I think I’ve spent the last few years trying to convince myself that I don’t and shouldn’t want love so much.
Every time I caught myself imagining marriage or relationships...
Wondering what it would be like to build a life with someone...
Feeling that ache when another engagement announcement popped up...
I’d immediately rebuke myself.
“Don’t idolise relationships.”
“Just focus on God. God is enough”
“Be content.”
So I tried, tried to become the girl who didn’t need anything. The girl who never yearned.
But lately I’ve started wondering if I’ve been fighting the wrong battle.
What if yearning was never the problem?
Maybe the problem is what we do with our yearning.
GROWING UP AROUND LOVE
I grew up in a family with both my mom and dad.
And I didn’t understand love till I got much older.
My parents weren’t very PDAy, so it didn’t click early. To be honest, I was a very slow kid. More especially when it came to social cues. How I wish for that innocence back.
But here’s what I did understand, even then:
Growing up around happy couples wires your brain in a way you don’t fully understand till you’re much older. They become the unconscious baseline. The standard. The thing you expect for yourself.
My parents loved each other quietly. Steadily. In ways I couldn’t see as a kid but felt everywhere. In how my mom looked at my dad. In how he showed up for us. In the way they built something together.
I watched that. And somewhere deep down, I wired it into my system as the goal.
PLAYING ALONG
Now that I think about it, growing up, I don’t think I was the kind of girlie girl that dreamt of her wedding and marriage like everyone else did.
Half the time I played along because I didn’t want to be left out.
I’d sit with the other girls talking about their dream proposals, their future husbands, and I’d nod and smile. But inside? I didn’t feel it the way they did. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I just knew I didn’t want to be alone in my uncertainty.
So I performed. And through all that heart was asking different questions:
Will I be seen?
Will I be safe?
Will I know myself enough to not lose myself in someone else?
I didn’t know it then, but I was already asking about the difference between yearning and idolizing.
THE GONE GIRL MOMENT
Then came my early twenties.
And I fell. Hard.
You know that realization when you look yourself in the mirror and realize: It’s chai…It’s over…. You are gone.
A Gone Girl.
That’s what happened to me.
I met someone and decided he was the answer to questions I’d been asking my whole life.
Will I be seen? He saw me.
Will I be safe? I felt safe with him.
Will I be loved? He loved me.
But somewhere between being seen and being consumed, I lost myself.
I didn’t just want him. I needed him.
My worth became contingent on his attention. My happiness depended on his affection. My identity started shrinking to fit whatever he needed me to be. I began believing that without him, I was incomplete.
I was anxious when he didn’t text. I changed myself to keep his attention. I made his love the foundation of everything my confidence, my joy, my sense of value. I idolized him because I’d made him responsible for filling a hole inside me that only I could fill. And only after did i understand that, did I realize he used that to his advantage with him controlling me in the palm of his hands.
When he left (and he did), I didn’t just lose a relationship.
I lost myself, my world shattered.
Because I’d never actually had myself to begin with.
THE QUESTION WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO ASK
Here’s where it gets complicated.
Growing up there is this constant chatter of what kind of wife are you going to be, what kind of mother are you going to be. Almost like they were grooming us for marriage.
And then now that we are older we’re told, constantly, to stop idolizing marriage and relationships. To decentre men. To focus on ourselves. To be whole alone.
And all of that is true.
We should know our worth independent of a relationship. We should build our identity on something stronger than someone else’s love.
But then there’s this other truth that nobody talks about:
We yearn.
We see our parents together and we yearn for that.
We watch couples in love and we yearn for connection like that.
We get older and we yearn for someone to see us, to be with us us, to build something with us.
And we’re supposed to... what? Be stone cold about it?
Pretend the desire doesn’t exist? Shame ourselves for wanting what we’ve watched be beautiful our whole lives?
That’s the gap nobody addresses.
We’re told: Stop idolizing.
But our hearts ask: Is it wrong to yearn?
God Created the Longing
When we talk about singleness in Christian spaces, we usually swing to one of two extremes.
Everything becomes about finding “the one.”
Or... Everything becomes about pretending you don’t want anyone at all.
Neither feels honest.
Because the truth is...
Some of us really do long for marriage, we genuinely want companionship and dream about building a home, raising children, growing old beside someone.
That doesn’t automatically make us idolaters.
In fact, the first time we see the need for relationship in Scripture, it wasn’t Adam who noticed it.
It was God.
“It is not good for the man to be alone.” - Genesis 2:18
Before sin entered the world.
Before brokenness.
Before idolatry.
God Himself acknowledged that longing for companionship wasn’t a flaw.
It was part of His design.
The desire isn’t the problem but the direction of the desire is.
God created the desire before sin ever entered the world.
THE DIFFERENCE IS SUBTLE. BUT IT’S EVERYTHING.
This when I understood the difference between yearning and idolizing.
A few years ago I dated a guy that I realised I wanted but way more than I needed. To be honest it was a very interesting experience, a bit jarring, but also wholesome. I was so used to an idolising relationship that one scared me so much.
When I was with him, I felt myself expand. Not shrink.
I could be myself and also be loved.
That’s yearning.
But before? Before him?
My entire life end existence didn’t depended on him.
I think the difference comes down to this...
I spent years thinking yearning and idolizing were the same thing.
They’re not.
And the difference matters more than you think.
Idolizing is what I did in my early twenties.
It looks like needing someone to feel complete and believing your worth depends on being chosen.
Becoming anxious without them and seeking their validation to know your value while making them the foundation of your lif and thus you lose yourself in order to keep them
Idolizing comes from emptiness. It’s desperation wearing a pretty dress.
It says: Without you, I am nothing.
Yearning is what I learned much later.
It looks like wanting someone because they add to your life, feeling safe, loved, seen and desired in their presence. Missing them but not falling apart without them and wanting their love but knowing your worth exists independent of it
Making them an addition to an already meaningful life, not the foundation
Being fully yourself and still being loved
Yearning comes from wholeness. It’s desire coming from a full cup.
It says: With you, my life is fuller. But without you, I am still me.
WHERE THE DIFFERENCE REALLY LIVES
The difference between yearning and idolizing isn’t in the feeling.
It’s in the foundation.
It’s in how you see yourself when nobody’s watching.
A healthy sense of self allows you to desire love without depending on it for your identity. With love or without it, you know who you are.
Your worth isn’t a question mark waiting for someone else’s answer.
Your value isn’t on trial, waiting for their verdict.
You can want someone and be complete without them.
I didn’t understand this till I started rebuilding myself after that relationship fell apart.
Therapy. Prayer. Time. Slowly learning to be alone without feeling abandoned by myself.
And somewhere in that process, I realized:
I had never actually loved him. I had worshipped him.
I’d confused intensity for love. Desperation for devotion. Idolization for yearning.
When Love Starts Looking Like Validation
If you’ve been reading my writing for a while, you’ll know I’ve been unpacking this theme over the last few months.
In The Christian Pick Me, I realised how much of my identity had quietly become tied to being chosen.
Then in The Coveting Problem, I realised I wasn’t always seeing people for who they were.
Sometimes I was seeing what they represented.
Validation.
Security.
Proof that I was enough.
And that changed everything.
Because when someone becomes the answer to your loneliness…
Your insecurity…
Your need to feel worthy…
They stop being someone you love.
They become someone you need.
And love cannot grow where possession is living.
That’s what Scripture warns us about.
Not desire.
Disordered desire.
Yearning opens its hands. Idolatry closes its fists.
WHAT SCRIPTURE ACTUALLY SAYS ABOUT THIS
I think the Bible speaks to this tension more clearly than we give it credit for.
There’s Proverbs 31:11 a verse about a woman whose worth is so solid, so rooted in herself, that “the heart of her husband trusts in her.”
Notice what that’s not saying: It’s not saying your value comes from being trusted by a man.
It’s saying: When you know your value, when you’re grounded in who you are, then you’re actually trustworthy. Then love becomes addition, not desperation.
There’s also 1 Peter 3:3-4, which says:
“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment... Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”
Your worth is already established. Before anyone chooses you. Before anyone loves you. Before you’re in a relationship.
It’s of great worth in God’s sight.
And then there’s Song of Solomon, which the Bible includes to show us that healthy desire is holy. That wanting love, wanting to be desired, wanting connection these aren’t sins. They’re human.
God doesn’t condemn yearning. He condemns idolizing.
He wants you to want love. He just wants you to want it from a place of wholeness, not from a place of emptiness.
THE PERMISSION YOU ACTUALLY NEED
So here’s what I want to say, especially to the young girls who are asking this question:
It’s not wrong to yearn for love.
It’s not weak to want to be chosen.
It’s not unfeminist to desire connection and partnership.
The world will tell you to pick: Either be fiercely independent (and alone), or be in love (and lose yourself).
But that’s a false choice.
You can be whole and yearn for someone.
You can know your worth and want to be desired.
You can have a full life and want to share it with someone.
The difference isn’t in whether you feel it.
The difference is in whether your foundation is built on them or on yourself.
Ask yourself honestly:
Am I yearning for someone because they expand my life? Or am I idolizing them because they fill a void?
Do I want them? Or do I need them to feel okay?
Can I be myself around them? Or do I have to shrink to keep them?
Would I still know who I am if they left?
If the answer to the last question is no if you’d be lost without them then you’re not yearning.
You’re idolizing.
And the work isn’t about stopping the desire.
The work is about building yourself up so solid, so grounded, so real, that when love comes, it’s an addition to something already whole.
Not a Band-Aid on a wound.
Not a replacement for self-love.
Not your entire reason for existing.
FINDING THE LINE
I think about my parents and siblings sometimes.
About how they built something together while staying whole as individuals.
How they loved quietly but steadily.
How I could feel the stability of it without feeling the desperation.
That’s what I’m learning to want for myself.
Not the fairytale I played along with as a kid.
But the real thing.
The kind of love that doesn’t require you to disappear.
The kind where you can yearn without idolizing.
Where you can be chosen without being consumed.
Where the other person adds to your life instead of becoming your life.
It takes time to build that kind of foundation.
To learn that your worth doesn’t need a witness to be real.
To believe that being loved is wonderful, but being yourself is non-negotiable.
To understand that the line between yearning and idolizing is really just the line between wholeness and emptiness.
And wholeness? That’s the only thing worth building.
Holding the Dream with Open Hands
Psalm 37 says,
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
For years I read that as a promise that if I loved God enough, He would eventually give me everything I wanted.
Now I wonder if it means something deeper.
Maybe delight reshapes desire.
Maybe the closer we grow to God, the less tightly we grip the outcome.
Not because we stop wanting it.
But because we trust Him with it.
There’s freedom in that.
Freedom to hope without demanding.
Freedom to dream without obsessing.
Freedom to yearn without worshipping the thing you’re yearning for.
I don’t want God to remove my longing. I want Him to teach me how to carry it.
Maybe This Is What Waiting Is For
I’m beginning to think waiting isn’t God’s way of punishing us.
Maybe it’s His way of preparing us.
Teaching us to hold beautiful things without making them ultimate things.
Teaching us that love is a gift.
Not an identity.
Not a rescue mission.
Not proof of our worth.
Because if I can’t believe I’m loved before someone chooses me…
What happens if they leave?
What happens if they disappoint me?
What happens if life doesn’t unfold the way I imagined?
A relationship was never meant to carry that weight.
Only God can.
So Let Me Yearn
I’m done pretending I don’t want love.
I do.
I hope I get married one day.
I hope I build a beautiful home.
I hope I experience the kind of partnership I’ve prayed for.
And I don’t think those hopes make me less faithful.
They make me human.
The work now isn’t learning how to stop longing.
It’s learning how to long well.
To carry the desire without letting it carry me.
To hold it with open hands instead of clenched fists.
To trust that if God gave me the capacity to love so deeply…
He also knows how to steward it.
The One-Line Truth
God never asked me to stop longing. He simply asked me not to lose myself in it.
Perhaps that’s the invitation for all of us.
Not to become people who never yearn.
But people who yearn without turning the gift into a god.
Because love is a beautiful thing.
It was always meant to point us back to the One who loved us first.🤍
Thank you for reading. Writing these reflections is personal to me, so if this spoke to you, feel subscribe and to pass it along..
K,
One thought came to mind as I was reading: perhaps the goal isn't to become someone who no longer longs, but someone whose longings no longer dictate reality. We all have desires that pull us forward, but wisdom is learning to hold them without allowing them to define the meaning of our lives.
I felt you know me, I feel seen. Not just by you, but by God. To know the difference between being in love and losing myself in it, I really don't know when to draw the line. But thank you for this, I will delight in Him and my desires will be reshaped according to His Word and will for life ❤️.