n.A one-sided bond with someone who does not know you exist.
Horton and Wohl, 1956Established psychological concept
He Does Not Know I Exist
She has listened to eleven hundred hours of a man talking and has never met him.
Joy is forty-four, works nights at a distribution centre in Leicester, and has, since 2019, listened to a podcast in which two men in Manchester discuss nothing in particular for ninety minutes a week.
She knows one of them has a bad knee and a sister called Frances. She knows what he thinks about his father. She knows the specific noise he makes before he is about to disagree.
He does not know she exists. There is no version of the world in which he ever will.