Why Do We Go Back to People Who Hurt Us?

Imagine a kitchen. Three friends are sitting around the table, drinking wine and spending their second hour trying to comfort Katya.

Katya is crying, periodically saying that she is “a complete idiot.” Her friends assure her that she is not, pass her tissues, and at the same time compile a list of reasons why Maksym is absolutely not worth it.

The list becomes impressively thorough.

He can disappear for several days after an argument. He refuses to discuss anything. He makes promises and does not keep them. He flirts with other women. Somehow, every conflict eventually ends with Katya being the one at fault. If she says that something hurts her, he tells her she is being dramatic.

By the end of the evening, there are already twenty-five items in the notes app.

Katya agrees with every one of them. She even adds a few herself.

Her friends pour out the last of the wine, hug her, and ask for just one thing: “Please, this time, don’t go back.”

About a month passes.

One evening, Marina opens Instagram and sees Katya. She is sitting in a restaurant, smiling. Maksym is across from her, holding her hand, and the caption says something about a wonderful evening.

Marina stares at the photo for about ten seconds and has roughly one thought:

“Katya! Why? Whyyyyyy?”

Especially considering that this is already the third time.

And that “why?” is actually far more interesting than it may seem.

Katya has not forgotten the twenty-five points. She did not wake up one morning and decide that Maksym had actually treated her wonderfully and that all those previous fights had been a dream. She remembers perfectly well why she left.

So why do people sometimes go back to relationships in which they were already unhappy?

We don’t only miss what was actually there

From the outside, other people’s relationships can look fairly simple.

Here is the person. Here are twenty-five reasons why being with him feels bad. Just leave. Problem solved.

Except attachment does not work particularly well according to the rules of mathematics.

After the breakup, Katya loses not only, and perhaps not even primarily, the real Maksym who avoided conversations, disappeared after arguments, and did plenty of other things that led her friends to label him a walking red flag and create that famous list.

She loses another Maksym too.

The one who may never really have existed, but who has lived in her imagination for years.

The Maksym who will one day learn to talk about his feelings. Who will understand how much he hurt her. Who will become more responsible. Who will stop running away from difficult conversations. Who will finally see how much she has invested in the relationship.

And along with this version of Maksym comes an entire future.

They will move somewhere together. Make a home. Take the trip they have been planning for years. Get the dog they once talked about. Maybe there will be children. Slow Sunday breakfasts. Mutual friends. A normal, peaceful life.

Sometimes we spend years building a relationship not with the person actually sitting in front of us, but with their potential version.

With the person they could become.

That is why a breakup can mean losing much more than a partner.

When someone is trying to understand how to get over a breakup, it can seem as though the task is simply to stop thinking about an ex. But sometimes what we have to let go of is not only the person, but the entire future we had already imagined with them.

Katya is not only losing Maksym. She is losing a possible life that has existed in her mind for years.

As long as she remains in the relationship, hope stays alive. Maybe after this argument he will finally understand. Maybe when they move in together. Maybe when he changes jobs. Maybe if they have one more serious conversation. Maybe after therapy. Maybe once he understands that he could genuinely lose her.

A breakup forces her to face a much more painful thought: that future may never exist at all.

Sometimes we go back not because we have forgotten how bad things were, but because we are not yet ready to give up the hope of how good they might one day have become.

But there really were good moments too

There is another important part that often gets lost when we talk about difficult or toxic relationships.

There is usually good in them too.

Sometimes very good.

If someone behaved terribly from the very first date, every single day, without a single warm or loving moment, becoming attached to them would be much harder.

Even in much more serious situations, such as relationships with someone struggling with addiction or relationships involving abusive behaviour, victims often remember moments of genuine tenderness and care.

A woman may spend an hour talking about how her husband drank, cheated on her and humiliated her, and then suddenly say:

“But when I was really ill, he got up before me, made me a sandwich and brought me tea in bed.”

And something in her expression changes completely.

That sandwich does not cancel anything. It does not erase the drinking, the cheating or the humiliation.

But it happened.

Just like that night when they laughed until morning. That trip to the sea. The incredible sex after an argument. The flowers for no reason. The conversation when, for the first time in months, it felt as though she had genuinely been heard.

Our minds do not store relationships in a neat spreadsheet where we can add up all the good and bad events and see which side wins.

Individual moments can carry enormous emotional weight.

Especially when the good happens rarely.

When the good becomes a reward

There is a psychological mechanism known as intermittent, or unpredictable, reinforcement.

Put very simply, behaviour can become particularly strongly reinforced when the reward does not appear every time, but unpredictably.

That is one reason instability can sometimes create a stronger attachment than we might expect.

If your partner is usually attentive and caring, a nice evening does not feel miraculous. It is simply part of ordinary life.

Now imagine something different.

You have been tense for days. You do not know whether he will answer today or go silent again. You do not know what mood he will come home in. You have argued, tried to talk, and got nowhere.

And then suddenly everything changes.

He arrives with flowers. He hugs you. Says he missed you. You go out for dinner, laugh all evening, come home, have amazing sex, and before falling asleep he says exactly what you have been waiting so long to hear.

After a long period of tension comes enormous relief.

And that evening stays with you.

When the good becomes rare, it stops being an ordinary part of the relationship and gradually turns into a reward.

And once you have received that reward before, it becomes very easy to wait for it again.

“Yes, things are bad now. But I remember how good they were that one time.”

That is why someone may remember not the dozens of ordinary evenings when they felt lonely beside their partner, but that one sandwich.

Sometimes we have known this pattern for much longer

Of course, not every difficulty in adult relationships begins in childhood.

But for some people, inconsistent closeness can feel deeply familiar because of early experience.

There is one important difference between an adult and a child. An adult can, at least theoretically, leave a relationship. A child cannot look at their parents and say, “I don’t really like the way you treat me, so I think I’ll rent my own apartment.”

A child is completely dependent on adults.

They need their care, food, safety, connection and love. Their psyche has to adapt to the reality available to them simply in order to survive.

If a father often comes home drunk, shouts, or is simply emotionally unavailable, a child may hold especially tightly to the moments when things are good.

“Last Saturday Dad was sober, we went for a walk, and he bought me ice cream.”

That is not stupidity or a refusal to see reality.

The child needs to preserve some sense that the adult they depend on still loves them and can be safe.

If this kind of experience repeats for years, inconsistent closeness can become a very familiar kind of relationship.

Not pleasant. Not something the person consciously chooses. And certainly not because they enjoy being hurt or mistreated.

Simply familiar.

The psyche already knows how to live here. How to wait. How to read another person’s mood. How to value the good periods intensely. How to survive the bad ones. How to think, just a little longer and everything will get better.

That is why calm, predictable relationships can sometimes feel unfamiliar at first, while a familiar emotional roller coaster can feel unusually intense and meaningful.

When being with him hurts, but being without him feels even worse

Another mechanism that can keep someone in a relationship like this is emotional dependency.

It does not necessarily look like the dramatic declaration, “I can’t live without you.”

Sometimes it looks much more ordinary.

If he messages me, I have a good day. If he does not, I cannot think about anything else.

If he is affectionate, I feel beautiful, interesting and wanted. If he becomes distant, I begin to doubt myself.

When things are good between us, I feel calm. If we argue, I cannot work properly, sleep or get on with my life until contact has been restored.

Gradually, a large part of my internal emotional state begins to depend on another person.

And that creates a painful paradox: being with him hurts, but being without him may feel even worse.

Because when the partner disappears, it is not only the source of pain that disappears. So does the person from whom I have become accustomed to receiving relief, reassurance of my value, closeness and the feeling that everything is all right again.

In some relationships, this dynamic can develop into what is described as codependent relationships, where a significant part of someone’s attention and life becomes organised around their partner’s condition, problems and behaviour.

“If I talk to him in the right way, he’ll stop drinking.”

“If I ask for less, he won’t get angry.”

“If I support him a little more, he’ll finally change.”

The focus quietly shifts from “what is happening to me in this relationship?” to “what else do I need to do to make him become different?”

One day Maksym writes, “I understand everything now”

A month has passed since that evening in the kitchen, the wine and the twenty-five-point list.

Katya misses him.

Then one evening a message appears on her phone:

“I’ve been thinking a lot. You were right. I understand everything now. I’ve changed.”

That sentence can sound incredibly convincing, not because Katya is naive, but because she desperately wants it to be true.

If Maksym really has changed, she does not have to say goodbye for good to the future she has imagined for so long. She does not have to admit that years of waiting changed nothing. She does not have to give up hope.

The Maksym she has been waiting for all this time might finally become real.

They arrange to have dinner.

A few days later, Marina opens Instagram and sees the familiar restaurant photo.

The circle closes.

How to leave a toxic relationship when you still want to go back

When someone searches for how to leave a toxic relationship, they are often given very obvious advice: block the number, delete the photos, stop replying to messages.

Usually, those things really are necessary.

But the difficult part is that you can block someone’s number and still continue the relationship with them inside your own head.

You can keep waiting, imagining, hoping and rehearsing future conversations.

So one important question may not only be, “Why can’t I let him go?” but also:

What exactly am I afraid of losing along with this relationship?

The person himself?

The feeling of closeness?

My dream of having a family?

The fear of being alone?

The hope that everything I have been through will eventually mean something?

The belief that somehow I will finally manage to earn this person’s love?

Sometimes it really is difficult to understand this on your own, especially when the same relationship has already ended and restarted several times. People may seek a psychologist for relationship problems not because they want someone else to decide whether they should stay or leave, but because they want to see their own attachment, expectations and fears more clearly, and understand what is actually keeping them connected to this particular person. And that can be one of the best decisions they make.

There is also another question that may feel uncomfortable, but can bring us very quickly back to reality:

If this person never changed at all, would I want to spend another five years with them exactly as they are now?

Not with the future Maksym who has understood everything.

Not with Maksym after therapy, a new job, a move or one more serious conversation.

With the person who exists now.

“I’ve changed” is still not enough

People really can change.

Sometimes couples separate, come back together and build a completely different relationship.

So returning to an ex-partner does not automatically mean someone has made a mistake. The more important question is: what exactly has changed?

Not simply, “I understand everything now,” but what exactly do you understand?

Not simply, “Things will be different now,” but what exactly will be different?

If Maksym used to disappear for three days after an argument, what will he do now when he becomes angry again?

If alcohol was the problem, what has actually changed in his relationship with alcohol?

If he cheated, what will agreements, trust and responsibility look like now?

If he refused for years to talk about problems, is he now willing to have those conversations even when they are uncomfortable?

The words “I’ve changed” can be incredibly soothing.

But change is visible only in behaviour.

And not especially during the first three romantic dates after getting back together, but when a difficult situation arises again.

When the person is angry.

When they hear “no.”

When they do not get what they want.

When they feel jealous.

When they are tired.

When conflict appears.

Those are the moments when it becomes much clearer whether a genuinely new way of being in the relationship has developed.

Maybe it is worth opening that list again

Somewhere on Katya’s phone, those twenty-five points are still there.

And if Maksym really has changed, she does not even need to delete the list.

Quite the opposite.

After some time, she can open it again.

And see which items are genuinely no longer true.

Not what he promised to change.

Not what Katya desperately wants to believe has changed.

But what has actually become different in their life together.

Sometimes people really do return to each other and build new, much healthier relationships.

But there is a significant difference between:

“I’m going back because this person and our relationship have genuinely changed”

and

“I’m going back because it hurts too much to give up the hope that one day they will change.”

And perhaps, when we once again feel an almost unbearable pull to go back, it is worth asking ourselves not only:

“Why am I going back to him again?”

But also:

“Who exactly am I missing right now: the person who was actually beside me, or the person I spent so long hoping they would become?”