Is true love supposed to last throughout your life? Should you feel love for those who have wronged you in some way in previous relationships? And, if so, is it healthy?
Having that loving feeling for previous partners in your life can raise questions in current relationships. It’s a good idea to get clear on what your best course of action is.
A listener of my podcast reached out with a question about love that’s been troubling them. They believe love never dies and that even a brief connection can last forever. They shared their experience of meeting someone years ago with whom they felt a strong bond. The relationship started beautifully but ended when their partner revealed a different side – one that was unkind and disrespectful.
Now, years later, they find themselves missing this person while also recognizing the poor treatment they received. They want to cherish the love that once existed while acknowledging this person wouldn’t have been a good long-term partner. They’re wondering if it’s possible to hold these seemingly contradictory feelings and thoughts.
This is a great topic because love often changes as we grow from childhood to adulthood. As kids, we have crushes. In our teens, we think we’re in love and can’t imagine anyone better. Then, we reach our twenties and thirties, and our perception of love shifts.
I’ve come to see love as not just how we feel about someone else but how they make us feel about ourselves. When you’re in love or deeply care for someone who makes you feel good about yourself, you feel loved. When they support your happiness, you feel cared for and want more of that feeling and more of them.
This is why I view emotional abuse as the opposite of love – it makes someone feel bad about themselves. Love, on the other hand, supports the other person’s happiness, individuality, and authenticity. When someone does this for you, it comes closest to defining love, in my experience.
Beyond that, love involves having an emotional connection, enjoying someone’s company, and sharing yourself deeply with someone who hopefully does the same. It’s crucial to define what love means to you personally.
For me, I enjoy all aspects of love – falling in love, being in love, and the feeling of love. I’ve thought about what love means to me, how I receive it, and how I give it. I’ve found that the ways I enjoy receiving love are the same ways I give it. When I give love in the way I like to receive it, it feels like a true loving connection.
I believe it’s important to identify what love means to you so you can recognize when those criteria are met.
It might sound like I’m breaking it down logically, and to some extent, I am. But understanding your definition of love helps you recognize when it’s present and when it’s absent, rather than relying solely on feelings.
The feeling of love is real, but it can be hard to measure because it often mixes with other emotions. Our feelings are a combination of our emotional and physical state, which can create a complex message. When you’re in a relationship and have loving feelings for someone, it’s easy to forget about logically defining what love means to you. This can lead to confusion about what love really is.
It’s helpful to outline what love means to you personally. For example, you might say that when someone hugs you and tells you everything will be okay, that’s a loving gesture that makes you feel loved. As you consider what love means to you, you’ll likely recognize qualities you appreciate in others, both past and present.
The tricky part is that we often remember the good feelings from a relationship, even when they were mixed with bad ones. Relationships can be a blend of emotions because they have both good and bad times. If someone who was once loving becomes rude and selfish, you end up with a mix of positive and negative feelings.
This is where the concept of a trauma bond comes in. You might mix the good emotions from a relationship that turned sour with the bad experiences. Our minds and bodies sometimes go into denial about the negative aspects because we don’t want to feel bad. It’s like a protection mechanism that focuses on the good times and how you felt during those moments.
When you primarily focus on the positive, it becomes hard to acknowledge the negative because thinking about it makes you feel bad. You might have been in a relationship with more downs than ups, but because you felt good during the good times, that’s what you hold onto. If your mind minimizes the bad times, you end up remembering more of the good times.
This is why many people stay in or return to relationships where they were treated poorly. Their mental filters have blocked out many of the bad memories and held onto how they felt during the good times. Love can trick us into thinking we had it good when it was only good sometimes.
In extreme cases, you might be in a relationship that’s mostly terrible, but the small percentage that’s good feels amazing in comparison. The contrast is so great that you can’t compare it to anything else. You go from feeling low to being on cloud nine because you’re finally being treated with kindness and respect. You hope it lasts, even though you know it’s usually not like this.
This pattern can occur in relationships where things are consistently bad, and then suddenly, there’s a good day. During that good time, it feels like your dreams have come true. You develop hope that things will improve, and you start thinking optimistically about the future. These good feelings become a strong memory to hold onto when things inevitably go bad again.
The good memories and feelings become very powerful, and they’re what you grasp onto during the bad times. It’s natural to want to avoid remembering the painful stuff because it brings back those difficult emotions. It’s like when someone asks if you remember when a loved one died – you don’t want to relive those painful feelings.
When it comes to abuse victims, their minds can play tricks on them. They might experience moments of kindness and care from their abuser, which feel amplified because they’re in stark contrast to the abuse. These good times create strong, positive memories that the victim clings to when things get bad again.
Coming back to the email I received, they said they met someone they really cared about who eventually became rude, degrading, and selfish. And now, even though the relationship ended years ago, they still miss this person. However, they’ve realized that the way they were treated in the end wasn’t loving at all.
It’s important to remember that if an abusive person comes back into your life, you’ll likely experience both good and bad times with them. It’s similar to childbirth in a way – it’s incredibly painful, but many women choose to have more children because the reward outweighs the pain. The difference is that, in a toxic relationship, it’s a constant cycle of ups and downs.
The person who wrote to me said they want to cherish the love that was once there while acknowledging that this person wouldn’t have made a good romantic partner. I think that’s a great way to look at it. You can appreciate how someone made you feel without wanting them back in your life.
When you have strong feelings for someone, it’s often a mix of self-love and love for the other person. If they make you feel good about yourself, you feel loving and positive. But if they’re belittling and degrading you, they’re not a good partner, no matter how good they made you feel at times.
It’s okay to have conflicting feelings about someone who hurt you. You can feel love for them and still know they’re not good for you. You can remember the good times fondly while hating the bad times. This is common in abusive relationships.
I experienced this with my stepfather. He was a violent alcoholic who mistreated my family, but I still had loving feelings for him. If I found out he died, I think it would hit me hard because he meant something to me at one time. I have good memories of him, like when we rode a swinging pirate ship at an amusement park. It was hilarious seeing him so out of his element, and in that moment, I loved him.
Now, I have mixed feelings about him. I don’t want him in my life or near my family because he’s dangerous. He’s like Jekyll and Hyde – kind and generous one moment but unsafe to be around the next.
So yes, it’s possible to cherish the good memories while acknowledging that someone isn’t right for you. Your feelings can be complex, and that’s okay. You can remember the good times you had with people in your life, even if they’re no longer a part of it. It’s okay to cherish those memories and moments when you felt a strong connection with someone. You might think, “That was a wonderful time. We had amazing experiences together, and I felt really good about our bond.”
But you also recognize that the rest of the time, they were too toxic to be around. This is why you choose to love from afar. It’s not just about physical distance but emotional distance, too. You need to keep yourself safe for your emotional well-being.
You don’t fully invest in loving this person or wanting to create new memories with them. You don’t support that idea, but you do remember what you had. When you think of the good times, it makes you feel good. And that’s okay. You can love people and those times without needing anyone’s permission. You feel good about it because you felt good then, and those feelings are still valid. This is also common in abusive relationships – you might have mixed feelings inside.
You might wonder, “I still love this person, yet they hurt me. Why do I still love them?” It’s because you did love them. You had moments of love, moments when you couldn’t stand them, moments of fear, and maybe even moments of hate.
All these feelings are real and authentically you. They’re all part of you and the human experience.
Loving someone doesn’t mean you have to be with them, near them, or spend your life with them. It just means you loved them at certain times, couldn’t open your heart to them at others, and had to protect yourself at times, too.
You don’t need to retrain your mind to handle this situation. Instead, you need discipline. It’s hard to have love for someone and then just turn it off like a light switch. Some people can do this. But for many, it’s not that simple. You can have caring, loving thoughts about people from your past, especially those you loved.
If someone tells you that you shouldn’t have loving thoughts about a person because they hurt you and you should feel angry instead, you might agree. But you also had good times with them. You don’t need to throw all that away. In fact, it might be unhealthy if you did.
Should You Erase a Painful Past So You Can Move Forward?
It’s important to acknowledge the loving, fun, happy times you had with someone. For example, if you’ve been married for 20 years and find out your partner has been cheating for the last two, you might feel like your whole marriage was a sham and that you wasted 20 years of your life.
It’s okay and normal to feel that way. You’d be angry, thinking you could have spent time with someone who wouldn’t cheat on you. But there’s also the fact that you had 18 years together with probably some amazing memories.
It’s not necessarily always healthy to forget all those amazing memories and how you felt. Your identity is wrapped up in those memories. They’re an intrinsic part of you. If you had good memories before you found out about the betrayal, why take that away from yourself?
It’s not really about them anyway. It’s about how you feel about yourself – how you feel inside – and yes, how you feel about them, too. It’s also about the security, warmth, and love you experienced. It’s all intertwined, and while it might feel like they took some of that away, don’t take it away from yourself.
When a relationship turns sour or toxic, it doesn’t negate the good times you had. Those memories and feelings are real and valid. It’s important not to invalidate them because doing so might lead to losing a part of yourself. If you take a long-term relationship and convince yourself it was all a waste of time, forgetting the good and focusing only on the bad, you’re essentially tearing away a significant part of who you are.
Your memories are a part of your identity. If you decide to erase those memories or label them as a waste of time, you might end up feeling like there’s something missing inside of you.
Some people choose to do this because they need to start over and rebuild. However, it’s crucial to be careful about what you decide to let go of. You might have wonderful memories with people who also gave you bad experiences. It’s not always wise to erase everything just because you discovered someone was unkind or abusive.
That being said, if getting rid of these memories and feelings, both good and bad, helps you feel better and move forward, then you have every right to do so. If someone mistreated or abused you terribly, and you find that extracting all memories associated with them gives you a fresh start without the toxic mix of emotions, then that might be what you need.
The key is to do what serves you best. If holding onto good memories helps you maintain a sense of self and growth, do that. If letting go of everything associated with a toxic person helps you heal and move forward, that’s okay, too. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. What matters most is finding the path that leads to your healing and happiness.
My partner recently shared something that made me think about past relationships in a new way. She told me she still cares about everyone she’s been with before. She has feelings for them, thinks about them, and hopes they’re doing well. This doesn’t mean she’s in love with them or wants to go back to them. It simply shows she has a big heart and cares about people she’s shared experiences with.
For a long time, I used to shut people out after a relationship ended. I’d close the door and move on. But her words made me reflect on my own past. I realized I’d be sad if I heard any of my exes got hurt or died. This made me wonder: Is it because I knew them well, or do I still have feelings for them? I think it’s a mix of both.
When we spend time with people and connect with them, those feelings can last a long time, maybe forever. They become part of us, and we become part of them. In a relationship, “I” becomes “we,” and “me” becomes “us.” The other person starts to show up in our thoughts. For example, when I go to the store, I might think, “I wonder if Asha wants yogurt. I’ll get her some.”
If my partner suddenly left me for someone else, I’d be devastated. But how could I erase all the good times we’ve had? It would be tough. I might feel angry and need to work through those emotions. Looking back at my first long-term relationship from decades ago, any negative feelings have faded. I remember some good times, but I wouldn’t date those people again. Still, they hold a place in my heart because they were once part of it.
I’m glad my Asha, my wife, got me thinking about what’s healthy when it comes to feelings for people from our past. I have come to believe it’s absolutely okay to have feelings for those we were once in a relationship with – even the people who may have hurt us. They were part of our lives, and we were part of theirs. It’s hard to completely remove that unless there’s been serious trauma involved.
When you have a loving connection where you can be vulnerable with someone, you share a unique bond. You don’t usually get as deep or vulnerable with friends and family as you do with a romantic partner.
Some people in relationships might get upset if their partner keeps pictures of their exes. They might say, “You shouldn’t have pictures of anyone but me.” I think that’s a narrow-minded view, though I might have felt that way years ago.
Now that I’m older and understand love better, I see things differently. If you support your partner’s happiness and individuality, which is how I define love, you should be okay with them having memories and pictures from past relationships. It’s part of their history!
When you’re okay with this, you’re showing how much you love and support them. When they feel your support, they’ll want more of it and more of you. And they won’t want to let you go.
