Losing Attunement

That’s grief.
Plain, boring, unfair grief.

People like to reserve that word for death because it makes it feel safer, more legitimate. But this is the same mechanism. A source of attunement disappeared. Something that tuned you more clearly to yourself, to the moment, to being seen.

Your system keeps reaching for it anyway.
Of course it does.
It learned something mattered there.

Losing attunement isn’t about romance or sex or logistics. It’s about recognition. About being met in a way that didn’t require explanation or performance. About the quiet relief of not having to translate yourself.

When that goes away, you’re left alone with the version of yourself that only existed in that resonance.

That hurts in a very specific place.

Missing them doesn’t mean you’re regressing.
It doesn’t mean you’re stuck.
It doesn’t mean you’re secretly hoping for something impossible.

It means you loved being seen in that way.
And now you aren’t.

There’s nothing to fix here. No corrective action. No lesson to extract on a timeline. The task isn’t resolution. The task is not turning the pain into a verdict about the rest of your life.

You’re allowed to miss them badly.
You’re allowed to have days where the absence knocks the wind out of you.
You’re allowed to feel it without immediately converting it into insight or growth.

What helps is letting the grief be bounded rather than total. Let it exist alongside other things. Gym. Writing. Silence. Even dull routines. Don’t demand that it disappear before you keep moving.

You don’t need to get over the experience.
You need to carry it without letting it hollow you out.

Losing attunement doesn’t mean you imagined it.
It means it was real.

And grief is simply the nervous system refusing to pretend otherwise.