Cutting off ties....

Should we allow the people that hurt us to stick around in our lives or should we cut off all ties, and if so, when is the best time to do so?

This is a situation that's a lot easier said than done... If someone has hurt us, we can still want them in our lives, and still want to be around them. But we don't always see if that's good for us.
No one should place themselves in a situation that will hurt them. If it upsets you to be around them, or to talk to someone from a past relationship that has hurt you. Then don't have them around and don't talk to them.
The reason why people get upset when they're with their ex's is because they miss the better times with them, and having them so close. A little bit of pointing out the obvious there, but we try to keep them around, and in our lives because we try to latch on to what we had with them, and we get upset because we know it's not the same. That part of our life is over, and we have to deal with that change. Sometimes it's not always easy to accept.
If it isn't that easy to accept, then the best way to accept it, is to cut off those ties, don't emotionally torture yourself with it. (Sounds a little dramatic, but it is what you are doing to yourself.) People ask when is the best way to cut off ties with an ex, the answer? The second it starts to hurt you. Yeah, people can stay friends after a relationship and many people still hang out and stuff, but if you weren't ready to give up that relationship, then it's only going to hurt you, and that hurt isn't necessary, and I don't believe it's a good idea for anyone to put themselves in that situation.

You can come back to it later, when you're emotionally ready to have them in your life again.

Something that seems even more crazy is when we have moved on, that person from the past can still come back into ours lives, and we remember how it was, and begin to miss it again. It happens to a lot of people and we end up comparing it to what we have now. Sometimes even believing we were happier with what we had rather than what we have. And I think it's a little bit of 'we want what we can't have' sort of thing, and especially if we see someone else with what we want, we get jealous, and want it just a little bit more...

Some people even break off relationships to go back to what they had, and mostly they do regret it, and to everyone outside of the situation, it seems like a crazy thing to do. Is it?
Especially if we're the ones who got hurt in the past relationship, it's a lot easier to fall back into the trap we were in then. Because we didn't willingly take away what made us happy, so we crave it a little bit more because we weren't finished with it. It was something that we wanted and it got taken away from us.

It's natural for when that happens for us to want it back, and what people don't always see is the mistake of throwing away what they have now, because we're comfortable and happy, and what we had that made us happy before is a temptation to what we think would make us happier.
People believe that a person has changed, and they won't hurt them again... etc. We have a lot of excuses to justify what we're doing/thinking/feeling. But in reality it's usually a false happiness, things don't change, things didn't work out for a reason, and we forget that. We also don't realise or underestimate how much we'd be losing by throwing away what we have then, one, because we're comfortable and sitting tight and happy. And two, because usually, we've never been in a situation where we could of lost what we have before.
People don't realise the damage they do by throwing away relationships, because of the temptation, the illusion of things being better the second/third/forth etc time around and because we don't always appreciate what we do have in our lives.
To other people it seems crazy, but they don't know what we're thinking or feeling, we might see more of a picture of the situation, but outsiders can actually see the clearer picture. We do tend to lose our way, and follow our senses and emotions, but they can be very misleading.

Do we need to follow our head or our heart? Our head needs to pull the reigns on our hearts every now and again, but not so much so we aren't going anywhere. We need to follow what makes us happy, but also what is good for us.
And what seems to make us happy, isn't always what's good..