Some of the best classical love poetry in Indian history in pretty much all our languages, be it Tamil, Kannada, Sanskrit, Odia and others, are about missing the person you love when you are away from them. More modern poetry such as ghazals are also pretty much all about love and lovers being away from each other – yearning for each other, sulking and pining in their lonesome ways, feeling the pangs of separation. The actual union and joy of lovers itself is but a small part of the canon of love poetry. It is as if we feel the need to express and experience love more when away and missing the object of our affection. The challenge is not when we are missing the person we love when we are away from them, but when we suddenly find ourselves not actively missing them. After years of loving each other, when we find we are quite ok being by ourselves and not feeling feelings of active separation, it can be a little jarring.
Does it mean that you are now so settled and comfortable with each other that you feel like you are carrying each other with you wherever you go, that you don’t really feel like you are apart? Does it mean that you are not as much in love anymore, that the attraction has waned from before, or more, that you might be open to meeting other people or falling in love with others?
Could it mean that you might be distressed in your personal life, maybe overwhelmed by life’s pressures on you, perhaps even emotionally burnt out to the point that there’s nothing much left to flow? Could it even be that you are starting to actively dislike the person you are with, tired of their behaviours or values, finding living with them so tiresome, that being away from them feels joyful?
When you are going through such feelings, it isn’t easy to tell them apart. The absence of a particular emotion is not necessarily indicative immediately of some other emotion, is it? The absence of love at the moment doesn’t mean dislike or hate. What might be helpful is to ask if you are missing ‘missing’. A little meta, yes, but that’s often the ticket. If we find a little longing for feeling the way we used to, then maybe we are just a bit too tired and empty at the moment and need a break for feelings of love and longing to spring back again. If we find there’s relief or even joy in the absence of the missing, like when we happily remember that we forgot the birthday of a toxic ex that we tried but failed to forget, that can be a sign that we have finally let go and have moved on. Love and longing are so central to our experience of life. When we long to feel it, have it, miss it or miss missing it – it is all a big beautiful knotty mess of how we live.
(The writer’s views are personal)