Grieving a Relationship that Never Existed
After years of speaking publicly about the abuse I endured in childhood and later in my twenty-five-year marriage, I thought I had heard every possible question.
Then a podcast host asked something that stopped me cold.
“Do you miss him?”
My body recoiled before my mind could even process the words.
How could I possibly miss a man who psychologically tormented me, financially and sexually abused me, bragged about his infidelities, smeared my name behind my back, and ultimately plotted to kill me after our divorce?
The answer should have been simple.
But it wasn’t.
Because when I really sat with the question, I had to admit there were moments when he wasn’t cruel. Moments when he wasn’t drunk, explosive, manipulative, or terrifying. There were fleeting periods where we laughed together. Times when he seemed soft. Familiar. Human. Moments that gave me hope that maybe the man I loved was still somewhere underneath all the destruction.
And for a second, I wondered…
Maybe I did miss him.
But after reflecting more deeply, I realized something important:
I didn’t miss him.
I missed the life I believed we were going to have.
That realization hit me hard during May’s episodes of SHIFTING GEARS LIVE with Dr. Karen Kramer, best-selling author of Healthy Grief: Normalizing and Navigating Loss in a Culture of Toxic Positivity. During our conversations, she explained that grief is not reserved only for death or catastrophic loss. Grief also lives in the quiet disappointments. The daily heartbreaks. The futures we imagined but never got to experience.
That was it exactly.
I wasn’t mourning my ex-husband.
I was mourning the dream.
💔The promises.
💔The future he painted.
💔The safety I thought I had found.
💔The unconditional love I spent decades trying to earn.
💔The family connection.
💔The companionship.
💔The version of life I kept hoping would eventually arrive if I just loved harder, stayed longer, sacrificed more, or became “better.”
But that life never existed.
Like so many narcissistic relationships, ours began with love bombing, grand promises, intense emotional connection, and future faking. Then came the cycles of affection and cruelty. Idealization and rejection. Hope and devastation. Over time, my nervous system became conditioned to survive on crumbs of approval while constantly trying to avoid punishment.
That is the trauma bond so many survivors struggle to explain.
So yes, I grieved after the divorce.
And I grieved again after his final move out of the marital home.
But what I was grieving was not the loss of a healthy relationship.
I was grieving the collapse of the illusion.
And honestly? That kind of grief is uniquely painful because it comes wrapped in shame. There is often humiliation in realizing you fought so hard for something that was never truly real to begin with.
You wonder:
How did I miss the signs?
Why did I stay?
Why did I keep believing?
But this is where self-compassion becomes critical.
Dr. Kramer teaches that healing through grief requires us to acknowledge our pain without turning ourselves into the villain of the story. We can recognize unhealthy dynamics while still honoring the parts that felt meaningful to us. We can hold both truths at once.
The good memories do not erase the abuse.
The abuse does not erase the moments that felt real.
Both existed.
And suppressing either truth keeps grief trapped inside the body.
That matters more than most people realize. Unprocessed emotional pain does not simply disappear. It often manifests physically through anxiety, chronic illness, exhaustion, migraines, autoimmune issues, digestive problems, hypervigilance, and nervous system dysregulation.
The body keeps score long after the relationship ends.
So if you ever catch yourself smiling at an old memory…
If you laugh while telling a story from “back then”…
If a part of you still grieves…
That does not mean you should go back.
It does not mean the abuse was acceptable.
It simply means you are human.
You are allowed to mourn the future you hoped for while still being grateful you survived what actually happened.
And eventually, the goal is not to harden into bitterness over the injustice.
The goal is to return home to yourself.
Because love was never supposed to cost your identity in the first place.
And the healthiest love you will ever experience begins with the one you finally learn to give yourself.
📚 My multi-award-winning and best-selling memoir, GASPING FOR AIR: THE STRANGLEHOLD OF NARCISSISTIC ABUSE, shares the full story of surviving my first marriage and rebuilding afterward.
➡️ Download the first two chapters at danasdiaz.com.
📺 And watch Dr. Karen Kramer’s powerful appearance on SHIFTING GEARS LIVE with Dana S. Diaz on YouTube.
