Why I’m Still in Contact With Someone Who Hurt Me
If someone you love has left a harmful relationship, or is trying to, you may have noticed something that doesn't quite make sense to you.
They know the relationship was damaging. They can name what happened. They might even use words like coercive control, gaslighting, or trauma bond. And yet they are still in contact. Still grieving. Still, in some quiet or not-so-quiet way, missing the person who hurt them.
If you're the one who left, you may be living with the painful awareness that the people closest to you don't understand this. That their love is showing up as pressure. That their fear for you is coming out as ultimatums.
This article is for both of you.
“I know this relationship harmed me. So why am I still in contact?”
This is one of the most common and most painful questions survivors carry in early recovery: If I know this relationship harmed me, why is part of me still reaching for them? The answer is not a lack of insight. Insight alone does not dissolve a trauma bond.
Understanding something with your mind and feeling it in your body are two very different things. And trauma bonds live in the body.
The attachment system doesn't respond to logic
When we form an attachment to another person, even a harmful one, the brain begins to treat that person as a source of safety and regulation. This is not a character flaw. It is the attachment system doing exactly what it was designed to do: orient toward connection, and treat its loss as a threat to survival.
In relationships characterised by intermittent reinforcement, where warmth and cruelty, closeness and withdrawal, alternate unpredictably, this attachment becomes stronger, not weaker, than in stable relationships. The brain learns to stay alert, to keep trying, to hold on. The unpredictability itself becomes the hook.
This is the same mechanism observed in animal studies on intermittent reward schedules. The most persistent, compulsive behaviour is not produced by consistent reward; it's produced by inconsistent reward. The nervous system learns: if I just keep going, a connection might come.
Leaving doesn't switch this off
When someone leaves a relationship built on these dynamics, the attachment system doesn't immediately update. The brain still registers the absence of that person as a threat. Cortisol rises. Intrusive thoughts increase. The body seeks contact not because the person wants to return to harm, but because contact temporarily quiets an activated nervous system.
This can look like staring at a phone, unable to concentrate on anything else, waiting to see if they've replied. It can look like a spike of panic after leaving a message unanswered for too long, not because anything has happened, but because the nervous system has learned that silence often meant something bad was coming. And it can look like a brief, flooding sense of relief after a single one-line message, followed almost immediately by shame.
This is not a weakness. It is neurobiological. And it is why early recovery from a trauma-bonded relationship can feel more like withdrawal from a substance than like a straightforward breakup.
There is also grief
Beneath the neurological piece is something simpler and perhaps harder to sit with: grief. Grief for who the person seemed to be. Grief for who you were in the relationship before things shifted. Grief for the life you thought you were building. These losses are real, even when the relationship was harmful. Grief and relief can coexist. So can love and clarity about the harm that occurred.
Leaving physically and letting go emotionally are often very different processes.
Why does contact not automatically mean someone wants to return
This is where loved ones often get stuck and understandably so. If they're still talking to this person, doesn't that mean they're going back?
Not necessarily. And assuming it does can cause real harm.
Contact in the early stages of leaving can serve many functions that have nothing to do with intending to return:
Regulation. For someone whose nervous system became oriented around a particular person, brief contact can temporarily reduce the physiological distress of separation. It functions less like choosing the relationship and more like managing an acute withdrawal symptom.
Fear management. In relationships involving coercive control, low-level contact is sometimes used to manage the risk of escalation. A person may maintain minimal contact precisely because going completely silent feels unsafe.
Reassurance-seeking. Survivors of psychological abuse often emerge with profound self-doubt. Brief contact can temporarily relieve the anxiety of not knowing, not because they want the relationship back, but because certainty, even painful certainty, is easier for the nervous system than ambiguity.
The process of letting go. Leaving is rarely a single moment. For most people, it is a process, sometimes a long one, of gradually increasing distance, both physical and emotional. Ambivalence is not a sign of failure. It is a normal part of disentangling from something the nervous system experienced as essential.
A person can be fully committed to not returning and still be in contact. These are not contradictory. They are the reality of early recovery.
Why pressure, shame, and ultimatums can backfire
This is perhaps the most important thing for loved ones to understand and the most counterintuitive.
When someone we love is in danger, the impulse to act decisively makes complete sense. To say: if you keep contact with this person, I will withdraw from you. To frame it as protecting yourself. To believe that making the stakes high enough will finally shift things.
But for someone already navigating a trauma bond, this dynamic can cause significant harm. Here's why.
Shame drives the bond underground
Survivors of psychological abuse are often already carrying profound shame. Shame that they stayed. Shame that they still miss someone who hurt them. Shame that they can't “just leave”. Many describe the experience of making contact or receiving a message and feeling that unwanted rush of relief and then spending the rest of the day hating themselves for it. When loved ones respond to continued contact with anger, disappointment, or threats, that shame intensifies and shame, research consistently shows, increases secrecy. The person doesn't stop making contact. They stop telling you about it. And now they are navigating their recovery alone.
Ultimatums can recreate the same nervous system threat
One of the defining features of coercive control is the experience of love being conditional, of affection being withdrawn as punishment, of compliance being demanded under the threat of abandonment. When loved ones issue ultimatums, even from a place of genuine care, the nervous system of someone who has lived inside that dynamic may not register it as different. It may register it as more of the same. Another person whose love comes with conditions. Another threat to manage. Another relationship in which they must be careful, controlled, and less than honest.
This is not a reflection on the loved one's intentions. It is a reflection of what coercive relational experiences do to the nervous system's ability to distinguish between safe pressure and unsafe pressure.
Survivors may withdraw from support to protect their autonomy
Perhaps most painfully, when someone feels controlled, even lovingly, they often pull away from the very support they need. Not because they don't value the relationship, but because their sense of self, already eroded by the abusive dynamic, needs to experience agency. Making their own decisions, even imperfect ones, can feel essential to recovery. Being managed, however kindly, can feel like one more loss of self.
What actually helps someone leave safely
If pressure and ultimatums are counterproductive, what does help?
Calm, consistent presence. The most valuable thing a loved one can offer is the experience of being safe to come home to. A relationship in which the survivor doesn't have to manage your feelings, perform their recovery correctly, or hide the messy truth of where they are.
Curiosity over conclusions. Rather than telling someone what they should do or feel, asking genuine questions: What would feel helpful to you right now? What's making this feel complicated? supports the restoration of self-trust that abuse often dismantles.
Non-shaming responses to ongoing contact. This doesn't mean pretending you're not scared. It means finding ways to express your fear that don't make the survivor responsible for managing it. I worry about you when I know you've been in contact with him. I'm not going anywhere, and I want you to be able to tell me when it happens is very different from if you keep talking to him, I can't be around you.
Helping restore agency, not removing it. Recovery from coercive control involves reclaiming the capacity to make your own decisions. Loved ones support this by offering information, perspective, and presence, not by taking over, deciding for, or issuing conditions.
Trusting that the person knows their own situation. Survivors often have detailed, nuanced knowledge of the risks involved in their specific situation, knowledge their loved ones don't have. Decisions that look inexplicable from the outside often make sense within the full context. Trusting this doesn't mean agreeing. It means staying curious.
The difference between support and enabling because it matters
This article is not suggesting that loved ones should tolerate anything indefinitely, or set aside their own well-being, or remain silent about their concerns.
Loved ones are allowed to have limits. They are allowed to feel frightened, frustrated, and heartbroken. They are allowed to say: I am not able to hear details of ongoing contact right now because it is affecting my own mental health. Setting a boundary around what you can hold is different from issuing a condition about what someone else must do.
There is also an important distinction between supporting someone's autonomy and colluding with a harmful dynamic. Loved ones are not required to pretend the situation is fine, validate contact they believe is dangerous, or keep secrets that compromise the safety of others, including children.
The question to hold is: is this limit I'm setting about protecting myself, or is it about controlling them? Both can feel the same from the inside. They have very different effects.
Loved ones can hold their own ground without making that ground conditional on the survivor's behaviour. They can stay present without approving. They can express concern without issuing threats. And they can trust that recovery, while rarely linear, is far more likely to succeed when the person going through it feels accompanied, not cornered.
A note for the person in recovery reading this
If you've shared this article with someone you love, it may be because you couldn't find the words yourself. That makes sense. Explaining a trauma bond to someone who hasn't experienced one is exhausting at the best of times, and nearly impossible when you're still in the middle of it.
You are not weak for still missing someone who hurt you. You are not failing at recovery because the process is taking time. The pull you feel is neurobiological, not a character flaw. And the fact that you are naming it, reading about it, and trying to stay grounded, even while missing them, is not nothing. It is, in fact, everything.
What you need from the people around you is not management. It is an accompaniment. And you are allowed to ask for that.
A note for the loved one who is frightened
Your fear makes complete sense. Watching someone you love stay connected to a person who has hurt them is genuinely painful. The instinct to intervene, to protect, to make it stop, these come from love.
But love, in this moment, may look less like action and more like steadiness. Less like drawing a line and more like holding a space. Less like making them choose and more like making sure they always have somewhere safe to land.
That is harder than issuing an ultimatum. It asks more of you. And it is far more likely to bring them home.
If you're trying to make sense of a trauma bond, whether you're the one living it or the one watching it, support is available. I offer trauma-informed counselling online across Australia, with a small number of reduced-fee places for those experiencing financial hardship. You're welcome to get in touch.
📧kat@safespacecounsellingservices.com.au
0452 285 526
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it normal to still love someone who abused me?
Yes. And it is one of the most painful and least understood aspects of psychologically abusive relationships. Love and clarity about harm are not mutually exclusive. It is entirely possible, and very common, to know, with considerable certainty, that a relationship was damaging, and to also feel grief, longing, and genuine love for the person who caused that damage. This is not confusion or weakness. The attachment system does not evaluate whether the person it is bonded to deserves the bond. It responds to history, to intermittent closeness and warmth, to the version of the person that was sometimes present. Loving someone who hurt you is not evidence that you are wrong about the harm. It is evidence that you are human.
Why does contact feel like relief, even when I know the relationship was harmful?
Because your nervous system came to treat this person as a source of regulation, a way of managing the physiological distress that their absence creates. This happens through a process called intermittent reinforcement, where unpredictable cycles of warmth and withdrawal train the brain to orient intensely toward the source of that warmth. When you make contact or receive a message, the nervous system registers a temporary reduction in threat. That relief is real. It is not an indication that the contact was a good idea, or that the relationship is safe. It is a neurobiological response, running below the level of conscious reasoning. Understanding this doesn't make the relief disappear. But it can change what you conclude from it.
How long does trauma bonding last?
There is no universal answer, and anyone offering a precise timeline is probably oversimplifying. What research and clinical experience both suggest is that the strength of the bond tends to correlate with the intensity and duration of the intermittent reinforcement, how long the relationship lasted, how extreme the cycles were, and how much earlier attachment history the bond connected with. For some people, the acute phase of the bond loosens relatively quickly once contact is reduced. For others, particularly where earlier relational trauma has been activated, the process is considerably longer. What matters most is not meeting a timeline but understanding that the persistence of the bond is not a character flaw and is not evidence about the relationship's worth. It is evidence about the depth of the neurobiological imprinting — which, with the right support, can change.
Can a trauma bond be broken?
Yes. Though the word “broken” is worth examining, because it implies a single moment of rupture that is rarely how recovery actually unfolds. What tends to happen instead is a gradual loosening, a process of increasing distance, both physical and emotional, that allows the nervous system to slowly update its threat prediction. The activated nervous system begins to learn, through repeated experience, that the person's absence is survivable. That the distress of separation, while real, does not last indefinitely. This process is significantly supported by consistent therapeutic work, by rebuilding trust in one's own perceptions, and by having relationships in which the nervous system can experience genuine safety. It is rarely linear. Moments of intense longing or the urge to make contact can resurface well into recovery, particularly in response to specific triggers. That is not failure. It is how nervous system healing works.
My family is threatening to cut contact if I keep talking to my ex. What do I do?
This is one of the most painful positions to be in during early recovery, navigating your own process while also managing the fear of people you love. A few things are worth holding onto. First, your family's reaction almost certainly comes from love, even when it lands as pressure or an ultimatum. Second, their fear does not give them accurate information about your timeline or what your recovery needs to look like. Third, if the threat of withdrawal is activating your nervous system in ways that make contact with your ex more likely, not less, that is worth naming, ideally with a therapist or someone you trust. You are not obligated to perform recovery in a way that satisfies everyone watching. You are obligated to move through it in a way that is real. If this particular dynamic with your family is making that harder, the article above and the related piece on adult children may be worth sharing with them directly.
I'm a loved one reading this. What should I actually do?
Stay. That is the most important thing. Stay present, stay honest about your fear, and stay available, without making your availability conditional on the person's behaviour. The experience of having somewhere safe to land, a relationship in which they do not have to manage your feelings or perform their recovery correctly, is one of the most protective things you can offer. You are allowed to set limits around what you personally can hold — there is a difference between I find it hard to hear the details of ongoing contact and if you maintain contact, I will withdraw from you. One is self-protection. The other is a condition that may recreate, for someone already shaped by conditional love, something uncomfortably familiar. If you are struggling with your own fear, grief, or helplessness around what is happening, please consider finding support for yourself. You are going through something genuinely difficult. You do not have to carry it alone, and you will be more able to offer a steady presence if you are not carrying it alone.
Related Reading:
If you're carrying shame about still missing them:
If you want to understand why the bond felt so powerful:
If you're struggling to make people around you understand:
When Your Adult Children Don't Understand Why You're Still Struggling to Leave (coming soon)
