An unrealized future persists as an ideal co-presence haunting the present.

Evidence

The Future, on the other hand, although equally affected by the metamorphosis, does not cease to be future—that is, to remain outside the For-itself, in advance, beyond being—but it becomes the future of a past or a former future. … It can enter into two kinds of relations with the new Present according to whether we are dealing with the immediate Future or the far Future. In the first case the Present is given as being this Future in relation to the Past: “What I was waiting for—here it is.” It is the Present of its Past in the mode of the former Future of this Past. But at the same time that it is For-itself as the Future of this Past, it realizes itself as For-itself, therefore as not being what the Future promised to be. There is a split: the Present becomes the Former Future of the Past while denying that it is this Future. And the original Future is not realized; it is no longer future in relation to the Present, but it does not cease to be future in relation to the Past. It becomes the unrealizable co-present of the Present and preserves a total ideality. “Is this what I was waiting for?” It remains a future ideally co-present with the Present, as the unrealized Future of the Past of this Present. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 492

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how a former future splits from the present: the for-itself both is and denies being that future, generating an ideal co-presence.
• XREF: This ‘unrealized future of the past’ split maps onto Beauvoir’s analysis of how women experience lived possibility and missed futures; also echoes Heidegger’s gewesenheit. — connects to: Present experience re-encounters a past that was once a projected future. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 1068

Broader Connections

• Present experience re-encounters a past that was once a projected future. #expands (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1068