Why Men Need Absence to Know You're the One

The Soldier and the Love Letters

Imagine I'm a soldier and we've been married five years. I've never deployed, and lately you feel the coldness. I'm not as romantic, not as interested, and the distance is growing between us. Then a war breaks out and I'm deployed for eight months to a year, and the only way I can reach you is by letter.

Three months in, four months in, you notice something strange. In these letters I sound like a love poet. I'm writing about the color of your eyes, how I miss the way your eye twitches when you laugh too hard at my jokes, everything I want to do when I finally see you again. And you're thinking, this is amazing, but why did I never hear any of this in five years of marriage? Then I come back, embrace you with the biggest hug of your life, kiss your whole face, and I'm more romantic after deployment than I ever was living beside you. That story is the whole lesson. Everything below explains why it works.

Imagination: The Monster You Never See Is Scarier

Picture two horror movies. In the first one, they show you the monster in the very first shot, standing in broad daylight under a clear sky, whole body visible. In the second, you barely see it for the entire film. Glimpses. Noises. Something creeping just out of frame, and only at the very end does it get revealed. Which movie is more terrifying? The second one, every time. Your imagination is the most powerful tool you have, and it drastically changes your perception of a person, a place, a thing, anything.

The same thing happens with men and your absence. It's hard for him to imagine what it feels like to be with you when you're sitting right there. But when you're absent, his imagination runs wild, and suddenly you're the best thing since sliced bread and he has to be with you. So here's the key: stay off the dating apps, stop being a textaholic, kill the Snapchat streaks. Those are low-quality forms of communication, and when you're communicating through them all day, he feels like you never left. For a lot of you, that's the real problem. You're never actually absent long enough for his imagination to start.

Contrast: He Only Sees Your Value When It's Missing

The soldier could only write those love letters because war gave him contrast. How good it felt to be around you versus how horrible it feels to be away from you. That contrast is what lets him finally see clearly everything about you and the relationship that he finds amazing.

Why do you think a man can suddenly list all the wonderful things you did for him right after you break up? Because for the first time, he can compare having you in his life with not having you in it, and he comes to his own conclusion: my life was so much better with her. Now think about what you're doing when you talk to him in two or three apps at once, the texts, the Snapchat, the meme exchange in the DMs, 24/7. Not that you're a bad person, but how can he possibly contrast life without you if there is never a single minute without you?

Appreciation: The Garbage Man Lesson

You get woken up early by the garbage truck banging around outside, and you're annoyed. Can't they be quiet out there? Look at those silly garbage men. Now imagine you had to spend one full day doing that job. Waking up at their hour, running the routes, smelling the trash, dealing with the landfill and all the stress behind it. What happens? Your appreciation grows, permanently. For the rest of your life that truck is less annoying, because now you know everything that goes into your garbage disappearing to some magical place. A change in perspective drastically changes how much you appreciate something.

Your absence does the same thing to him. The moment he stops being able to see you, text you, and talk to you around the clock, his appreciation for the time he does get with you starts to grow, along with his anticipation. It's hard to appreciate time with someone you can never get away from.

This is exactly why you don't overdo it in the beginning stages. You like the guy, you get giddy, and suddenly it's sleepovers six days a week, two days turns to three turns to five, and it's like a marriage before he's ever had the chance to miss you. My advice: for the first three, four, five months, no sleepovers. Keep showing up in high-quality forms, in person, where he anticipates seeing you, spends real time with you, then has to go home and think about the next time. By the time you do spend every day together, he's already of the mindset that being around you is the best part of his life.

Realization: Why He Comes Back Different

Here's the final piece. When he has real absence from you, he knows for a fact that everything he's feeling and thinking is genuine to him. Nobody prompted it. You didn't beg for it, hint at it, or perform for it. It grew in the space you left, so he trusts it completely.

And once a man realizes on his own that he desires you and wants you, the next logical step is unavoidable: he must take action on his realization. That's why men come back with a totally different approach than they had before. The pursuit, the effort, the romance, it all stems from a conclusion he reached himself. Your absence didn't just make him miss you. It made him sure.