Heartbreak is a brutal but honest editor. It shows you what you actually needed from someone.

Loss clarifies by removal. While a relationship is running, what you needed from it is tangled up with habit, hope and the wish for it to work; afterward the absence is specific, and the shape of what is missing tells you plainly what mattered. That information is expensive and it is real.

When you are able, write down what you actually miss rather than who you miss. Being listened to, being relied on, feeling steady on a Sunday. Those are requirements you can carry forward, and naming them is different from wanting the same person back.