Don’t feel guilty about texting your toxic ex. It’s normal to have regrets over your old loves. It’s normal to give into the temptation to get back together again — or at least talk again.

You’re allowed to make mistakes in love. You’re allowed to screw up from time to time. No one is perfect and feelings are complicated. Love can compel you to do crazy things, to make bad decisions, to miss people who you should be happy to live without.

Texting your ex doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you stupid. It doesn’t make you the loser of the breakup. It might suck that he knows how much you miss him now, but he probably assumed you missed him anyway. He probably didn’t learn anything new.

Even though you might be embarrassed about some of the things you’ve said to him, you shouldn’t feel guilty about texting your ex because healing is a difficult process. It can take a long time. You’re bound to have setbacks along the way. There are going to be nights when you cry your eyes out over missing him and nights when you celebrate how happy you are without him. There are going to be nights when you have a hard time resisting the urge to text him and nights when his name never even pops into your mind.

Don’t feel guilty about texting your toxic ex because missing him isn’t something to be ashamed of. Even though he put you through hell, there were good times too. You have a lot of history. You have a lot of memories. It doesn’t matter that you’re better off without him because sometimes your heart is going to overpower your head. Sometimes you aren’t going to be able to stop yourself from missing him.

Don’t feel guilty about texting him because there’s nothing you can do about it now. You cannot change the past. You cannot take away the messages you sent. But you can stop yourself from sending more messages in the future. You can control the temptation to reach out to him again moving forward.

Just because you texted him when you were lonely or when you were drunk or when you were thinking about getting back together with him doesn’t mean you have to keep texting him. You can fix your mistake right now. You can delete him from your phone. You can mute him on social media. You can push him out of your world again if you think that’s what would be best for you.

Don’t feel guilty about texting your toxic ex because the important thing is you know it was a mistake. You know it should never happen again. You know he didn’t deserve to hear from you.

Texting him might have helped put things back into perspective. It helped remind you how dangerous it is to keep him in your world. Maybe texting him was part of your healing process — and now you can start moving on from him. You can learn how to live without him.