6 Reasons Why You Miss Your Ex

Breaking up is never easy. Whether it’s a fairly new relationship, or a decade long one, it is always hard to move on post a breakup. After breaking up with someone it gets all the more important that you find ways to move on with your life and follow your interests and passions. You need to get out of their hold on you and try to navigate life on your own. However, if you find yourself excessively missing your ex, it is time to delve deeper in to the reasons. Here we explore some of the reasons which might give you the cause, and therefore, the solution of the problem.

6. You miss the good times

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A relationship is not always all bad. There are good times that you have shared with the other person in spite of things not working out for the both of you eventually. Your ex might seem a thoroughly despicable person to you now, but you still remember the happiness that you both once shared. That steaming hot cup of coffee that you shared on a winter morning, or that first, nervous date at a posh restaurant. It might have been in the past but that does not mean that you can forget all about it suddenly.
It is the memories of the good times that you hold on to and relive over and over again in your mind.
Also, it is natural for us, as human beings, to give comfort to ourselves when we are depressed by remembering the good times we have had, as is usually the case after a breakup.

5. Stockholm syndrome plays a part

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According to Charles Montaldo, Stockholm Syndrome occurs “when people are placed in a situation where they no longer have any control over their fate, feel intense fear of physical harm and believe all control is in the hands of their tormentor, a strategy for survival can result which can develop into a psychological response that can include sympathy and support for their captor’s plight”.
The name Stockholm Syndrome was derived from a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, which occurred in 1973 where four hostages were held for six days and they became sympathetic towards their captors.
This can apply to relationships also. If your ex was abusive, either physically or emotionally, you can still miss them because you feel sympathetic towards them due to all the things they did for you when they were not abusive. You become emotionally attached to the person and cannot think of leaving them. When the relationship gets broken, you continue to think of them in a caring way. It is said that Belle also suffered from this and that is why fell in love with the Beast!

4. You blame yourself

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This is a very common reason for missing your ex and feeling that you still love them. When you love someone you believe that they can do nothing wrong and instead blame yourself for the things that did not work out. You think this way because placing blame is the commonest way to try to comprehend any situation. And placing blame on yourself is the easiest.
Even if you could not have prevented the breakup, you still feel that you are somehow responsible. You give a reason to yourself for all the flaws of your ex and try to justify your actions. This makes you miss them more as they still hold a special place in your heart.

3. You are unsure about the future

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When we are uncertain about the future, we think that the things we had in the past were good enough, even though they weren’t. If your breakup left you alone and without the prospect of a partner in the imminent future, you can hold on to the past relationship for a very long time. You feel that the relation you had with your ex was something to be cherished rather than remembering all the ways it was futile for you to pursue it.
This is our psychological reaction to escape reality and this is the reason that most people get back with their exes. Living in the past also means that you can avoid thinking about all the ways your life has changed post breakup and all the ways you would have to deal with the new reality.

2. You were dependent on your ex

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While the psychological trauma is immense, breaking up with someone can also leave you reeling with the enormity of tasks to be faced day to day. This becomes especially burdensome if your ex did most of the things around the house or handled all financial affairs. People who are dependent upon someone can feel their absence and thus miss them more than people who are self-sufficient. For example, if your ex made breakfast for you every morning, or put in their share in paying the bills, it is only natural that you would miss them.
It is important to understand however, that you might be missing the actual acts they did for you, the ways in which they made life easier for you, rather than their physical presence itself. This distinction is what helps you to move forward with your life and try to figure out things on your own.

1. You think it might have worked out

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If you even have an iota of positivity in you it is natural to think that things might have been better or that the relationship could have been salvaged. You might consider that going to counseling might have helped, or being more tolerant of each other could have been the key to a long relationship. These thoughts usually present themselves when you feel at a loss of how to cope with the breakup.
You assume that it might have been easier to just carry on like nothing bad had happened between the both of you.
While it is important to think about what went wrong in order to avoid those issues in the future, it is important to remember that you probably tried your best. And if your best foot forward didn’t save the breakup from happening, it might not have worked out eventually after all.