Interesting question. Lately I have come across a surprising number of couples where they seem to miss each other. They just don’t know how to connect any more, like the way they did in the first couple of years of the relationship.
The men have started working almost around the clock, or drinking or smoking or doing drugs or having affairs. The women are feeling abandoned and that it isn’t fair they have to be the only ones to parent the kids plus the kids miss their fathers. SOmetimes the women are having affairs, too, or if not, wishing they could because they aren’t getting any sex or touch any more and they are lonely. Oh so lonely.
The men and the women are lonely. Sometimes it’s the men who miss sex and sometimes the women. For both it’s about connection—a way of experiencing the other person intimately—the only thing that truly shows you that you aren’t alone.
This is not about self-esteem or being alone or lost of any of that. This is about connection—some people would say soul to soul. I don’t know what to call it except to say that when we are inside ourselves looking out, we can always wonder if we’re the only real thing, and everything else is just a movie. When we feel that kind of connection with another person, we understand that there truly are others out there and that they truly accept us.
So many relationships start out fine, and then the connection is lost, and they everyone starts acting out because the loss of the thing that showed them there really are other people in the universe makes them crazy to reestablish that feeling.
I think everyone has had that feeling at one time or another. I think that we go in and out of it depending on circumstances. I think we do all kinds of other things to establish that we are not alone in the universe—having friends, attending support groups or all kinds of other meetings and dances and going to bars and doing whatever with whomever. But the only way we know for sure is in that kind of love relationship with someone else. Or possibly with an idea (like God or oneness), but I’m not sure of that at all.
There may be a few people who don’t need such a connection in order to feel like they are not alone. There also may be some who don’t really care. However, for the vast majority, I think this is how we bridge the gap between people. It is how we turn from our individual selves into our human selves. How we become aware that we are part of something larger than ourselves in more than an intellectual way. It is how we feel the oneness, whether we call it that or not.
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