The Peculiar Grief of Missing Out

Yes, you can grieve experiences you never had

Photo by Meris on Unsplash

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Stay tuned after the article for one last announcement. xx

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The Peculiar Grief of Missing Out

I always thought I would have a certain kind of marriage — strong, equitable, and loving. I was sure that I wouldn’t choose anything less. Until I did. I didn’t get a romantic proposal, but I made the best of it. I didn’t walk down the aisle toward someone who was over the moon to marry me. But that’s normal, right? Every single disappointment was explained away to keep from having to face the truth — I had chosen unwisely.

There are reasons, of course. Childhood trauma. Low self-worth. A need to feel like I belonged. But the missing experiences kept being missed, a grief I would come to know intimately.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I didn’t have a doting partner who would rush to the store to fulfill my pregnancy cravings. Frankly, I had one that wasn’t really willing to inconvenience himself in any way. While that should have been a glaring red flag, I stayed and had a second child. It was then that the real grief for my situation kicked in. Why would he want to feel this child move when he’d already experienced one pregnancy? That’s a direct quote. I was truly on my own.

I never remarried after my divorce. There was a time when I thought I would, when I met someone I thought could be that elusive One. But that didn’t work out. I got older. Now, in my early 40s with children approaching adolescence, I know that I won’t get a repeat of the pregnancy experience with someone who actually cares. It’s a peculiar grief I sometimes feel when hearing about other people’s loving pregnancy experiences.

It’s called ambiguous loss.

It’s a term so bland that it pales in the face of the human experience of grieving something we wish we had but didn’t. I’ve experienced it many times. I grieved not having a single home or town when my family moved so much. I grieved those roots like they had ever been real.

But there were other forms of ambiguous loss beyond pregnancies and equally pivotal moments. When the one who turned out not to be The One left, I realized that there was a veritable tsunami of grief headed for me for the life I thought we would share but never did. I didn’t realize how fragile and precious those dreams were until wave after wave struck following that loss. How could something that never even happened hurt so much?