“I Outgrew Them, But That Doesn’t Mean I Don’t Miss Them”
“I outgrew them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss them. I know I made the right decision—our paths were pulling in opposite directions, and I couldn’t stay small just to keep the relationship comfortable. But some days I miss the closeness, the ease, the way we used to laugh. I don’t want to go back. But I still miss who we were.”
Dear Taryn,
There’s something exquisitely honest about the way you said that. You didn’t try to clean it up or over-explain. You named the ache so many people carry in silence—the ache of moving on without malice. Of loving someone, outgrowing them, and still mourning the version of yourself who fit beside them.
I think we’re taught to view outgrowing people as a clean break. As if maturity means moving forward without looking back. As if clarity should erase longing. But that’s not how emotional truth works. Growth and grief are not opposites. They often walk hand in hand.
You made the right decision. That doesn’t mean it was an easy one. Choosing growth often means choosing loneliness—for a time. Because when you start to honor your own depth, your own values, your own emotional needs, the relationships that once felt like home can start to feel tight. Like shoes you loved that no longer fit. That doesn’t make the shoes bad. It just means you’ve changed.
But even when you know that, the missing doesn’t disappear. You can love the memories. You can crave their presence. You can smile at an old inside joke that pops into your mind, and feel a tug in your chest that surprises you. That doesn’t mean you’re confused. It means you’re human.
Missing them isn’t betrayal. It’s remembrance. It’s a signal that what you shared was real—and that you were real in it. It mattered. It shaped you. And even if it couldn’t come with you, it still walks with you in some invisible way.
I wonder if part of what you’re grieving isn’t just them, but the version of you who existed in that time. The one who laughed with them. Who felt known in a way that, even if no longer nourishing, was once comforting. It’s okay to mourn her too.
You don’t have to rewrite the past to validate the present. You don’t have to pretend it was toxic just to justify why you left. You’re allowed to say: we were good once. And that goodness still lives in me, even as I step into a life they may never see.
This is the emotional work of becoming: to carry what was, even as you walk toward what’s next. To let the memory soften instead of harden. To let missing someone be just that—missing. Not a directive. Not a signal to return. Just a small honoring of what once was.
You don’t need to stop missing them. You just need to trust that missing doesn’t mean moving backward.
You’re not wrong for remembering. And you’re not weak for walking away.
–RJ
Sometimes the deepest love is the kind you let go of, and still carry.