Ep #34: The Hidden Grief No One Talks About: Missing the Person You Were in a Past Relationship

In today’s episode, I’m sharing a personal story about grief, nostalgia, and the versions of ourselves that relationships leave behind. Sometimes we think we’re yearning for an ex, when really we’re grieving the version of ourselves who existed in that chapter. And while it’s tender and sometimes gut-wrenching, this grief can also be a doorway into growth, self-love, and a deeper understanding of who you are now.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- The difference between missing a person vs. missing the version of yourself you were with them
- Why nostalgia is both beautiful and painful—and why it’s okay to feel it deeply
- How to reflect on who you were in past relationships without making it mean you “should” go back
- The role of grief in healing and why letting yourself feel it is essential for growth
- Reflection questions to help you integrate past versions of yourself and step into your next evolution

🎧 Tune in now! And if this episode resonates, send me a DM on Instagram—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

👉 Doors to PEACEFULLY ATTACHED are open! Click HERE for full details

MIMI SOCIAL MEDIA
Come say hi 👋 (or DM me your biggest takeaway) over on Instagram HERE!

Got something you'd love me to record an episode on? DM me and let me know!

Transcript

0:00

You are listening to the Secure Love Club podcast. I'm your host, Mimi Watt. Hey friends, welcome back to the club. I am sitting at my desk with my delicious coffee, a long black, with a dash of hot almond milk if you wanted to know. And I just got back from a Pilates class with my sister, which was, you know, I do Pilates every now and again and more of a weights girl. But, um, I enjoy it when I go. And anyway, just to set the scene for you, it's a rainy, cloudy morning here in Melbourne. And I'm rugged up. I've got the heater on and it's nice and cozy, and I wanted to race home and jump on the mic to record an episode that is coming through me. Like that's how it feels. It's coming through me from an experience that I had two nights ago and now. I'm currently recording this on Tuesday, the 9th of September, and two days ago on the 7th of September, we had in, uh, astrology what they call a, what does it say? A f uh, the moon. Being in Pisces now, I'm not like, I read my horoscope every day. I'm a Virgo. Hey, but I am not like a full astrology person. I don't understand a lot of this, but I had the craziest night on Sunday night, so on the 7th of September, like one of the most. Emotional nights I've had in a long time and it felt like it came out of nowhere, and I'll go into that in the episode. But when I stepped outside the front door the next morning to go to the gym, there was the moon was directly in front of my, in my eye gaze. It was huge and glowing and there was clouds like parted all around it. It was this big, beautiful full moon. And I said, right. You motherfucker, you have got to have something to do with this. Anyway, and then I was talking about it on my stories yesterday and this um, beautiful woman I know who's a kinesiologist replied to my story and she was like, oh my god, girlfriend don't even, like, there is something, it's definitely the full moon. Like it's this, it's this moon being in Pisces and it's really intense. And so. I thought, okay, great. So it's the full moon, but it's, you know, I, I also know that I am PMSing, so that time of the month is always extra sensitive. But I went and googled what this bloody full moon in Pisces is about, and it says We are being drawn into the deep well of emotions where we all hold our traumas. Profound pain and shame. This portal will expose. All of those uncomfortable feelings for us to nurture them, give them a hug of understanding, then release them. It says, all of these feelings are a part of us, not outside of us. So this. Kind of made sense for me because there was some profound pain that came up for me on Sunday night. And as I said, I was not expecting this pain to come up. I wasn't expecting to go down this route, if you will. Um, but it brought up a lot and it brought up a really important topic that I've been reflecting on over the last couple of days, and that I wanna share with you because I know that this is actually such a. Universal experience, and when we talk about it, it can bring a lot of comfort and relief in a way to the feelings you might be experiencing. And so this pain that I was experiencing was in relation actually to a past relationship to an ex partner of mine from about five years ago. And the. This relationship was that one that holds so much significance for me in my relationship journey. And I think everyone has that one relationship that really just left such an imprint on who you are and changed the course of your life. And it's one of those relationships you think back to often. And as I'm saying this, maybe there's that one relationship that you can think of right now and you're like. Oh yeah, that one is just the one that no matter how much time passes it, it's like you can think back to that person and that relationship and it just feels like you're sucked back into that present at any moment. So today we're gonna talk about what it means to sort of differentiate between missing the person and the relationship versus. Missing who you were when you were in that relationship, missing the version of you who existed in that relationship. Because often that is actually what we are grieving more than the person. So if this is hitting a nerve for you. My love. We are gonna dive into this and explore this conversation because it's important and I think it's going to help to almost like integrate further maybe some of the pain or grief that you might still be holding over that past relationship. So let's take a sip of our coffee and dive in. Let me go back and paint the scene for you on Sunday night. So I'm sitting in bed, I was watching something, I don't know, and I wasn't that invested. And so, you know, when you're watching something, you're not that invested and you're like, ah, just pick up my phone. So I pick up my phone. I think I was on Instagram and. Fuck knows why, but I had this instinct to go into my camera roll and go back to 2020 and look through my photos and content from that time in my life. And now the camera roll is. A dangerous place to go, especially if you're feeling a little bit sensitive or a little bit fragile, because we don't always know what we're gonna see in there. We are gonna see photos of exes, of past living environments, friendships, times when we looked different and felt different and were, you know, living a different life. And it's just a bit of, you're playing a bit of emotional Russian roulette sometimes when you go back into your camera roll anyway. I had this, yeah, as I said, I had this urge to go back and look at this time of my life, and so I did and I'm scrolling back and of course this was the time when I was in that relationship, that one that change the course of my life forever. And this relationship was not particularly a super long relationship. I think we were together for about. 10 months, but you know, that time doesn't always equal significance or impact of a relationship and. This person was, you guys have, you've heard me speak about the relationship that was the catalyst to my deep transformation journey and healing journey with relationships. This was the relationship where when we ended it, I dove deep into trying to understand myself and my attachment style because whilst that relationship was. Amazing and filled with love and so much passion and a connection that's very, very deep. It was also very painful, and not because the person I was with was a bad person or harmful at all, but you know this, he had a lot of, um, wounds himself and so did I that we both hadn't really what like looked at and he was heavily avoidant. I was heavily anxious, so. You know that combination is, it's really challenging. It's really, really painful. Hence why I got into this line of work once I figured all this out. Anyway, so I was 24 when I got into this relationship, 25 when we broke up, and this was also when the pandemic was happening, so. There's a lot of reasons as to why this relationship sort of feels quite, I don't know how to describe it, like quite magical in my mind. I always say that, you know, to the people close to me, and I've said this to him, that I feel like we have known each other in the past life. It, it's just something about this person that feels so familiar and deeply connected to me on some level. And anyway, so we were together when COVID hit and. You know, I don't know if you feel the same way, but when I think back to that time, it feels like time just stood still and everyone was. You know, bunkered down, you're in your house and you are just close to the people you love. You're spending so much quality time together. You are cooking, you are being present. You are playing card games, you're watching movies, and the pressure to be out socializing all the time, or the expectation that is put on us or that we put on ourselves wasn't there. And so it was such a interesting time in the world. And also in my love life. So there was that combination. Right. And when I mentioned in the introduction of this podcast, missing a version of yourself from a past relationship for me in this relationship, it was before I, how do I describe it? It was before I had a huge. Like emotional and spiritual awakening. So maybe it's that I was a slightly more naive version of myself and I was younger and I was in that phase of my life where I felt like I had so much time ahead of me and. Everything was still such a mystery in life, and I mean, I'm speaking as if I'm like fucking 80 right now, but I'm only 30, but. Just stay with me. Um, this was also at the time when I was just trying to get my business off the ground. So my first business, which was in general life coaching, this was when I had been made redundant from a job that I was in, and I'd invested nearly all of my money into a. Business coach to help me get my business off the ground. So that was really exciting. I was fresh into the entrepreneurial journey. Maybe that's also part of it. Like I wasn't, I didn't, I wasn't, um, didn't have all the battle wounds and the scars that come from trying to get your own business off the ground. So there was just such a Yeah, a naivety, a. Uh, like a wild hearted free version of myself in that relationship and that my partner at the time was also very free spirited and he, you know, he's a surfer. He rode a motorbike. He loved adventures and just living that sort of lifestyle that. It really brought out something in me that I hadn't tapped into much before him. Like I've always been sort of sporty and love being in nature, but he brought out this other side, this other, he showed me this like taste of life that I hadn't experienced with anyone else. And I remember feeling so alive. When we did that stuff, and also because we were in lockdown, like, you know, we used to sneak off on these adventures because as everyone was kind of going crazy inside all the time, like you just wanted to be outside and do what you could to feel any sense of normal, normal normalcy. Normalcy, I think that's the word. And so, you know, we would jump on the motorbike and we'd drive to like the, um, what's it called, the national. The na, what's it called? Like the national parks. And we'd drive on the motorbike, like through these winding along roads along the bush. And you know, we'd, we'd park and then we'd trek to this deserted beach and we'd spend all day just swimming in the ocean and lying in the sun. And then we'd drive back and we'd get a beer and we'd sit on the hill and watch the sunset. Then he was the one who taught me how to surf, and that opened up a whole new side of my life, like a whole new hobby that became extremely important to me and very deeply spiritual in a way. And so I'm rambling here, but I really just wanna paint the picture of who I was in that relationship. And so the other night, as I'm going through memory lane, I. Started to feel my, it was like my heart just cracked open and all of this emotion that I didn't realize was still so present and so strong just came up and I started crying. And let me tell you, I could not stop crying like I was crying for a good hour or more. And. This is gonna make you laugh if you know, you know, I had put tanning drops on my face, so, you know, you can mix like some tanning drops with your moisturizer and you can put it on and it gives you like a, like a slight glow the next day. I had put that on my face. And so I was crying, but I didn't want the, the tears to like make the affect the tan drops on my face. And so, you know when you're crying and you feel like you really need to let it out, but you're like, and you're trying to wipe the tears before they run down your face. This was me for like an hour and my sister came into my room and she was like, are you okay? And she's talking with me and I was like, I really need to cry harder, but I don't wanna fuck up my face. Seriously. It's so stupid. Anyway, but I just couldn't stop crying and it, it honestly, yeah, it felt like I could have cried 10 times harder and it felt like there was something that was trying to come out of me so intensely in this moment. And as my sister asked me what was wrong and what was coming up, I found myself saying to her, I just. Miss this moment in time. I miss this chapter of my life when I was this person and I was doing these things and when it felt like time stood, stood still in COVID and before, you know, before I, what sort of felt like got more and more into adulthood and the responsibilities of life and being an adult, I miss that so much and it feels like I will never have that back and. I don't know about you, but I can be a very sentimental person and very, um, nostalgic. And I think nostalgia is such a potent, beautiful, but painful emotion because when you're nostalgic for something, it, it means you are, you are looking back on an experience or a time in your life with such fondness and yearning, but you know, you can never have it back. And that's kind of what makes it beautiful. You know, that's the duality of life. It's, we have to know pain and. Longing and yearning in order to know pleasure and love and joy, and to be able to recognize it when we have it. So. Yeah, I was saying this to her. I was like, I just missed that. And, and of course, you know, I, I still hold this person that I was with very close to my heart, and, and he and I are on good terms, like we are friends and we've spoken many times since that breakup. Of course, when that breakup initially happened, we had to have a period of time where we did not speak. I had to go no contact because. For my anxious women out there, you know how painful a breakup is from an avoidant or from someone who's emotionally unavailable. It is excruciating, and I could not be in contact with him. I remember going through that breakup, just the nights following the initial breakup, being in bed. Writhing in pain, wanting with every cell in my being to reach out to him, to comfort me, to make it all better, to run back. But from experience, I knew that that relief would be so temporary and the come down and the fallout was just devastating. You know, the next day when you leave and you realize you have to start the grieving process all over again. So yeah, we went through a phase of not talking, and then as. The healing progressed and as we moved on with our lives, we spoke a few times and, and anyway, we're on good terms. But the other thing that I realized that was so painful and so sad, and I, I have felt this before, is when you know in your heart of hearts that you've outgrown that relationship and the version of who you are today wouldn't make sense. In that relationship anymore. And so this is why I really believe that we miss who we were in a past relationship and we miss the experiences we were able to have at the time because of who we were. And of course, the person that you were with made that experience possible. So it's okay to feel like. Yes, of course you might miss certain moments with that person, but I don't think it's that we actually long for that person specifically. I think we long for who we were in that relationship and the experiences that you created with them. I also believe that the other reason this came up so strongly, and this is a reflection piece I want you to carry, when you think about your own past relationship, where maybe you feel a similar way. Is it comes up to show us how much we have grown and how much we have evolved since that relationship. It comes up to show us with even greater clarity who we are today. That is different, that is grown, that is more evolved, more wise. Than who we were back then. And you know, when I got really honest with myself, I, I said yes. I at times miss who I was back then. And I will never forget that experience in that relationship. And I will hold those memories so close to my heart. But I'm glad I'm not the same person anymore because. That version of me didn't know herself. She didn't understand her conditioning around love and that it wasn't exactly healthy. She carried a lot of pain and went through a lot of pain in that relationship as well because. She, she didn't know how to confidently voice what she was feeling and what she needed, and she let herself be shut down at times and told that her emotions were too much or that she was too needy at times, and she internalized it to make it mean that there was something wrong with her. That version of me back then. Still held these internal beliefs that she wasn't enough, that she wasn't fully lovable, and because of that she attracted people who made it hard sometimes to feel loved. Because we are always looking for evidence to prove our deepest, most core beliefs to be true. That version of me. Was naive when it came to business and had expectations that it was all just gonna happen for her, like overnight, and she'd become a millionaire overnight. You know, she didn't, she was, I mean, I love her for being a big dreamer and being so excited about the life she was creating, but the version of me now has so much more experience and wisdom to know what it really takes. To run a successful business and the version of me now has such a high self-worth and self-esteem in relationships. The version of me now would never allow myself to be told I'm too much by someone. I would never allow myself to be put down or gaslit or be with someone who is conflict avoidant and who can't go there. I just wouldn't. And so I want you to think about who you were in that relationship. I don't wanna say the negative parts, but the parts that you can recognize were still naive and still needed a lot of growth and experience and transformation. What were the parts of yourself that are different to who you are now? And let that reflection show you how far you've come. Or let them show you what parts still need some love and attention and integrating. Are there subtle ways that you are still silencing yourself? Are you making yourself small to make other people more comfortable? Are you self abandoning because you don't wanna rock the boat? In relationships? Are you letting someone make you feel unworthy? Or like you're too much in relationships. What is it that is coming up for you that you can see if you are really honest with yourself? Still needs some work and some attention. The other reason I think this can come up is because maybe there is something about the way you were living your life or the things you were doing or who you were in that relationship that a part of you is craving now. I know for me that when I think, when I think along that line, I can recognize that over the last few years I have become heavily, heavily focused on building my business and. That's not a bad thing. It's served me very well, but I can feel that there is a part of my soul that is craving adventure, more adventure and is craving to get back into surfing because I kind of stopped that after a few accidents. I, I miss that in my life. There's a part of me that misses going on camping weekends, going with a group of friends and going surfing and sitting around a campfire and talking shit and sleeping in a tent under the stars. There is a part of me that is yearning for more of a carefree aspect of my life that is not sitting behind a desk for 10 hours a day. And yes, I fucking love what I do clearly because there's no way I'd be sitting behind a desk 10 hours a day building my business if I didn't love it, like I just wouldn't be doing it. And I love what I do and I love the clients that I work with, and I love peacefully attached my, my program, my signature program that I am always refining and building. I'm so passionate about it, but I do have moments where I can feel myself not having enough balance and getting a bit off kilter. And when we are. Are too far out of balance. We are leaning, you know, either too heavily into our, let's say our, our work or our masculine energy, or if we're leaning too far into our feminine energy. So our play, our creativity, our flow life has a way of bringing us back into equilibrium. And, and maybe this came up because it was the universe or my higher self, or. The fucking full moon in Pisces trying to bring me back into equilibrium and to remind me that, hey, whilst what you're doing and the mission that you are leading is so important, so is your life. And so is having fun and being carefree and going on adventures and. If anything, prioritizing that stuff is only gonna add more to my business because I know that the more life experience I have, the more I learn, the more I grow, the more joy I have and all of that I get to share with you. All of that wisdom I get to share with you and we get to grow together. So your second reflection piece is, are there parts of the way that you used to be living that you've forgotten about? That you've put on the back burner or you've let go of, maybe you've gotten really serious when around work. Maybe you have kids and you've put your kids first and being a mother and you've left your independence on the back burner, locked away in a closet because you think it's not that important. What is it that you need to bring back into your life to feel. Even more deeply connected to yourself to feel reinvigorated and to bring overflow into the other parts of your life, into your career, into your family, into your friendships, that's going to add to those relationships because you filled up your own cup first. I truly believe that some relationships are meant to come into our life for a reason. I, I mean, I think all relationships are important. They shape us and help us grow in many different ways, but there are some people that come into your life to teach you a very important lesson, to be the catalyst for a level of growth that is disproportionate to any other growth you've had in your life, and whether that relationship was really painful. And really hard, or it was not so painful, but significant in other ways. I invite you to reflect on why that relationship was a gift and the version of you who is in that relationship and recognize that it is okay to grieve who you were. It is okay to miss that. It doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It doesn't mean you haven't grown. I always say healing is not linear. This relationship was five years ago, and I'm telling you the other night when I was crying, it felt like the breakup had just happened. So never put yourself down or be hard on yourself because you're emotional about something that happened a long time ago and you think you quote unquote, should be over it. Don't do that to yourself. It's a disservice and it's not productive. But when it comes up, when the emotion comes up, look at it. Don't block it. Don't avoid it or numb it. Pay attention because pain is a gift. When pain comes up, it causes, it forces us, sorry to pay attention to what is present in our body and in our emotions. And there is always a gift if we look at it that way. If we can get curious about what is coming up in this, in this emotion, and an important piece is if you can recognize within yourself that you have outgrown that relationship. Don't make the pain mean that you should be with that person and that you should go back and be with that person. That's not what this is about at all. And your growth, part of your growth is having the wisdom and the discernment to recognize that, that just because we miss something or someone doesn't mean that it's right for who we are now. But let yourself grieve. Let yourself grieve who you were, the memories that moment in time, the person, let yourself grieve it, and then ask, what is the gift here in this grief? What is the wisdom and the love that is trying to come through in the other side? How can I grow from this moment of pain? What needs to be further integrated in order to up level into the next version of myself? You are going to be constantly evolving throughout life and shedding layers of yourself as you evolve. It's like the snake sheds the skin. It has to happen so that a new layer can form or a new version of yourself can take place and can take form in your life. And so. Let yourself change and evolve. Don't see it as a bad thing. See it as a good thing. I think when we try to cling for dear life onto a version of who we used to be, that's when we feel stuck. That's when we experience resistance, because the way that life wants to take place can't, it can't flow and evolve as it wants to naturally. We block ourselves off from opportunities from people who might be an even better fit for us or from the person we are now, the person we are becoming. So let yourself grieve past versions of yourself, but don't keep looking back in that direction. Take the wisdom, integrate it, and then look forward again into who you are becoming every single day moving forward. Alright my friends. That is it. That is straight from the heart, from my heart to your ears. And if this resonated with you, I would love to talk to you about it. Come to my Instagram, which is Linked Below, send me a DM and let me know if this is what you needed to hear today and if this resonated with you. Have a beautiful week, my friends, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. If you enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Share this episode with your friends and come find me on social so we can hang out between episodes. All the links are below in the show notes.