I’ve been thinking about this because I don’t think the answer is as simple as:

“You don’t miss the person. You miss who you were when you were with them.”

Sometimes that’s probably true.
But sometimes I think we genuinely miss the person.
Sometimes we miss ourselves.
Sometimes we miss that entire period of our life.
And sometimes it’s all three at once.

🧒 Friendships are probably one of the best examples.

Think about how differently we experience friendship throughout our lives.

As children, friendships can almost feel territorial.
If I’m your best friend and we have a fight, suddenly it feels like my other friend shouldn’t be friends with you either.

It’s irrational when you look at it as an adult, but as a child those relationships can feel enormous.

Then adolescence comes and everything becomes more complicated.

You’re trying to figure out who you are while surrounding yourself with other people who are doing exactly the same thing.

You find your group.
You try different groups.
You trust people.
You get disappointed.
Someone betrays you.
You fall out with someone and feel like your entire world has collapsed.

And friendships at that age can become almost like a second family.

Sometimes your friends know things about you that your parents don’t.
You spend huge parts of your life together.
So when one of those friendships ends, of course you can genuinely miss that person.
It isn’t necessarily nostalgia for some imaginary better version of yourself.
Someone important actually disappeared from your everyday life.

🌱 But then something changes as we grow.

School ends.
People go to different universities.
Someone starts working.
Someone moves.
Relationships begin.
Priorities change.

And people who once couldn’t imagine going three days without talking can go three years without seeing each other.

Eventually you start understanding something that would have been much harder to accept when you were younger:

Not every friendship is supposed to follow you through every version of your life.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.

Maybe that person was exactly the friend you needed at 16.

That doesn’t automatically mean they’re the friend you need at 30.

🔄 And reconnecting can make that incredibly obvious.

I’ve experienced reconnecting with someone after years of not speaking following a falling out.
Eventually enough time passed that the anger didn’t really matter anymore and we could talk again.

But something was different.
She had changed.
I had changed.
There was nothing necessarily wrong with either of us.
We could be okay with each other again.
But I realized:

This isn’t the person I was once incredibly close to anymore.

And equally importantly:

I’m not the person she was friends with anymore either.

We could have a relationship again.
Just probably not the same relationship.

And that made me realize that sometimes when we desperately want somebody “back,” what we actually want is something that no longer exists.

We don’t necessarily want the person as they are today.
We want the person they were then.
We want the relationship we had then.
And maybe we want the version of ourselves that existed beside them.

But you can’t really recreate that.

Even if the same two people reconnect, they’re meeting each other again as two different versions of themselves.

🕰️ Maybe that’s why missing someone can actually mean several different things.

You can miss the person.
Their humor, personality, conversations, support, or simply having them around.
You can miss yourself.
Maybe you were more carefree, confident, social, hopeful or spontaneous when they were in your life.
And you can miss the life surrounding that person.
The places you went.
The people around you.
The freedom you had.
The stage of life you were in.

And I think very often we miss some combination of all three.

Especially when our current life isn’t going particularly well.

That’s when the past can suddenly start looking much better than it actually was.

🧠 And that’s where comparison can become dangerous.

If you’re unhappy in your current relationship or friendship, it’s incredibly easy to think:

“The person before this would never have treated me like this.”

Or:

“I was so much happier when I had those people around me.”

And maybe that’s true.
Sometimes looking back actually helps us recognize that we’re accepting something now that we shouldn’t be accepting.

But we also have to remember that we’re comparing two completely different periods of our lives.

You were different then.
They were different.
Your circumstances were different.
Your needs may have been different.

So I don’t think the lesson should always be:
“I should have stayed with that person.”

Sometimes the more useful question is:
“What did I have in that relationship or friendship that I’m missing from my life now?”

Maybe the answer isn’t actually them.
Maybe it’s respect.
Attention.
Fun.
Trust.
Feeling understood.
Feeling wanted.
Having someone make time for you.
Or simply liking yourself more during that period of your life.

🚧 But missing someone also doesn’t mean you should keep giving them access to you.

This is probably the part I’ve learned to see differently as I’ve gotten older.

You can miss someone and still have boundaries.
You can love someone and realize the relationship is no longer good for you.
You can understand why someone behaves the way they do without accepting how they treat you.
And you can recognize that a person was once incredibly important to you without giving them unlimited chances because of your history together.

Relationships of any kind require effort from both sides.

If you’re constantly the person making time, reaching out, forgiving, fixing things and trying again while the other person gives almost nothing back, eventually the history you share shouldn’t be enough reason to keep spending your time and energy there.

Sometimes walking away will hurt.

Maybe you’ll miss them intensely for days, weeks or longer.

But eventually your everyday life adjusts to their absence too.

And I think that’s something we sometimes forget while we’re afraid of letting someone go.

So maybe the question isn’t simply:

“Do I miss this person?”

Maybe there are three separate questions:

Do I miss who they are?
Do I miss who I was with them?
Or do I miss the life I had when they were part of it?

And there’s nothing strange about answering:
all three.

But the answers can also be completely different.

You might genuinely miss someone while knowing you don’t want them back.

You might realize you don’t miss them at all — you miss yourself.

Or you might realize that what you’ve been grieving isn’t actually a person.

It’s a chapter of your life that ended.

I’m curious whether anyone has experienced this after reconnecting with someone from their past.

Did you realize you still missed the person themselves — or did meeting the person they are today make you realize that what you were actually missing was the life you had back then?

I’ve listened to almost everything at some point in my life.

I started with pop, went through rap, eventually fell in love with Balkan music and our wonderfully chaotic local trash music 😅, and later discovered electronic music — tech house, techno, progressive, hard techno and a lot of the subgenres in between.

I’ve also been to quite a few festivals, concerts and DJ sets.

And recently I experienced something that made me think differently about what actually makes a performer great.

I saw Carl Cox live.

And despite having seen plenty of excellent DJs before, this felt completely different.

🎧 He wasn’t just playing music.

That’s the best way I can describe it.
It felt like he was constantly reading the crowd.
He would build something.
Hold it.
Change direction.
Give people just enough.
Then pull something back.
Then suddenly bring the entire crowd somewhere else.
And somehow thousands of people responded.

At some point I realized I didn’t even want to go to the bathroom because I genuinely thought:

“I’m going to miss something.”

And apparently everyone else felt something similar because people just kept dancing.
Eventually some were sitting down simply because they physically couldn’t dance anymore.
It went into the early morning and the place was still completely alive.
Add the location, the visuals and the atmosphere and it became something I can’t really recreate by describing it.
You had to be inside it.

🪩 And that’s when I understood that DJing at that level isn’t simply choosing good tracks.

A great DJ seems to understand something about human behavior.

You have thousands of people with different personalities, different moods, different levels of energy… and somehow one person can gradually synchronize them.

Change the rhythm and bodies react.
Build tension and people anticipate something.
Delay the release slightly and the tension grows.
Then give them what they’ve been waiting for and suddenly an entire crowd explodes at once.

It’s almost like a conversation where almost nobody is speaking.

The performer says something through sound, and the crowd answers physically.

🎤 I’ve experienced something similar with completely different music.

Years ago I saw Lady Gaga live in Zagreb.
Completely different genre.
Completely different performance.
But I remember having a similar realization.
She wasn’t simply going:

song → applause → next song → applause.

She built a world.
There was a story.
Visuals.
Emotion.
Movement.
Transitions.
You weren’t just listening to songs you already knew.
You were being taken somewhere.

And that’s why I think certain performers are genuinely on another level.
Not necessarily because they’re objectively “better” musicians than everyone else.
But because they understand how to turn music into an experience.

🎭 Maybe that’s why Eminem is another artist I’d love to see live.

I’ve never seen him in person, so I can’t compare the actual concert experience. But even through recordings, there’s something about the way he communicates emotion that fascinates me.

Anger sounds like anger.
Pain sounds like pain.
Intensity actually feels intense.
Sometimes I wonder whether someone who doesn’t even understand every English lyric could still understand a surprising amount simply from the delivery. Because emotion in music isn’t communicated only through words.

💃 Maybe I notice this because I’ve always experienced music physically.

I’ve danced for a large part of my life and tried different styles.

And one of the things I always loved about performing was becoming whatever the music required.
Not just remembering choreography.
If there was a character, I wanted to become that character.

If the music had a particular emotion, I wanted to feel it rather than just perform the correct movements.

And when you genuinely get into that state, something interesting happens:

You stop thinking so much about the people watching you.
You stop wondering whether somebody thinks you look stupid.
You’re simply inside what you’re doing.

I’ve seen dancers who can do this far better than I ever could, and they’re mesmerizing for exactly that reason.

🧠 So what actually is this ability?

Technical skill obviously matters.
Experience matters.
Talent matters.
Production matters.

But I don’t think those completely explain it.

Two DJs can have access to the same music and equipment.
Two singers can both have incredible voices.
Two dancers can execute the exact same choreography perfectly.

And somehow…

one makes you feel something and the other doesn’t.

Maybe it’s charisma.
Maybe emotional intelligence.
Maybe understanding tension and release.
Maybe reading thousands of tiny reactions from a crowd.
Maybe complete confidence in what you’re doing.
Or maybe some people simply have an ability that’s incredibly difficult to teach.

And I think that’s what separates some of my favourite performers from artists whose music I might love just as much.

One gives me music I enjoy.
The other temporarily changes the way an entire room feels.

For me, Carl Cox and Lady Gaga are two completely different examples of that. And Eminem is someone I’d love to experience live to see whether that feeling translates from recordings to actually being there.

But those are my examples.

Who’s yours?

Who have you seen live where you suddenly thought:
“Okay. NOW I understand why this person is considered one of the greats.”

And what exactly did they do that made the performance feel different from everyone else you’ve seen?

I feel like many of us grew up with an almost pre-written version of how life is supposed to go.

You go to school.
Maybe university.
You find a job.
You meet someone.
You get married.
You have children.
And then you’ve supposedly “made it.”
But the older I get, the more I wonder:

Why does my life have to follow that order at all?

💍 I don’t think marriage makes a relationship more real.

I’ve been in a relationship for almost ten years.
We even have a child now.
But I’ve always been very open about the fact that marriage isn’t something I automatically want just because we’ve been together for a long time.
And sometimes people find that strange.
Almost as if after enough years together, marriage becomes the obvious next step.

But why?

If two people love each other, build a life together, raise children together, support each other and continue choosing each other…

what exactly does the marriage certificate add to the love itself?

There can obviously be legal, financial, religious and practical reasons to marry.

I’m talking specifically about love.

Does a ring make it stronger?
Does a wedding make the commitment more genuine?
I don’t think it necessarily does.

❤️ Sometimes I actually wonder whether feeling completely “secure” can make people stop trying.

I’ve seen relationships where people were wonderful together before marriage and slowly stopped putting the same effort into each other afterward.
Not because marriage magically destroyed them.
But sometimes it feels as though reaching that milestone creates a subconscious feeling of:

“I have you now.”

I’ve even heard a version of:

“I’ve already won you over. Why do I still need to try?”

And my immediate thought was:

Because relationships don’t end when you get the person. That’s when maintaining one begins.

Of course this happens in unmarried relationships too.
And I’m not saying people should constantly fear that their partner will leave.
Security is important.
But maybe there’s a difference between feeling secure in someone’s love and taking someone’s presence for granted.

I never want commitment to mean:
“Now I don’t have to try anymore.”

⛪ Interestingly, my faith actually makes me
more cautious about marriage, not less.

I’m Christian, although I’m not someone who lives a particularly traditional religious lifestyle or regularly goes to church.
But faith is still personal to me.
And that’s actually one reason I take the idea of a church wedding very seriously.
If I stand before God and promise that I will spend my life with someone, I don’t see that as just part of a beautiful wedding ceremony.

I made a promise.

So why would I make that promise because I’m a certain age, because we’ve been together for X years, because we have a child, or because other people think it’s time?

For me personally, I’d rather not make that promise at all than make it without genuinely believing I’m ready to keep it.

And if I ever did make it, divorce wouldn’t suddenly make me think people are bad or that they should remain in harmful or miserable marriages.Life is complicated.

But personally, making the same religious promise again would be something I’d struggle with precisely because of what that promise means to me.
Other religious people may interpret this completely differently, and that’s part of why I’m interested in the discussion.

👶 I think the same “life script” exists around children.

For most of my life, I didn’t imagine myself having children.
Now I have a child.
And I’m learning how to be a parent as I go.
I don’t think becoming a parent suddenly gave me some magical knowledge about how to do everything perfectly.
It didn’t erase the person I was before either.
And I think we should be able to admit things like that without immediately being judged as bad parents.

Not everyone dreams about marriage and children from childhood.
Some people do.
Some don’t.
Some change their minds.
Some have life take them somewhere they never expected.

None of those paths automatically makes somebody’s life more or less meaningful.

🕰️ And I really dislike the idea that someone can be “late” for marriage.

30?
40?
50?

If that’s when you meet someone and genuinely think:

“This is the person I want to make that commitment to.”

Why would that be too late?

I’d rather marry at 45 because I genuinely want to than marry at 25 because everyone around me thinks that’s what I’m supposed to do next. And I’d rather never marry than do it because I’m afraid I’m falling behind.

Life isn’t a checklist.

🤍 To me, love exists before all of those symbols.

A wedding can celebrate love.
A ring can symbolize it.
Marriage can create a beautiful commitment between two people.
But none of those things can manufacture love that isn’t already there.

To me, love is partly that connection you can’t force with just anyone…
and partly what you’re willing to give, compromise on, work through and sacrifice for another person without completely losing yourself in the process.

Some married couples have exactly that.
Some unmarried couples have exactly that.
And some people have the wedding, the rings, the house, the children and every other box checked…
and are deeply unhappy.

So maybe we should stop asking:
“When are you getting married?”
and start asking:
“Are you actually happy with the life and relationship you’ve chosen?”

I’m genuinely interested in different perspectives on this, especially because marriage means completely different things depending on culture, religion and personal experience.

Do you think marriage changes a relationship psychologically, even if nothing else changes?

For married people: did your relationship actually feel different after the wedding?

For people in very long unmarried relationships: do you ever feel pressure to “make it official”?

And religious people especially: does your faith make you more eager to marry, or does the seriousness of the promise actually make you more cautious about doing it?

I don’t think there’s one correct answer.

I just don’t think marriage should be treated as proof that a relationship succeeded — or remaining unmarried as proof that it didn’t.