What It Means to Miss Someone

Some people say they don’t miss anyone —

not lovers, not friends, not even their children.

They describe it as presence, grounding, living in the moment.

A self-contained emotional ecosystem that doesn’t lean into longing.

I’ve heard that before.

Recently, Isaac told me he doesn’t miss people.

That he tries to stay present,

that absence doesn’t register somatically in his body.

He said it gently, honestly.

It wasn’t meant to hurt.

But something in me jolted —

not because of him,

but because those weren’t new words.

Troy once told me the exact same thing, almost verbatim.

That he never missed anyone.

That he lived fully in the present tense.

That longing felt unnecessary, even unhelpful.

And hearing it again —

in a different voice, from a different man —

sent a quiet shock through my body.

Not trauma.

Not panic.

Recognition.

A familiar ache, a familiar ceiling.

A familiar moment where my nervous system whispered:

“Oh. I know this.

I’ve been here before.”

---

For some people — people like Isaac and Troy —

connection lives only in the moment.

It flares to life when they are with you

and rests when they’re not.

They care.

They feel.

But the feeling doesn’t echo in your absence.

There is no somatic imprint.

No tug.

No hum of presence held in the background.

Their hearts don’t reach forward.

They don’t lean into longing.

They don’t feel the ache of missing someone because their nervous system doesn’t interpret absence that way.

And that’s not wrong.

It’s not cold.

It’s not incapable.

It’s a way of being.

---

But for people like me,

missing someone is not a sign of weakness.

It’s not a failure of mindfulness.

It’s not a symptom of neediness.

It’s not emotional dependence or clinging.

It is a felt-sense.

A bodily truth.

An invisible emotional tether

stretching softly from the center of my ribcage

to the idea of the other person.

When I miss someone, it is my nervous system saying:

“You mattered here.

You still matter.

Your presence left an imprint.”

It’s not pain.

It’s not longing for rescue.

It’s the echo of connection, the resonance of chemistry, the warmth of having let someone slip past my armor.

Missing someone is how my body honors intimacy.

It means:

your energy brushed up against mine

and my body remembers you.

It means:

my system still feels the shape of your presence.

It means:

your connection left footprints.

---

So when Isaac said he doesn’t miss people,

that his affection doesn’t stretch into absence,

my body recognized something my mind didn’t have language for yet:

This is a pattern.

This is a place where our emotional geographies don’t match.

Not a red flag.

Not an indictment.

Simply a mismatch.

Some people love in the present moment.

Some people love in the lingering sense of someone’s existence.

Some people love in echoes.

Some people love in flashes.

And neither is wrong.

But if someone doesn’t miss me —

not even a little —

my body will eventually feel unheld,

unseen in the in-between places,

like I vanish when I’m out of the room.

Missing is the somatic language of my attachment.

It’s how I register significance.

It’s how I know I exist in someone else’s internal world.

If a person never feels that,

or simply isn’t built that way,

it doesn’t make them incapable.

It makes us romantically incompatible.

---

I don’t need to be missed constantly.

I don’t need pining or clinging or obsession.

I don’t need anyone to ache for me.

I simply need to know that when I’m gone,

a part of me still exists somewhere in the quiet corners

of the person I care about.

A warmth.

A pull.

A spark.

A moment of internal recognition that says:

“Ah, there you are.”

Connection, for me, lives not just in the moment —

but in the echoes that come after.

Missing is the shape my love takes

when it no longer has a place to land.

And I’m learning to honor that shape,

not apologize for it.

Because it’s not my flaw.

It’s my truth.

And I need someone whose heart echoes back.