Today was a day of getting some stuff done. I did laundry, changed sheets, looked for jobs, secured letter of termination from insurance company, read a bit, cleaned shower, exercised, etc. etc. Any writing, until now, was either editing the post from last night, or jotting down some notes from when I used to take my step-grandfather out to the park and wheel him around the neighborhood. The refrain that was playing in my head throughout the day was this notion of wanting to be missed and seen and heard. It’s a feeling I think many people, if not all, can relate to. Though, they are probably more familiar with the reaction to not being missed or seen or heard than they are with the root feeling.
I can’t remember a lot of specifics, but I definitely remember those internal tantrums where I felt the “I’ll show you. I’ll be gone, and then you’ll all miss me” sentiment. I remember once, as a young child, I tried to run away. I’m pretty sure I only ran as far as the corner of the apartment building and hid behind a bush. I briefly remember in middle school or high school wanting my family to move to Lebanon, PA. Not because I was in love with the area, but because I just wanted to get away from where I was, start over, make friends that would appreciate me. I’m not sure I’ve ever had suicidal ideation – or at least no more than any angst-filled teen did, but I can remember having those thoughts of wanting people to miss me when I’m gone (which, I suppose requires thinking about being gone). The funny thing is, I can’t remember any of the precipitating factors, I can only remember the vague feeling of wanting to be noticed or feeling unappreciated.
This feeling plays out in so many aspects of life. As parents, we hope our children will call us or write us. As friends, we get tired of always initiating and sometimes stubbornly sit and wait and pout. As partners – the same dynamic plays out (over everything from chores to sex to texts). At work, we want to feel valued and needed and sometimes find ourselves playing “chicken” through things like procrastination or avoidance or cutting down our colleagues when we feel under-recognized. There’s a reason that sayings like “success is the best revenge” exist… They are built on the notion/desire that the person deserving of revenge is still paying attention. It’s also why I believe attention is one of the greatest gifts we can give to someone else.
Before sitting down to write this post, I tried to google a couple of things, to see if I could get some clarity on what this feeling is. A ton of different songs came up (cool, but not helpful). Though in thinking about it, duh, it seems obvious that a lot of songs would be about that sort of lover’s revenge / lover’s remorse dichotomy (don’t know what you have ’till it’s gone). I dug a little more. I tried search terms related to running away or wanting to be missed and psychology. I was surprised by how many “how to” sites there were… how to get your boyfriend back, how to make her miss you, how to blah blah blah… 20 ways to …. A little sketchy and manipulative, but also understandable.
The closest I came to anything reputable was an article in Psychology Today on dismissive attachment types. It’s a good read. If you’ve read any of my blog, you’ll know that I’ve written a few times about attachment theory – a quick search shows at least 8 posts. And while it’s really tempting to diagnose other people’s attachment type, it best used as a tool for self-reflection. I peg myself somewhere between secure and anxious-preoccupied (needy). I tout patience and compassion as a way to mask my desire to be seen by the person I’m waiting for. At first, I assumed the article on dismissive attachment was triggered because one of the search terms was running away. It didn’t quite seem to fit with what I was looking for. Dismissive attachment types tend to push people away, which seems counter-intuitive to wanting to be missed or seen or heard…. until you think of it in terms of wanting love.
The root of all attachment types is the same. How they go about securing those relationships, is also pretty similar…. It’s in the maintenance, especially when they feel threatened that the attachment types show their differences. The anxious becomes needy and the dismissive becomes distant. Anxious types will seldom end a relationship and dismissive types tend to either run away, or push so hard that the other person ends it.
When I started dating, I was overcompensating for how my marriage ended. We had lost affection, and as an overcompensation I was drawn to anyone who seemed warm and affectionate (the article on dismissive attachment types highlights that they often appear extremely warm and affectionate). In seeking this out, I made a very conscious decision to be as honest as I possibly could be about my own feelings. During my marriage, I increasingly felt that affection and respect of my time were being withheld. In response to that, I bottled everything up. I too dug in and withheld – and we never had an honest and open conversations about what was going on. I didn’t want to do that ever again. As a single person trying to find my voice then, I was determined to always share my feelings and thoughts, even if they made me seem needy or distant or weak. I was ashamed of how resentful I had grown and how much time my wife and I lost by not communicating.
My first real post-divorce relationship was with an extremely warm woman who had been cheated on and had lost all trust. She constantly fled in order to protect herself from getting hurt. We both knew it and talked about it. She said she was just so sure the other shoe would drop. For my part, I overcompensated with patience (enabled) as she pushed and ran away. It wasn’t until the next relationship when I was the skeptic and the one who pushed away and eventually ended things that this notion of wanting to be missed became apparent to me. I was distraught over pushing someone good away. I took a road trip down south to clear my head. Driving down here to Tennessee for blues, bbq, and hiking, I was listening to a lot of songs from the band Wild Child, and realized that so much of the music I liked was about longing and returning and the push pull dynamic of adult relationships. At that point, I realized the sadness in how my ex-wife and I so easily let go. Neither of us put up a fight. Again, I decided to double down on this notion of patience and honesty as the only way for two people to overcome all of this baggage that we all carry around with us.
For much of this past year, I have read and thought and waited and written. I’ve turned to things like Buddhism and philosophy because they are the things that best help me see both sides of the same coin – help me live on the edges and the spaces in between. Trying to think deeply about these things allows me to be ok with the notion of wanting to be missed and with missing someone else. It allows me to be ok with being angry, or sad. It allows me to pause and sit with whatever I’m feeling for a little while. I can remember times in my life when starting over seemed like the only answer (it’s part of why I moved). I can remember wanting to leave in hopes people would notice. I can also remember wanting to be the guy in corner minding his own business, secretly hoping someone will find his solitude alluring. When you can see all of these different things inside yourself and can recognize them as a stance (and necessarily how you are defining yourself) it becomes a lot easier to see them (and maybe understand them) in someone else – which hopefully leads to compassion.