The Wreckage: When Missing Toxic Ex Becomes Your New Normal
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about toxic relationship feelings — they don’t follow logic.
Your brain knows he was poison. Your friends have the receipts. Hell, you probably have a Notes app full of screenshots documenting every cruel thing he said.
But your heart? Your heart is still back there, replaying the three good days out of 365 bad ones.
A woman once told me she missed her ex so much she’d call him from blocked numbers just to hear him hang up on her. “I know he was terrible,” she whispered. “But the silence without him feels worse than the chaos with him.”
That line haunted me for weeks.
Because that’s exactly what missing toxic love feels like — choosing familiar pain over unfamiliar peace.
You miss the version of him that existed for maybe 10% of your relationship. The one who brought you coffee that one Tuesday. Who held you when you cried about your mom. Who made you feel chosen for exactly 47 minutes before he remembered he preferred you broken.
Your nervous system got addicted to the cycle. The fight, the silence, the love-bombing, the repeat. Now that the chaos is gone, your body doesn’t know how to exist in calm.
It’s like your emotional system is going through withdrawal.
The cruel part? Everyone expects you to be relieved. “Good riddance,” they say. “You’re so much better off.”
And you nod and smile because you know they’re right. But inside, you’re drowning in a grief nobody understands. How do you explain that you miss someone who made you feel worthless? How do you say you’d rather have toxic love than no love at all?
You find yourself scrolling through old photos, analyzing every text for hidden meaning. You remember his laugh more than his cruelty. You catch yourself defending him to friends who witnessed your tears.
“He wasn’t always like that,” you hear yourself saying.
Except he was. The good moments weren’t the real him breaking through — they were the bait. The intermittent reinforcement that kept you hooked like a slot machine that occasionally pays out.
But your trauma-bonded heart doesn’t care about psychology. It just knows it’s lonely now. And lonely feels scarier than being slowly destroyed by someone who at least knew your middle name.
The Reflection: Why Longing for a Toxic Ex Doesn’t Mean You’re Weak
Listen to me.
Your emotional abuse feelings aren’t pathetic. They’re not proof you’re broken beyond repair. They’re proof you’re human.
You’re not missing him. You’re missing the person you believed he could become. The potential you saw buried under all that toxicity. The love you convinced yourself was hidden behind the walls he built from your tears.
You’re also missing the version of yourself that still had hope. Before you learned that love isn’t supposed to require you to shrink. Before you discovered that the right person doesn’t need you to be smaller to feel bigger.
Here’s what’s really happening when toxic relationship feelings won’t let go:
Your attachment system is confused as hell. For months or years, this person was your primary source of both comfort and threat. Your nervous system learned to seek safety from the same person who destroyed it.
It’s like being hungry and only knowing one restaurant — even though that restaurant keeps serving you poison. Your body remembers being fed there. It doesn’t remember the food was killing you.
The missing isn’t about him.It’s about the hope you had to bury in order to survive. And grieving hope feels a lot like dying.
But here’s the truth they don’t put on Instagram quotes: Missing toxic ex experiences means your capacity for love is still intact. A dead heart doesn’t ache. A heart that’s given up doesn’t long for someone, even someone wrong.
Your pain is proof you’re still soft in a world that tried to make you hard.
The shame you feel about these feelings? That’s just your inner critic, sounding a lot like his voice, telling you that wanting love makes you weak.
It doesn’t.
Wanting love makes you human. Choosing the wrong love makes you human too.
You’re not broken. You’re just learning the difference between attachment and love. Between need and want. Between settling and choosing.
Real healing doesn’t mean you’ll never miss him. It means you’ll miss him without needing him back. You’ll remember the good without forgetting the cost. You’ll honor what you learned without returning to school.
The missing will fade, but not like you think. It won’t disappear one day like morning fog. It’ll shrink gradually, like an old scar that only aches when it rains.
And someday — I promise you this — you’ll meet someone who loves you without conditions, without drama, without making you earn basic respect.
And you’ll realize the difference between toxic love and real love isn’t the intensity. It’s the peace.
No, I can’t promise the missing stops tomorrow. These emotional abuse feelings are stubborn like that. But I can promise you this: You’re not pathetic for feeling them. You’re not weak for surviving him. And this chapter where you find yourself missing someone who once hurt you?
It’s not the end of your story. It’s just the unexpected turn in the story right before everything starts to heal.