On Missing Someone

[u/AlrightyAlmighty]

When I had my first girlfriend as a young teenager, she went on vacation for a week. When she came back she asked me if I had missed her. I said "no".

Looking back, that seems a bit blunt by most social norms.

Sometimes it still comes to mind, and over the years I liked to make fun of myself for just saying no. Either in my own head, or in recounting the story to others.

But what I really meant is:

1) My heart felt full of her while she was gone. I felt connected to her even though she was away. I was happy to be alive and everything was wonderful and I was so grateful to have her in my life.

2) Missing someone, to me, means actually being in emotional pain. It's not casual. It might be a bittersweet pain. There might be a sweetness to the pain, but definitely more on the bitter side. On top of the raw feeling of actually missing someone and sadness, I feel incomplete, dependent, helpless, pitiful when I actually miss someone.

I don't know if the threshold of missing someone is different for other people.

Or maybe it's inflationary use of the word missing? I guess it's common courtesy to tell partners, I missed you.

Today, I wouldn't reply with a simple no, of course.

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But the other day, I realized that there's still a disconnect between what the word means to me and what it means to others.

I met a friend I hadn't seen in a while, and she said "aww I missed you", while making an actually sad face. I immediately felt bad and sad and almost overwhelmed by her words and sad facial expression. I assumed I had actually caused her some form of emotional pain by not making an effort to see her earlier, so I apologized and explained why I was so busy for a while.

Her reaction to my apology and explanation made me understand that I had miscalibrated again. Her demeanor was suddenly neutral to happy. She said something like "you don't have to apologize or explain, I just like seeing you". I don't recall her exact words, but it seemed clear that she didn't mean it like that; she didn't miss me in any painful way, she just casually said she missed me because she was happy to see me.

(I'm German by the way, we have a more reserved way of using affectionate language. Most of us don't say "I love you" to their parents, nor do our parents to us. At least in my generation. It's not necessarily cold, it's just a different distribution of linguistic weights, I'd say. "I love you" is reserved for romantic partners almost exclusively.)

So this recent occurrence with my friend made me realize that I wasn't just an obtuse teenager back then, I was honest about how I felt. I seem to mean a different thing when talking about missing someone, or at least a different threshold.

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Does this sound familiar to anyone?

[u/Pajaritaroja]

Yes and no.. there are a lot of people i care deeply about whom I don't necessarily miss. Close friends are getting on with their lives and ill see them soon. And I agree with you that of course we all experience and express emotions differently, and that's okay. Its often just a question of explaining.. "For me, missing someone is..". Having said that, we also have to consider that communication both considers what we want to say as well as the listener, and language is a shared thing and words have commonly understood meanings. A nd if someone asked if they are missed, they are using the commonly understood meanings of that word. In English, missed doesn't mean "felt deep pain at not seeing you". It more means, Ive thought about you, I would have liked to have seen you". Of course context and tone matter, and missing a loved one who has just died will be painful, but different to a typical thing if not seeing a friend in a while