Missing, Why Does it Happen to Us?

Missing is one of the most common feelings. Next, we reflect on the causes that lead us to miss and the consequences that this feeling can have.

Missing is one of the most common feelings. We can miss a loved one, a stage in our lives, or a special place: missing is natural and should not worry us. The problem arises when we are unable to handle that feeling when missing becomes nostalgia, and sadness dominates us. Next, we reflect on the causes that lead us to miss and the consequences that this feeling can have. 

The nuances of missing 

Missing, why does it happen to us?

The very term in Castilian that defines this feeling is very eloquent: to miss, something that is missing, an emptiness within us. We all know that melancholy that occurs when we lose someone or when we are separated from a loved one. But there are many nuances within this feeling. 

To begin with, we may miss someone from whom we are separated due to force majeure. For example, we can miss our family because we live in another city, but sooner or later we will end up reuniting with it: it is the morriña that the Galicians say, an inevitable melancholy that keeps us united with our loved ones in the distance. 

But we can also miss an ex-partner. It is a more dangerous type of nostalgia if we are not able to handle it properly. Because even the dropout can also miss it. It is normal, you have spent a lot of time with that person, and love is never erased at a stroke: affection can last forever. 

Likewise, we also miss places or phases of our lives, or even more abstract sensations such as, for example, love itself: we can miss being in love. It is a sweet feeling that can be positive, helping us to be more creative, for example. 

Finally, we also miss the people who are gone, the people who have passed away. Of course, it is also an unavoidable feeling that can be accompanied by great pain, but it also has positive consequences: to miss is to remember, to build memory. 

Why do we miss it? 

Missing, why does it happen to us?

The human being is a compendium of memories and experiences. These experiences have been lived with specific people and in specific places. By remembering those experiences and the pleasant sensations associated with them, we link them to those people with whom we have lived those experiences. And nostalgia appears: how I would like to live it again! 

How many times have you thought back to the day you met a partner? The first coffee, the first kiss, the first night… It is an unforgettable memory: literally, it cannot be forgotten, we will always carry it with us.

The sensation that occurs in us then is very ambiguous. On the one hand, it makes us happy, for having lived through something like this, but, on the other, it makes us sad because we will no longer be able to experience the same episode again. We can fall in love again, we can live many other nights, but it won’t be like that. 

Thus, on many occasions, missing is an act halfway between the conscious and the unconscious. We do not sit on a sofa to miss, but we let ourselves go once that feeling appears. Because missing makes us more human … And suffer a little, too. But when we can’t handle nostalgia, when we can’t control the actions of missing, and the melancholy turns into acute sadness or, worse, heartbreak, then we have a problem. 

When missing becomes a negative emotion 

Missing, why does it happen to us?

“Missing the past is like running after the wind”. This Russian proverb sums up the risks of not handling homesickness properly. Because nostalgia is a sweet poison that can break a person if you don’t use the antidote in time. 

When we miss an impossible, like a past relationship, we should moderate that feeling as much as possible. Because the past is no longer going to return and to pursue it is to stop living the present, it is to stop living our life. And how to temper nostalgia when it is taking over us?

• Assume that the past is often idealized. As Gabriel García Márquez said, to cope with the past, the memory of the heart eliminates bad memories and magnifies good ones. Make no mistake: not everything was so perfect … even if it was. 
• Take distance from your memories. In addition to feeling the memories, you have to analyze them. We are often so closely tied to our memories that we cannot rationally analyze them. For this reason, from time to time, you have to take distance: reflect on that past life as if someone else were telling you about it. Surely you no longer see it the same way. 
• Take new risks. By idealizing the past, we tend to believe that nothing can match it anymore. It is a conservative and self-pitying stance. Look for new experiences. Don’t worry, the good memories won’t go away even if you keep accumulating new experiences. 
• Don’t look for the same thing again. If in your search for new experiences you tend to look for something very similar to what you lived through, you are still trapped in the past. Sooner or later, the people you interact with will notice. Avoid the dead-end of always looking for the same person, because that person does not even exist, it is an ideal created by you … 
• Please be patient. Time does not heal everything, but it helps to better channel the pain of loss. Don’t aspire to stop missing a week after losing a loved one or breaking up an important relationship.  

Missing and building memory 

Missing, why does it happen to us? 

” Many memories of the same thing constitute memory, and from memory comes experience .” Aristotle 

Missing is not only inevitable and natural, but it is fundamental for the construction of our memory and the formation of our experience. When the act of missing has stopped being a source of pain or anguish, when we have managed to control nostalgia, those memories build a memory that, in turn, strengthens our experience. It is maturity.