Still wanting to return to an abusive relationship

How can I still miss someone who hurt me?

Almost everyone here is carrying both at once, and none of them found that the knowing cancelled the missing. Several of them can name clearly what the other person did, the yelling, the disappearing, the contempt, and in the same breath say they still love him and want him back.

What the missing seems to attach to, for most of them, is not the person as he actually behaved but a stretch of good time or a promised future that kept being held out and withdrawn.

The ones who got some footing did not do it by arguing themselves out of the feeling; they did it by building the thing that holds while the feeling is still there, distance kept by a rule rather than by willpower, someone else present when contact had to happen, the day's ordinary work carried on through it.

The ones still fully stuck are mostly the ones waiting for an explanation or a final word from him that would make the feeling make sense before they act on it.

Ember’s view. Missing him is not evidence that you misjudged the harm, and it is not a vote for going back. The people here who asked why they still missed him were mostly hoping that once they understood it, it would stop, and that is not what happened; it kept going and they built a life around it anyway.

If you are waiting to stop missing him before you hold the line, consider holding the line while you still miss him, with the distance set as a rule you don't renegotiate at night and someone who knows about it, and expect it to feel like loss rather than relief for a long while.

How do I keep from going back?

The people here who have kept from going back did it with structure, not willpower: a no-contact order, a friend beside them when returning his things and the dog, telling their oldest child the leaving was permanent so that it would have to be, asking for time and space in writing.

They name the pull exactly, so they can see it coming: the wish to explain themselves to the person, to make them understand, which feels like closure and works like a way back in; his middle-of-the-night messages; the daughter asking for the family back.

The pressure came from the other side too, promises to get help, messages meant to guilt, a request to visit, and the ones who held did not answer it in the moment; they answered later, on their terms, or not at all. What they describe afterward is not relief but a body catching up: anxious and afraid, lost and hopeless, wanting quiet for now.

None of them is sure yet that the door will stay closed; what they have is the next thing that makes it more likely, and a person or an order standing between them and the phone.

Will leaving ever feel like the right decision?

For the people here it feels right and wrong at the same time: knowing that going back would be unsafe while grieving the caring version of the person; knowing love should not feel that way while a part of them will always love him.

What made it clearer was rarely a new insight about the person; it was watching the pattern once more from outside, a promise to get help arriving exactly when they left, a return followed by the same blow-up, and noticing that the timing was the tell.

A few had a child in the room, one who had been carrying it for six years and asked whether this time was permanent, one whose honesty about both parents came as a relief; the children made the decision heavier and, they say, clearer. Doubt about whether the other person's love had ever been real arrived for several after the leaving, and they describe it as a second loss laid on the first.

None of them says it feels like the right decision yet; what they say is that it feels like theirs, the first thing in a long time that was, and they are holding on to that while the rest catches up.