On Longing: What Are We Really Longing For?
- Yudum Kaymak
- Aug 11
- 10 min read
I’ve been thinking about longing lately...
Where does our longing for a person, a place, or a situation come from? What does it tell us?
To begin with, I wanted to understand longing as an emotion a little better… I had spent a great deal of time researching emotions for my master’s thesis, titled The Connection Between the Intergenerational Transmission of Emotion Dysregulation and Interpersonal Communication Styles. What is an emotion? How does it arise? What does it lead to?
Some scientists have argued that emotions are interpretations formed in the mind as a result of physical reactions; others have described them as signals produced by the nervous system… Some thinkers have regarded emotions as weaknesses to be overcome through reason, while others have seen them as expressions of creative force… (James–Lange; Damasio; Stoic approach; Nietzsche)
The primary colors of emotion
There is a basic distinction that helps us get a little closer to understanding the concept of emotion, and it is widely accepted across different fields: primary and secondary emotions.
Information coming through our senses is processed simultaneously in different neural systems. Faster, automatic, bodily appraisal is associated with basic emotional responses such as fear, anger, and joy; when that same sensory information combines with memory, learned meanings, past experiences, and cognitive appraisal, it can develop into more complex emotional experiences. (Bekoff; Ekman; Plutchik; Tracy & Robins)
Primary emotions are generally regarded as universal, innate, basic emotions. Their characteristics include:
being automatic responses to stimuli,
being observed in all humans and in some animal species,
not requiring a conscious process of evaluation because they arise from the drive for survival.
Although different theoretical approaches propose different numbers of primary emotions, six to eight basic emotions are commonly discussed. Fear, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness, and joy; in Plutchik’s model, trust and anticipation are added to these.
Secondary emotions are more complex and may vary from person to person. Memories, social bonds, and thoughts play a role in how these emotions emerge. Their shared characteristics can be summarized as follows:
a cognitive process is involved in the formation of secondary emotions,
they involve perceptions of the self and sociality,
when faced with an event or influence, the individual thinks about what they feel, what they will do about the situation, and what the “best” response might be.
Emotions such as guilt, worry, shame, jealousy, pride, and regret fall into this category.
In short, primary emotions are more instinctive, immediate, universal—or perhaps, in the simplest word, natural. Secondary emotions are produced on a mental layer. They can therefore vary; they can be managed, transformed…
In my mind, emotions overlap with colors. If primary emotions are the primary colors—red, blue, yellow—secondary emotions are formed through endless mixtures: pink, orange, turquoise, lilac, khaki…
Plutchik approached emotions from a similar perspective and created an emotion wheel resembling a color wheel, visualizing different intensities of basic emotions and the more complex emotions that emerge when they blend with one another.
So what are we really longing for?
When we come to longing, structurally it falls among the secondary emotions. Memories, definitions, social context—in other words, quite a range of mental processes—come into play. Sometimes it can feel deeply difficult, even destructive; at other times it can create excitement, momentum, a force that moves us into action. Longing brings many other emotions and behaviors along with it. We may turn inward and feel trapped, tired, sad, depressed; we may freeze. Or we may become excited and move toward something with anticipation and enthusiasm.
I think the fundamental difference between these two kinds of longing is that, in one of them, we also know mentally that it is temporary. There may not be a precise ending, but if we have some knowledge that the longing will eventually end—reuniting with someone we haven’t seen for a long time, reaching an experience through a planned holiday, visiting our hometown… That kind of longing keeps us alive.
But when longing comes with loss—when it is for a time we cannot return to, a departure with no return, a place we could only visit once—surrendering enough to say goodbye becomes harder. Heartache, anger, denial, stubbornness, anxiety, more pain… There is a strange paradox here: because there is no clear point in time when this longing will end, it seems harder for it to settle; and yet, as time passes, its intensity seems to diminish.
When we miss someone…
Longing also has dimensions; like the different faces of a coin, it contains different sides.
When we miss someone, for example, we may be longing for:
the person’s qualities,
the experiences we shared with them,
and also how we felt beside that person—and who we were when we were with them.
Let me give a few examples from my own life:
When my grandmother passed away, my grief lasted for months. For several years, on the first day of every holiday, I would have the feeling, “I need to call Grandma.” Seven years have passed, and I still haven’t deleted her phone number from my contacts. Every now and then I open it and look at the photo I had saved to her profile.
I miss the way she told stories from her life, the rollers in her hair, the pearly nail polish she always wore, her potato fritters; I miss her hugs, the way her lips would purse and her eyes would fill with tears when she saw me for the first time after a few weeks. No matter how old I was, when I was with her I could feel the smallness of being a grandchild; and at the same time, I miss how she always treated me as an individual, no matter my age.
The comfort of her armchairs, the smell of cologne in her bathroom, the way she walked so upright, her devotion to my grandfather… I miss so many elements: her appearance, her personality, her behavior, the way she related to people, her belongings, what she made me feel.
But when I look at the seven years that have passed, I can see that it no longer carries the same force it did on the first day. When I remember her, yes, the longing is enormous. But in the first year it was there almost every day, vivid and alive; now it is an emotion that comes to visit from time to time…
I have a friend I miss. Someone with whom I lived my younger years fully, but from whom the circumstances of adult life gradually made distance feel almost inevitable…
I miss his laugh, the tone of his voice, the way he would leap during sports, the skeptical, compassionate, trying-to-understand expressions on his face when I told him something about myself, the shifts in his voice when he shared something about himself… The traces his family experiences left on him, the strength with which he held the hand of the person he loved… I miss the qualities that were uniquely his.
Then I miss going to the cinema and taking walks together, listening to music, playing board games, our laughter, our hugs…
And I miss the version of myself beside him: curious, trying to learn, sometimes stubborn, often withdrawing, trying to open my arms and make room.
Sometimes we run into each other. Being together, carrying all that longing for our past experiences, passes like a memory from another time; then the unfamiliarity of not having shared our newer selves makes it difficult for the communication to continue…
So, naturally, the longing never quite goes away…
I had a boyfriend many years ago whom I sometimes miss out of nowhere. The way he became flustered when trying to express his feelings, how his words would get tangled, the seriousness that came over him when he disappeared into his work in front of the computer, the way he would suddenly enter a completely different flow when he was making music, the way he quickened his steps when we walked toward one another after not seeing each other for a few days…
We were young, after all. I miss our silly selves in the flow of those sweet feelings between us, the excitement we shared while imagining a future, the way we turned the kitchen upside down while cooking together; I miss learning to feel like an adult beside him, learning to take responsibility, and the confidence his respect for me gave me…
A friend recently gave me another example:
“Sometimes I think I miss my ex-husband,” she said, “and then I realized that it isn’t him I miss. I miss myself as a married woman.”
What she missed was the feeling of safety within that relationship, having an area of responsibility that anchored her in the flow of life, and the thought that amid all the uncertainty of the future, there was always someone there…
Sometimes what we miss is a place…
Just as with a person, we may miss the qualities of the place itself, the relationship we had with that place, and the version of ourselves who experienced it.
Lately, urban redevelopment has created an almost unavoidable kind of longing. The shops we knew are closing, buildings that had a soul are taking on new identities, neighborhood culture is disappearing. We are left standing with the feeling of a loss we know will not return.
How much of what I miss is still with me?
Longing is complicated like that.
After thinking this much about longing, I also started looking at how I cope with some forms of it. When I miss a person or a situation so, so, so much, how can I keep moving without ignoring the longing, but without neglecting myself either…
I noticed that naming the longing—bringing that mental process into play—helps keep me in my body, in myself. What exactly is it that I miss? What are the qualities I miss about that person or place? What do I miss about the way we related within that shared experience? What do I miss about myself?
Once I separate these pieces, I begin with the last one. Because at the end of the day, this is the only thing I can truly change: myself…
I look at whether the version of me who related to that place, situation, or person is still here… What resources do I have today that could allow me to experience that version of myself again?
Then I look at the way I related. What gifts from that relationship remain with me? Is it a relationship I still need, or have I already received what it had to give me and learned to carry those gains into my everyday life?
Finally, I move toward making room to carry, lovingly in my heart, the longing for the person, situation, or place that exists entirely outside my control.
I keep photographs of my grandmother on top of my piano. Every now and then I walk over and wink at her. Sometimes I close my eyes, imagine her presence and talk to her; in certain situations, I gather from my memories the advice she might have given me and bring it to life in my mind. I remind myself that I carry pieces of her in my body, and I hold close what our relationship added to my character. In doing so, I pull longing away from the direction that hurts and toward the direction that brings something alive.
My former boyfriend is somewhere out there, having new relationships, new experiences… I take into my heart my wishes for his well-being and my gratitude for what he brought into my life. Something inside me warms.
Longing turns into compassion…
When I long for a place, I spend time finding new routes that resemble it, perhaps reading something about it; I let the beautiful feelings that gave rise to the longing move through my body, and in doing so I transform the more difficult parts of the emotional experience.
This is how I relate to longing…
Sometimes it arrives destructively. My body reacts with knots in my throat, tightness in my chest, sleeplessness. Missing something takes precedence over everything else; there is great pain, sometimes anger… My cognitive strength weakens and I simply surrender to the emotion.
At other times it arrives with excitement, compassion, even pleasure.
To what will never return, I say, “I’m so glad I got to live this experience,” and give it a little salute.
And when I believe that what I miss will return, I carry the longing as a source of strength—focusing on the flow of my own life, and on preparing for what may come after we meet again, until that reunion happens.
What is your experience of longing like?
Is there a place you miss deeply, somewhere you want to return to again and again? A relationship, a state of being, something about yourself that you miss?
Can you remember with love what you miss outside yourself—people, times, places—and allow yourself to settle?
And what might be possible in finding the self you miss?
Can you feel that this person has always remained within you, revealing themselves in different relationships; that if there is no situation in which you can live as that version of yourself, perhaps it is time to change your circumstances; and that as you believe in yourself, it may be possible to reunite with the self you have been missing?
Sources I drew on for this piece
Bekoff, Marc. 2015. The Emotional Life of Animals. — Source used for the distinction between primary and secondary emotions.
Cicero, M. T. (2002). Cicero on The Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 (M. Graver, Trans.). The University of Chicago Press. — The Stoic tradition; a philosophical approach to the relationship between emotions, judgments, and reason.
Damasio, Antonio. 2023. Descartes’ Error. — Work drawn on in the thesis regarding the relationship between emotion, body, and brain.
Ekman, Paul. 1992. “An Argument for Basic Emotions.” Cognition and Emotion, 6(3–4). — Universal facial expressions and the basic-emotions approach.
James, William. 1884. “What Is an Emotion?” 188–205. — A classical approach centering the role of physiological responses in emotional experience.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. — A philosophical approach to emotions, drives, and the forces that shape life.
Plutchik, Robert. 2001. “The Nature of Emotions: Human emotions have deep evolutionary roots, a fact that may explain their complexity and provide tools for clinical practice.” American Scientist, 89(4), 344–350. — The model of eight basic emotions, their intensities, and the emotion wheel.
Tracy, Jessica L. & Robins, Richard W. 2004. “Putting the Self Into Self-Conscious Emotions: A Theoretical Model.” Psychological Inquiry, 15(2), 103–125. — Source on more complex emotions associated with self-consciousness.
Kaymak, Yudum. 2025. The Connection Between the Intergenerational Transmission of Emotion Dysregulation and Interpersonal Communication Styles. Master’s thesis, Marmara University.
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