When What You Want Wants You
I’m intimately acquainted with the feeling of longing without fulfillment. I can name a guy for each chapter of my life where I wanted him in my perfect fantasy world, but we had no real relationship.
Chris, Paul, Juan, Mike, Joe, Randy, Craig etc.
When I got over one, it didn’t take long until another one took their place, until I healed.
If I examine them all, they had one thing in common, they were nice enough to engage with me, but they were all expertly adverse to choosing and committing to me.
With Hindsight, I can see how I was also adverse to a real connection. I was choosing these particular men for a reason. If I allowed myself to want an actual relationship, that would mean I believed down to my bones that my longing was, you know, real and worthy to me met.
Staying in the longing was actually the best way to keep the fulfillment at arm’s length. It’s like I was obsessed with the “almost” nature of the longing. Like when you are craving a chocolate cake and when you’re about to get the cake and smell the cake as you get close to it, your saliva glands kick into high production.
I loved the reaction to the idea of the fulfillment more than actually taking a bite and putting the saliva to good use. The pain of attempted intimacy or missing intimacy in my past was so strong and so familiar, that my system seemed to turn on every available defense, believing that the actual eating “chocolate cake” is painful.
The definition of longing is “a persistant desire or craving, especially for something unattainable or distant”. A longing exists because it is something seemingly unattainable. Have you ever experienced a person or a career that you’ve longed for, for years, but when attained, it looses it’s desirability?
I remember enjoying laughing at a guy friend’s jokes in college until he asked me out on a date and after that I avoided him like the plague. He was a great guy and I couldn’t risk my heart being broken, because that is what I assumed would happen eventually.
However, I’m learning that guaranteed heartbreak happens when we live for way too long in the longing for a thing.
In the Book of Proverbs it says that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick”. We start to feel heart sick because we are living continual in the delay of our longing being fulfilled. It’s like the longing is the heartbreak and we are feeling the very feeling that we are so desperately trying to not feel.
A smart coach taught me that to crave something is to push it away. (this is true emotionally, but not so with Chocolate cake, given you have the access=) Instead if we fully embody wanting a goal, dream, type of person etc. and fully own that we are worthy of that desire, almost as truly as if it’s already here, it much more likely to be satisfied.
If you can relate at all to my struggle, here are 3 good questions to ask yourself:
1. What is it that you WANT?
2. What thought comes up for you that pushes your desire back into longing?
(what thought takes away permission to WANT it)?
3. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the degree to which you can experience the want as a reality in this moment? (10 being that you feel, taste, imagine it so clearly it feels like a realistic dream)
If you answer these questions, I invite you to send me a message and tell me what you learned about yourself. Speaking your Wants out loud and sharing it with another person makes it more real. I’d love to hear yours! kristen@kristenmiracoaching.com
If you’d like support to move from longing deferred to a want fulfilled, find a time on my calendar here to see if we’re a good fit to work together.
