The feeling of longing for a relationship can be a complex and intense emotion, characterised by a deep desire for emotional connection and companionship with a person you’re attracted to. It often involves a sense of yearning and emptiness, as well as a longing for the fulfilment of one's emotional and romantic needs.

The feeling of longing to be in a relationship often includes some or all of these 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. Please seek professional help if you find this feeling overwhelming - get in touch.

• Jealousy of Couples: Seeing happy couples or hearing about others' partners and comparing your current situation to theirs, can trigger envy and sadness if romantic relationships appear unavailable to you. You may wish you had what they have and feel a sense of craving to experience that kind of love and connection.

• Daydreaming and Fantasising: People who long for a relationship often engage in daydreaming and fantasising about what their ideal partner would be like, what 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, as I compared my present to the imaginary future. (I’ll discuss this in greater detail later in this article).

• 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. 

It's important to remember that longing for a relationship is a natural and universal human emotion and - when fulfilled - is simply a motivator for people to get into meaningful and fulfilling connections with others.

The problem is that hardly anything is being said about the shadow side of the coin - the longing in itself does not guarantee finding a romantic relationship.

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. 

When told that at some point in the future, when I meet my special someone, I’ll no longer feel this bad, I often 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 no longer want to be in the relationship, the person who didn’t choose to split up is burdened with the weight of the relationship and all the expectations and hopes that didn’t materialise, which can be a really heavy weight to carry.

• 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 - the future we associate with all the light feelings of joy, laughter, wholeness and completeness, a sense of relief at having finally arrived -  

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 to be with someone. 

By rejecting the present, we are, of course, rejecting ourselves, in this present non-partnered state. What we are subconsciously saying to ourselves is that we are not enough, we’re lacking, we’re not sufficient as we are. 

This is what causes the emotional pain, not the lack of the partner per se, but how we interpret this fact. 

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