One of the most confusing parts of leaving a toxic relationship is realizing you can still deeply love the person who hurt you.

For many women, this creates enormous shame and internal conflict. You may know the relationship was unhealthy. You may know there was manipulation, betrayal, emotional abuse, dishonesty, or repeated violations of trust. And yet… a part of you still misses them. Still understands them. Still feels compassion for them. Still remembers the version of them you loved.

That contradiction can make you question yourself.

Many women I work with feel afraid to even admit this out loud because they worry it means they are weak, dysfunctional, trauma bonded, or incapable of moving on. But often, what they are experiencing is something much more nuanced.

I call this the “two-person paradox.”

It’s the experience of feeling like there were almost two different versions of your partner: the loving, connected, vulnerable version you bonded with… and the destructive, manipulative, or emotionally harmful version that caused so much pain.

And the nervous system struggles to reconcile those two realities at the same time.

Especially when you understand where their behavior came from.

Many women in toxic relationships have immense empathy for their partners. They understand the childhood wounds. The abandonment. The shame. The emotional neglect. The trauma. They can see how their partner became who they became. And sometimes that understanding becomes the very thing that keeps them stuck.

Because when you understand someone’s pain deeply enough, it becomes easy to minimize the impact their behavior had on you.

You begin holding compassion for them while abandoning compassion for yourself.

And even after the relationship ends, you may continue carrying guilt. Guilt for leaving. Guilt for giving up. Guilt for not loving them “well enough” to heal them. You may replay conversations in your head wondering if there was some way you could have explained things differently so they finally would have understood.

But relationships are not healed through one person endlessly over-functioning while the other avoids accountability.

Understanding someone’s wounds does not erase the consequences of their behavior.

And love does not require self-destruction.

In the video below, I talk more deeply about why this emotional contradiction happens, why lingering love after a toxic relationship is more common than people realize, and why it does not mean there is something wrong with you.

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