Sometimes you can’t help feeling jilted.

Even though Greater Des Moines has taken great strides in its appearance, ambience and reputation, we know it’s not the final destination for every ambitious person who arrives. We rejoice when it lands on a list of hip cities or great places for entrepreneurs, but we know it doesn’t look big enough to people who are hard-wired with Chicago or New York dreams.

But it stings just a little when people who sign on to be Central Iowa leaders and cheerleaders move on to do the same thing somewhere else. Gee, you think, we thought they had become one of us. What happened? Somehow, we failed to charm them enough to make them truly fall in love with the place.

Mo Dana told the Business Record last winter that she had realized “I’m not ever leaving,” but something changed since then, and she’s headed back to her natural habitat, New York City. We’ll miss the energy she was pouring into all of those downtown events placed in her hands this year.

A few days earlier, Darryl Gosnell announced that he was leaving the Greater Des Moines Partnership to work on economic development in Tulsa, Okla.

Eric Anderson stayed a long time as city manager, then started looking everywhere for a new job and found one.

All of these decisions are understandable for the surface reasons that were given, and no doubt there were even more reasons we don’t know about.

We don’t mean to sound provincial. It’s a big, interesting world and not everybody stays put. Still, you can’t help wondering. If our key leaders really believe what they’re saying as they work to improve our little part of the world and struggle to sell its image across the country, you’d think they would want to stay.

Naïve of us, perhaps, especially in a time when careers are filled with twists and families are uprooted to move a thousand miles for a new job title.

But it still gives you the usual pangs felt by the jilted: Someday, we’ll show you; we’ll turn into something special, and you’ll wish you had stayed with us.

If you’re really plugged in around here, you can advance from well-known leader to respected eminence. The respect and admiration can accumulate, year after year.

With a little luck, you could even become the next Robert D. Ray.