Hmmm.....missing people......being sad about them not being there any more........
Yes I do, sometimes. If a relationship ends, I usually miss the regular things we used to do together. I feel it when I get into a situation alone, that I was sharing with them before, e.g. waking up with them, making breakfast, making 2 cups of tea, parting when I go to work, coming home to them, shopping with them, cooking with them, enjoying that warm feeling of somebody being in the house, of somebody being there for me, watching TV shows with them, getting ideas all day and thinking "I must tell her about that tonight"........my brain tries to run the old "partnered" program and I feel sad that I have to intervene and cancel the subroutine, and revert to the original "lone wolf" script. I even miss the little awkward or eccentric things about them, the things that made them unique that I'll never see again. And there's sorrow for all the hopes of a happy future together that are no longer tenable.
I have the saddest feelings when I catch myself rehearsing saying things to a newly-lost partner, things that a moment's reflection tells me I'll probably never say, or shouldn't say. I realise that it's just wishful thinking, and it shows that my brain is still wired to the lost partner, and I feel sad and empty like I would if I'd just woken from a daydream about getting something I can't possibly get.
Of course every time I hit the cancel button, the processor gives me less trouble next time I'm in that situation. I guess that's the "time heals" process in action. It's just the brain getting used to certain reward channels being no longer open.
At Mum's funeral reception, which was at her home, a relative said that she kept expecting Mum to come into the room. I suppose that's the same kind of thing. I didn't miss my parents much when they died....for one thing we didn't have much to do with each other any more by that time, so there wasn't much to miss.....the other reason was that I was emotionally rather wirhdrawn from them, so our meetings had been bland and stand-offish. And I didn't look forward to seeing them. But I still missed the feeling that they were still around.....there was still something there.
Sometimes I've already gradually grown so far away from partners that the definitive break is only a rubber stamp for what has already slowly come to be....nonetheless it might destroy any residual hopes of restoration, and for a while I might get a few old memories and wishes coming back to reprocess as something definitely of the past, and it will sadden me. After leaving one partner, I didn't miss her much at all apart from the first few times I went food shopping alone, and realised I was no longer buying stuff for OUR fridge but for MY fridge. And later on, when I was in a relationship that was very rocky, every time I passed my ex's home I would feel a strong twinge of regret that I couldn't knock on the door and go back to her.
I've missed partners when I've just been away from them for a while......some of them lived in other cities so it was often a week or two. But it's usually felt qualitatively different from the feelings at the end of a relationship, and hasn't happened very much. It seems to be strongest when there's been a lot of tenderness and closeness beforehand.....with the partner I shared the most of that with, we would sometimes text each other to break up as short a separation as 3 hours, though that was a very new relationship where we were going through the "honeymoon stage." I sometimes wonder if this temporary separation feeling might not be so much missing them as separation anxiety. And I used to get a very depressed feeling when I returned from visiting a partner in London, though we hadn't been able to get all that close, and I suspect the feeling was more to do with my sorrow at failing with that, having sensed that we both wanted to be close but had failed to get there.
When my son grew up, I sorely missed the little boy who used to play on the carpet, and the innocent closeness we had that adults so rarely do....I suppose the parent-child bond is the only really close one there is, apart from relationship bonds, and even those are usually weaker than the parent-child bond. Once the child is an adult, the bond changes, the pastoral care takes a back seat and you have an adult friend instead. Of course you haven't lost the person, and there is (hopefully) still a bond of comparable strangth between you, but you have lost the child part of them, and there will be lots of little things you did with them that are no longer appropriate. With a boy, the sentimental side of things may have little left of it, as the boy becomes a man who needs to project a strong image to the world. And there's something about the way a child depends on you and about always being in control of where he is, that can never be the same again.
I can feel the same way about pets when they get lost or die, and sometimes that's been as intense as it has been for relationships. And giving up smoking felt similar.......some folks say that it's like losing an old friend, and it sure was for me.
To anybody who doesn't know what it's like to miss anybody or anything, I'd suggest they think about how they'd feel if they lost a limb, or some other valued thing that they got a lot of benefit from. While getting used to the new situation, you'd surely miss that limb every time your brain habitually tried to use it. Perhaps the only reason some Aspies don't miss people is that nobody has ever reached them to the point where they felt that sense of bonding.
06 Mar 2012, 7:50 pm
