Can you love someone new while still missing your ex or lost partner deeply?

Yes, absolutely. And the part of you that resists this truth is worth examining. We're taught that moving forward means leaving the past behind, but Mirabai shows us something different. She loved her husband. He died. She didn't stop grieving him to become devoted to Krishna. Both loves shaped her. Both made her who she was. The heart isn't a room where you have to turn off the light in one corner to illuminate another. What matters is honesty. You can miss someone and genuinely care about someone new. You can have moments where old grief surfaces unexpectedly—a song, a season, a familiar gesture—and it doesn't mean your new relationship is false. It means you're human. It means you've loved more than once, and each love changed you. This gets easier when you stop seeing it as betrayal and start seeing it as expansion. Your new partner deserves to know this about you, and you deserve to stop performing a recovery that isn't real. The examined heart doesn't pretend the past is gone. It makes room for both what was and what is. That's where real love begins—in honesty, not amnesia.