Sometimes the strongest attachment is not to a person, but to the unfinished possibility they represented.

What holds you is sometimes not the person but the version of life they seemed to make possible. The relationship that never quite happened, the future you had begun to picture: these are harder to release than an actual shared history, because nothing ever tested them and so nothing ever spoiled them. You are grieving a possibility, which has no flaws in it.

When you cannot let go, ask whether you are missing them or missing what you imagined. Describe the imagined version honestly, including what would probably have gone wrong. It is a small deflation and it returns a great deal of attention to your actual life.