This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
We’ve all been there, in that place where we’ve had the feeling of missing someone or something. The “missing” feeling is kind of hard to explain because it has a number of emotions attached to it that may be contradictory. We may feel sad, but inside the sadness we remember the good things, which make us happy. It gets complicated. When you get divorced or separated, this state of “missing” someone is the most common feeling you’ll experience for a while. Interestingly, most of the time this feeling starts long before you’re even aware that your relationship is coming to an end.
Do you know why this feeling may start before separation occurs? I have a theory, but before I dive into explaining it, let’s do a little exercise. For this exercise, it doesn’t matter if you’re divorced, married, single, in a complicated relationship, or have any other status. If you’re a human being filled with emotions (and I’m pretty sure you are) you’ve almost certainly missed someone at some point in your life. I want you to think about that experience for a moment. What’s the first thing you think of when you miss someone? Think about it for a moment and hold onto your answer while you keep reading.
As it is for most couples, our wedding anniversary was a special occasion for us. We didn’t do anything particularly fancy or expensive, but we liked to celebrate the occasion. My ex-husband was really good at getting flowers and balloons for me, and even though I knew he was like that, he always found a way to surprise me. Strangely, for that particular day I never had expectations. To put it in yoga words, I always went with the flow — I was relaxed and open to enjoy whatever that day brought.
The occasion was beautiful every year until our fourth anniversary. My ex-husband told me three weeks beforehand that he had to travel for the whole week of our anniversary. I got so sad that I started crying, and he laughed because he thought that was cute. The thing is, I was crying for real. The previous three years I had expected nothing, but that year for some reason I had burdened myself with a huge list of expectations. Because he felt a little guilty, my ex planned a few things for the weekend before his trip and told me that would be our weekend anniversary celebration. It was great, and I thought that would make me feel better on the actual day of our anniversary.
He left on Monday and was due to come back on Saturday. Our anniversary day was on Thursday that week. I was doing okay until Wednesday night, when I started feeling sad because I missed him. Unfortunately, I let my mind to go into expectation mode, and I elaborated all kind of crazy hopes. I wanted him to call me at midnight, and I wanted him to be as sad as I was. “What?” I hear you say. Yep, that’s how crazy we can get sometimes. Well, he didn’t call me at midnight. He also didn’t call me first thing in the morning. I was sad and angry, and when I decided to call him, his phone was dead. I went to work in a foul mood, and if you’re wondering — no, I didn’t even consider that maybe something bad had happened to him.
The morning went by, and he didn’t call or text me. At noon, I got a call from the front desk. They told me I had a delivery waiting. He’d sent me the hugest arrangement of roses ever. Everyone told me how awesome he was, but I still felt angry inside. He finally called me at 2 p.m.
That wasn’t a good day for me. I felt sad and disappointed. When he came back, I told him I felt horrible the whole time because I missed him. He promised me he would never travel again by himself on our anniversary, and I shifted back to a happy mood.
The reason I tell you this story is because it makes me analyze what it really means when we miss someone. A friend of mine and I talked about this subject the other day, and this anniversary memory came to my mind. When I finished telling her the story, I realized something. I don’t think I missed him; I think I missed the way he made me feel. I didn’t have anniversary expectations during the previous years because I already felt fulfilled, but when that fulfillment started to drop, I missed that feeling.
Now, what was your answer to our little exercise at the beginning? Do you/did you miss the actual person? Or did you miss the way you felt when that person was around? My theory is simple: we don’t miss people; we miss the feelings we associate with them. Please don’t misunderstand me! I’m not saying that we don’t need people, or that missing people isn’t real. All I want to point out here is that we can do something to help ourselves when missing someone becomes too painful. If we know that what we miss is the way we felt, then we can snap out of the pain by facing the emotion and working on understanding the feeling.
Do you see why I said earlier that you can start missing your significant other long before separation? You can miss people who are right beside you because if they’ve changed (or perhaps you’ve changed), then it’s pretty normal to miss how you felt in the past. Some people can work around this feeling by understanding the changes and adapting to the new way of being, and many of them keep living in healthy marriages. For others, it’s not that easy. Circumstances are different for all of us. The good thing is that whatever your case might be, you can overcome that missing feeling when it gets painful.
If you are going through a separation and the missing feeling constantly hits you, please keep in mind that you can create new feelings. You have that enormous power within you, my friends! Pay more attention to your thoughts, and redirect them to the things that serve you better.
Love,
Irene
