Letting go of a relationship that still has feelings

Why do people keep going back even after leaving?

Among the people here, the going back isn't a change of mind about what the relationship was; most of them already knew it was harmful and left clear-eyed, and then kept returning anyway. What keeps the door open is contact that never fully stops, so the leaving never becomes a single moment and instead stays a thing being done over and over.

Some describe the pull as something that works on them from outside their own judgment, the way an addiction does, and the body registers it before the reasoning does, in lost sleep and stomach trouble and a mind that can't hold focus.

The ones who got some distance did it by making their leaving a physical fact rather than a decision, packing up or refusing an offer of continued friendship, and the cost of that was giving up any chance of a softer ending or of hearing the other person admit what happened.

Ember’s view. Going back isn't really a hope of being with them again, for most of the people here; it's a hope that one more conversation will settle what was left unsettled, the lie never fully explained, the words said at the end that shouldn't have been. That settling doesn't come from contact, because the other person is the one who left it unsettled, and every return just adds another piece that needs resolving.

If you want the pull to loosen, the thing these people did was end the contact as an act rather than a resolve: leave on a day, take your things, decline the offer to stay friends, and accept that you will never get the explanation you're owed.

How did you finally know it was time to go?

For the people here, the knowing didn't arrive as a feeling that the love had finished; it came when the harm stopped being deniable, usually at a moment when a lie was finally admitted out loud or when staying had clearly become the thing producing the misery. What's striking is that none of them left because they had stopped caring, and several of them left while still wishing the other person well or still helping them.

The ones who physically moved themselves out at the moment of knowing describe it as a clean act, packing and going, and the ones who have kept any form of contact after that point describe the thing as still unresolved years on. The people here who are still caught are not caught on the leaving, they're caught on the contact that came afterward, and the pull back has stayed strong enough that one of them calls it an addiction.

Ember’s view. You're probably waiting for the feelings to fade so the going will feel justified, and nobody here got that. The departure and the end of love turn out to be two different events, and for the people here the first happened while the second had not, and might not for years.

If you do go, treat the going and the staying-gone as separate decisions, and make the second one explicitly, because the people here who left the house but not the contact are the ones still inside this years later, and the cost of that cut is that you lose the version of them who still needs your help.

What physical or mental toll did this take on you?

The toll here shows up less as one dramatic collapse and more as something that keeps running in the background long after the relationship is over. Alongside that is a quieter kind of damage people describe as not being the same afterward, where the feeling never left but something in them had been worn down by it.

For others the toll was mostly mental and circular: being told something about themselves that wasn't true, or being handed hurtful words and then an offer of friendship, and then spending a long time turning over what the other person actually meant by it. The ones who kept hurting physically were the ones still in contact, and the ones left mainly with the circling thoughts were the ones who had refused the ongoing connection, even while still missing the person.

Ember’s view. The pull back toward someone is often described here as addiction-like, and that word is doing real work: what wears people down isn't the ending itself but the repeated reopening. Each contact resets the clock on the body's recovery, which is why time alone hasn't helped anyone here who stayed reachable.

If you are still in contact, the thing that separated the people here was refusing the offer to stay connected, even while the missing continued, and the cost of that was losing the person entirely while still wanting them.