Going through a big breakup usually means a lot more than losing a relationship or losing one person from your life. Often, we lose entire ecosystems — and seemingly overnight. Closure is elusive in general in a lot of breakups, and it shouldn’t always be the goal either. But there’s really a lack of closure when it comes to the other people brought into your life by your now-ex. I think of all the people who exited my life because of breakups and how neither of us knew our final conversations with each other were exactly that.

For me personally, a lot of these people show up in my dreams more often than any actual exes do. And if you find yourself similarly haunting by the ghosts of relationships past, you’re not alone! Here, seven queer people share who we miss from breakups other than our actual exes. (And yes, we all miss pets from past relationships, too. But for the purposes of their roundtable, we’re sticking to human answers.)