Just read this and it all makes sense to me thought it might help some others
5 Reasons You Still Miss Your Abusive Ex!
(1) You suffer from Stockholm Syndrome:
Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological condition when the victim is made to develop a crazy empathy for the abuser. You love your abusive partner so much so that you justify the abuses and would not want to leave them. No matter how much abuse you are, you would not leave because you are emotionally attached to your partner. For every abusive deed, you will try to justify it either by blaming yourself or by taking empathy on the abuser.
‘She was bullied in school’, ‘ he had a horrible childhood’, ‘ she was ill-treated by her relatives’, ‘ he lost his father’, etcetera will be your excuses. Since the person has already showered their love upon you, it will be hard for you to believe that they are abusive. Even after leaving them, you will still miss your abusive ex.
(2) You miss the good times you spent with your ex:
Abusive partners are not at all abusive in the beginning. They spend a good amount of time showing testimonies of their love to their partners before revealing their true colours. Hence, you believe in those moments of love while your abusive ex was faking it all along.
These good times make you believe that this abusive relationship is not permanent; perhaps your partner will change and you will get back these moments. What you fail to understand that there’s no question of changing for your partner. Your partner had these traits and faked love in front of you.
(3) Your partner had a traumatic past:
Our life is not a merry journey on a ship. All of us have our share of chaotic waves. We have our traumas but the intensity might be different. It might happen that your ex had more trauma than you. Since you loved them so much, you believed that the abuses are just their way of coping up with their trauma.
But no matter how much trauma you have gone through, it’s inhumane to make others suffer for it. You need to understand that it’s an act of foolishness to justify such harmful behaviour by past trauma. If your ex had a problem coping up with the trauma, you were there for them to support. There are various support groups and counselling centres too. You cannot be a punching bag. So, stop thinking about your abusive ex.
(4) You feel everything your fault:
In abusive relationships, the predator makes the victim suffer from shame. They make things look as if it’s your fault. This makes you feel that you are the reason the relationship failed and hence, you should be ashamed of yourself. So, even after getting out of the relationship, you believe that you are to be blamed for the break-up; you miss your abusive ex because you are made to believe that they are not responsible for it.
(5) You still believe things could have been different:
You fell in love with your abusive ex because of certain good qualities you have seen in them. They were the person you have always wanted to be with. When they became abusive, you were manipulated into believing that everything is your fault. Since you are in love with the good qualities they have displayed, you still believe that perhaps things could have been different had you not behaved in certain ways.
It’s important that you come out of these thoughts and understand that you deserve to be loved back too. You can’t remove the memories but you can ignore them. Don’t let yourself manipulated by such negativity. Move on. Good luck!