The wanting complex

to daters looking for larger-than-life love

This newsletter is free & available to all thanks to Hinge. Thank you for letting a lover girl talk about her big, screaming, unruly feelings. #hingepartner

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Wanting. So much to say about it and even more to feel. I was appointed Chief Wanting Officer when I discovered my very first crush at the age of five, and knew then and there I was probably made for that feeling. Sparkly, dizzy electricity impulse running from the brain into the heart that takes over your day. Through decades, I have since been careful and careless, protective of feelings that weren’t my own, keeping desire on speed dial, walking the goodbye line, setting fireworks to my pride, climbing over the fence of the impossible, and playing my clandestine part well. In all of this, I’ve wanted – which, like a big protruding flaw, seemed too grand to bring into the scene. Can’t do things casually. Can’t go on a date without a future in mind. Can’t undercommit. Just can’t want in a casual manner. What a liability for a girl just trying to date.

In all of it, I had a mission: to find out if my wanting was a prison to escape from or a signal there’d be something waiting for me on the other side. Something that wants my wanting back, sneaks up on me like an avalanche, something I can fall into with my full entire self, no pretense, no arenas; just pure bliss and knowledge of a higher state. Parched and tired, I was out to prove to myself that looking for a larger-than-life love wasn’t a dead end street. But confirmations of the reverse were everywhere: an unlucky number on a cancelled date, a bad habit, an eyeroll, an afterword of something not entirely truthful. A bad text here, a good enough walk home there, dissatisfied, inauthentic, lifeless. Dating apps made this more acute: curating myself into punchline prompts, adjusting my tone to maximum casualty, a perfectly timed reply. All of this felt like showing up as somebody who had no resemblance to me the slightest. Could it be that the wanting itself was leading me astray? That it was no friend of mine, a product of fairytales and entitlement? Was I trading something in? I knew a type of love existed that would embrace me in its arms with midnight sweetness, and my ability to find it was dependent on chance or courage – maybe both.

Our beliefs and notions of love can get tinged with our own cynicism, propped by the echoes of the past. Like ink in water, the fear spreads thin and fast. In a world prompted by ironic misbehavior and good faith armor, it’s understandable that strategy is lionized: it guarantees bulletproof walls against heartbreak and embarrassment. A permission to find love exists within some sort of impartiality margins and careful thinking. The best way, I thought, was to pretend that I flat out don’t care. But care I did, on repeat, endlessly. There’s only so many times you can lie to yourself. After another “Don’t get attached” from a trusted friend, a nerve was struck. Though the strategy-oriented warnings meant well and probably wanted me to keep my sanity, I couldn’t listen: the wanting was too loud. What’s a girl to do when she’s graduated with honors from scheming-waiting-needing to get love right? When her whole being rejects the whole project management approach to dating? It was just so tiring to hold back. There had to be another way, I knew that much.

Sometimes you ought to take yourself out for a candlelit dinner and an honest intervention, because even the most hopeful girls turn to mad men if our wanting is kept in captivity too long. Dissolving in soft lights and elevator music, I grabbed my wanting by the hand and asked: what are you, even? Have I been kind to you? Have I listened to your needs and showed up as myself? Have I been patient, solemn enough, sat in the darkness of it all without interrupting? Or have I been carelessly smoke-signaling something that isn’t there? Looking to climb my way out of what needs my attendance? Saying yes when no was due? Caring more about how my photos come across than what I’m looking for? Being mean to the one that loves me most by virtue of pretending, settling, faking interest?

I made a pinky promise pact then to never water down my wanting. It’s this enormous, all-consuming thing, slightly careless but always true, a constant – everything else variable. An infinite resource. Has to be honored as such. It’s been beaming out of me, right at the very core, requiring to be attended to by none other than myself. That’s where wanting is metabolized into seeing and being seen, and from there, over the horizon, it can’t be mistaken for something half-real. Now we’re getting somewhere.

It’s easy to get cynical in dating. But self-respect that blooms out of honoring your wanting is a force of nature. Trees bloom differently when you know with certainty the gravity of your desire is what makes you, well, who you are. The ground is firm but tender, politics of attraction stand no chance. And while I waited for something tangible to love, I said I wouldn’t bide time yearning for better endings I haven’t allowed myself. There would be pitfalls and no one’s safe from disappointment, but no effort’s wasted when it’s honest, no attempt’s detonated when it’s true. Who am I to gatekeep my own love from myself? That night, nothing was imminent and everything was worth it.

This isn’t a story about getting dating right – I don’t think there’s such a thing. This is a story about letting yourself want and the self-trust that emerges from it. Unshakeable self-trust, the sparkling kind, the kind that changed everything about how I dated on Hinge: no stalling, self-erasure, buffering, assessing myself. First message, real questions, an honest yes. I let wanting set the dating pace, met the moment as it was, stopped auditioning for safety. Presence was infinite, and fear started to dissipate. Slowly, then all at once. From there, it took so little to see the wanting ricochet. I didn’t have to prove, bargain, plead, change, mold myself into a more desirable outcome.

And, honestly, what a silly thing to think that love is a sacrifice to who you are. Not the kind that makes you understand why you were given two hands to hold, two eyes to see, and lips to kiss. A girl that wants deserves that much and maybe a dozen more. Nobody told me what miracles awaited on the other side of giving it my all, so I’ll be one to spread the word. Could it be different this time? What would dating look like if you let yourself want plainly, urgently, strongly? If you just asked them out, sent that Hinge message, asked the real questions, allowed for errors of the human heart? All’s fair in love and wanting, and if I were to go back, I’d do it again. A thousand times.