Why Does Longing for a Relationship Feel Painful?
Why does the ache of longing for love feel so deep, so raw — almost like a physical wound? Our emotions go up and down on an invisible seesaw - completely out of our control…
If that’s how you feel - you’re in the right place. I’m here to help you take Your power back.
The feeling of longing for a relationship can be a complex and intense emotion. It often includes a deep desire for emotional connection and companionship with the person you’re attracted to. There can be a sense of yearning and emptiness, as well as a longing for the fulfilment of your emotional and romantic needs.
The feeling of longing to be in a relationship often includes some or all of the following elements:
Loneliness and a Feeling of Lack: Longing for a relationship can be accompanied by a profound sense of loneliness. It's the feeling that there's a void in your life, and you yearn for someone to fill that emptiness.
Remember - you are never alone. Help is always available.
Emotional Hunger:
This longing can be akin to a deep emotional urge, where you crave the warmth, intimacy, and connection that a romantic relationship might be able to offer. You may yearn for someone to share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences with.
Jealousy of Couples: Seeing happy couples or hearing about others' partners and comparing your current situation to theirs, can trigger envy and sadness, especially if romantic relationships appear unavailable to you. You may wish to have they have and feel a sense of lack when being reminded of this need to connect.
Daydreaming and Fantasising: People who long for a relationship often engage in daydreaming and fantasising about what their ideal partner would be like, the activities they would do together, and how it would feel to be in a loving relationship. I often found that coming back out of those fantasies to the present moment would aggravate the feeling of loneliness (I’ll discuss this in greater detail later in this article).
Impatience and an Impulse to Connect:
Longing for a relationship can create a sense of restlessness and lead to a strong impulse to connect with others immediately, whether through dating apps, social events, or other means, in the hope of meeting potential partners who can alleviate the uncomfortable feeling. You might feel a constant urge to find that special someone, which can lead to increased dating efforts and seeing a potential partner in everyone you meet, potentially leading to more disappointment.
Frustration: If the longing goes unfulfilled for an extended period, it can lead to frustration and disappointment. You might wonder why it's so difficult to find the connection you desire when other people find partnerships so easily (allegedly).
Feelings of Being Treated Unfairly: the (Western) society often makes us feel that a relationship is a prize we get for being ‘good’. So it might feel like it’s unjustified that other people were granted their wish, whilst you might have done everything ‘right’ — yet still not been rewarded for your efforts.
Vulnerability and Insecurity: Longing for a relationship might make you feel vulnerable and exposed. You might begin to question your worth, intelligence, looks and abilities, leading to feelings of insecurity as to your single status.
Lack of Self-compassion: the one time when we need care for ourselves the most, is when we let ourselves down and treat ourselves terribly, neglect and blame ourselves for things we can’t control. Listen to this meditation for POWERFUL SELF-LOVE to reinstate your balance and support yourself in these difficult times. You may find that as you replenish your Self-love resources - the pain of longing diminishes of its own accord!
Yearning for Intimacy:
Longing for a relationship is frequently linked to a desire for physical and emotional intimacy. You may crave the comfort and closeness that comes from sharing your life with someone special, being hugged, kissed, someone holding your hand. This craving sometimes intensifies the longer the time that passes since you’ve last been intimate with someone,
until it reaches a threshold and begins to naturally subside — you will not feel this way forever! but we don’t know how long it’ll take to subside naturally.
You don’t have to suffer indefinitely - book a free therapy consultation today - talking to me will provide you with the long-awaited relief.
It's important to remember that longing for a relationship is a natural and universal human emotion. Normally it’s simply a motivator for people to get into meaningful relationships with others.
The problem is that some of the well-meaning advice out there actually prolongs ours suffering unnecessarily.
Treating the Longing as Temporary
In so much media the longing to be in a relationship is treated as just a stage one goes through before they get into a relationship. We are often reassured by the likes of Shani Silver that WE WON’T BE ALONE FOREVER.
Even though most of the time this is said with the intention to alleviate the suffering we may be experiencing, I would argue that putting the point of satisfaction of our immediate needs into the future is actually exacerbating how bad we feel in the now.
Often, when told that at some point in the future, when I meet my special someone, I’d no longer feel this bad, I actually felt even more despair and helplessness, because me feeling better was conditional on an event that was completely out of my control. This made me spin in circles, going on even more dates, putting even more pressure on myself to find him already, lowering my standards.
All of this caused me a lot of psychological pain, as I was neglecting my needs,
being inauthentic and prioritising being in a relationship in the future over feeling good about myself in the now.
The PAIN of Longing
Alunika Dobrovolsky talks about how a romantic relationship between two people can almost amount to a third person between the two parties. Put in other words - the relationship is a separate entity and is fed by the energies of the couple, their wishes, desires, fantasies about the future, expectations, etc. This psychological expectancy eventually takes on a life of its own, independent of the two people involved in the relationship.
That’s why should one person leave, the person who didn’t choose to split up is burdened with the weight of all the expectations and hopes that didn’t materialise, which can be a really heavy weight to carry.
My theory
is that EMPTINESS and LACK can take up just as much space in someone’s life as a romantic partner would, but everything is felt in reverse:
The lack of someone to share a funny anecdote or silly comment with whenever we feel like it,
The lack of someone to go on holidays with or to share romantic experiences with,
The lack of someone to cuddle up to on the sofa to watch films with,
The lack of someone to greet us when we come home from work,
The lack of a plus one at weddings and other big events,
The lack of someone looking after us when we’re ill,
The lack of someone to bounce ideas off,
The lack of affection and companionship.
I could go on, but I am sure you get the gist.
This emotional lack/void/emptiness can feel just as real as an actual person would have, hence the desire to fill it with an actual person - the acute longing for their presence, experienced as an ache.
The emptiness can take up the MAIN ROLE in our life, rejecting the present moment since it’s being perceived as deficient. This perceived lack of completion and satisfaction in the now compared to how it ‘could be’, pushes out all the enjoyment of the life right now and into the imaginary future - by that creating a CONTRAST, an indirect correlation - like a seesaw.
If we believe that a relationship will bring us happiness and fulfilment, we tend to over-emphasize the positive attributes of a potential relationship whilst ignoring any negative or even neutral aspects of romance in general.
At the same time we concentrate too much on the sense of lack in the present, completely ignoring the things we craved and worked so hard for in the past but now take for granted - be that a more stable financial situation, better friends, better job, professional achievements, better health, creative endeavours, own home etc.
The more we put the idea of a relationship on a pedestal and rise up one side of the seesaw - romantic fulfilment -
the heavier the present feels
as it seems much lower in quality compared to the future, causing us to reject it as not being good enough.
The brighter the future seems, the darker it can make the present appear, causing even more emotional pain, propelling us even more into fantasy and/or dating, as it may seem like the only solution to the ache of longing is to be with someone.
By rejecting the present, we are also rejecting ourselves in this present single state. What we are subconsciously saying to ourselves is that we are not enough, we’re lacking, we’re insufficient as we are.
This is what causes the emotional pain, not the lack of the partner per se, but how we interpret this fact.
Facts can’t be changed. The good news are that - your interpretation of facts is yours to be changed however you wish!
How about feeling like a loveable, successful, worthy, important, valuable adult, who’s got her/his beautiful exciting life stretching far ahead into the distance? :)
For one-to-one support on your journey
to letting go of the longing for a happier, more fulfilled life consider our range of therapies offered.
