Missing someone who treated you badly

People expect grief after a good relationship ends. Nobody warns you about the other kind: missing someone you were relieved to get away from, and feeling ashamed that you miss them at all.

You are not missing the treatment

The first thing worth separating: you are almost never missing how they treated you. You are missing something much more specific and much smaller. The way a room felt when they were in a good mood. Being known without explaining. A particular laugh. The sense that something was happening.

Those things were real. They were real at the same time as the rest. Both can be true, and holding both is not weakness or bad judgement.

Why the bad parts fade first

Memory does not store an argument the way it stores a good afternoon. Pain comes back as a fact — "that was awful" — while good moments come back as sensation, with the light and the sound intact. So the case for leaving becomes an argument you have to remember, while the case for going back plays itself.

Knowing this does not stop it. But it explains why your feelings and your judgement disagree, and it means your judgement is not necessarily losing.

The shame is the heavier part

For most people, the missing is bearable and the shame about missing is not. You think it means you did not really mind. You think it undoes your reasons. It does not. People miss things that were bad for them constantly — that is most of what an unhealthy attachment is.

Catching yourself checking whether they are online is not a relapse or a verdict. It is a habit with a long tail.

What helps

Not arguing with yourself. Naming the specific thing you miss usually shrinks it: not "I miss him", but "I miss having someone to tell about my day." That version has other answers.

And time, which is a dull thing to say, but the interval between the moments of missing does get longer, and you notice the change only in hindsight.