There are all sorts of reasons why we might miss an ex who is no longer in our life. Our ex may have been attractive, fun, a great lover. We may have made plans for a future together that now will never happen.
Everybody understands the normal sadness or anger that people feel after a breakup. However, sometimes our reasons for missing our ex are a bit more complex and less obvious. Here is how one man described his longing for his ex-girlfriend.
Could I be "addicted" to my ex? Now that she is gone, I feel like I lost a piece of myself. I am actually having trouble functioning without her. What is wrong with me? I was always so independent and confident. Now I am a mess. Why do I feel so helpless without her?
We humans use other people to help us self regulate. We use this person to perform psychological or other functions for us that, theoretically, we could learn to perform for ourselves, such as soothing us when we feel hurt or helping us regulate our self esteem.
It is quite normal to use other people as self-objects to some extent. Our use of others as self-objects changes and generally diminishes as we mature. Self-objects help us stay emotionally stable.
Babies: When we are born, we are quite helpless and totally dependent on other people, especially our primary caretakers, to make sure we are safe, fed, warm, and soothed. We cannot survive without self-objects.
Children: If we are healthy as children, we no longer need our parents as we did as babies. For example, we can use the toilet, dress, feed ourselves, etc. However, we still depend on our parents to act as self-objects and soothe us when we are hurt, take care of us when we are sick, tell us we are loved, make sure we have clothing, reassure us, and so on
Teens: As teenagers we are getting ready for our future as independent adults. We usually start to look to our peers to perform some self-object functions that we used to depend on our parents for. For example, as teenagers, our taste in clothing will be more influenced by our peers’ opinions than by our parents. As teens, we start looking for love, soothing, and approval from our friends.
Adults: By the time we are in our mid-20s, we start to shed some of our dependence on our peers. Many of us stop caring as much about fads and what our peers think and start to give more weight to our own opinions.
One of the joys of falling in love is basking in our new lover’s appreciation for us. Many of us feel more lovable, attractive, and brilliant as we see ourselves through our lover’s eyes and actions. If we are treated as precious and told we are perfect and wonderful, we start to rely on that feedback.
Once our ex-partner is no longer performing any self-object functions for us, we are left with a gap. We had unconsciously stopped taking care of some of our own emotional needs. We had learned to depend on our ex to take our side in work quarrels, reassure us that we are smart and lovable, and cheer us up when we are down. Now, without our former partner's support, we feel destabilized. We miss what they gave us.
It is as if we used to sit in a specific chair, and now the chair is suddenly gone. We go to sit and fall on our butt. We miss our chair. It supported us and kept us comfortable and stable.
When we become addicted to a substance, it means that our body and mind have come to rely on it. If we take a pill to sleep every night, we will have trouble sleeoing if we run out of pills. If we are physically addicted to the pill, we will suffer until our body gets used to no longer having that medication.
Although we cannot be "addicted" to an ex, if we have relied on our lover to calm us, soothe us, and help stabilize our emotions, it will be quite jarring to find ourselves without that help.
Commentaires