“However much you have been wanting and hoping and dreaming of meeting the person of your dreams, it is only when you meet them that you will start missing them. It seems that the presence of an object is required to make its absence felt (or to make the absence of something felt). A kind of longing may have preceded their arrival, but you have to meet in order to feel the full force of your frustration in their absence.
[. . .]
Falling in love, finding your passion, are attempts to locate, to picture, to represent what you unconsciously feel frustrated about, and by.”
Adam Phillips Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
source:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/10/05/adam-phillips-missing-out-frustration-love/