How to Wait Better: The Psychology of Missing and Withstanding Absence

On “the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person one needs.”

With its fusion of frustration and hope, waiting is one of the most singularly maddening human experiences, and one of the great arts of living. To wait for something is to value it, to want it, to yearn for it, but to face its absence, its attainment forestalled by time and circumstance. All true waiting — which is different from abstinence, delayed gratification, and other forms of...