Imagine getting the call you've been waiting for, hearing someone tell you they're falling in love with you or finally being offered the opportunity you've been hoping to get. That excitement, the anticipation and the happiness when something you've wanted for so long suddenly becomes real. Being someone's favorite person, someone's emergency contact, someone's first call. Being the person someone thinks of when something exciting happens or when everything falls apart. We want to be chosen. In love, in friendships, in our careers and in all those little moments when someone makes us feel like we matter. Perhaps that's what makes desire so complicated; the more we want it, the more afraid we become of finding out that it might never happen.
Maybe that's where things get complicated. When the happiness of being chosen starts to influence how we see ourselves. A compliment can change our entire day. A rejection can ruin our week. We find ourselves checking who watched our Instagram story, wondering why someone hasn't reached out or feeling disappointed when a person we were never particularly interested in stops showing interest. It's almost embarrassing how much power we give to these tiny confirmations. But they feel good. For a moment, someone has noticed us. Someone thinks we're interesting, attractive or worth spending time with.
And it goes far beyond. We want the opportunity, the promotion, the invitation. We want to be included in the group chat and remembered when someone makes plans. Social media has turned everyone else's life into something we can watch unfold in real time. Engagements, babies, apartment keys, career announcements and new relationships. We no longer compare achievements alone. We compare timelines. Who got there first? Who seems happier? Who has already found the person they're going to spend their life with? And why does it sometimes feel like everyone else knows what they're doing while we're still figuring it out?
It's interesting how rejection can hurt long after we've stopped wanting. Sometimes we don't even miss them or it. We miss the feeling of being chosen. How often do we desire something because we genuinely want it and how often do we desire it because being the chosen would make us feel better about ourselves? Especially when it comes to love. Probably the one thing most of us would like to experience and somehow the one thing we've made unnecessarily complicated.
We talk about wanting to fall in love, finding someone to build a life with and having a relationship that actually lasts. Yet the way we date sometimes makes you wonder whether we even know how to get there anymore. Are we the generation that forgot how to love? Maybe.
We know someone's attachment style before we've seen how they handle an argument. We know their Spotify Wrapped before we've ever spent an evening listening to music together. Before discovering that we both love the same artist, discussions over which album is better or sharing songs that have been part of our lives for years. Songs that remind us of our teenage years, a summer we never wanted to end or a time when everything felt different. Letting someone listen to the music that shaped us through different versions of ourselves and telling them the stories behind it. Does that still happen? We used to discover these little things about each other over time. Now we can scroll through someone's entire life before we've even met them. We chat about their love language before we've had the chance to discover how they show affection. We exchange relationship trauma and intimate details over text before we've even decided whether we enjoy sitting across from each other at dinner on a Tuesday. We are the generation that knows so much about each other so quickly, yet struggle so much to feel genuinely close?
We know the terminology. Anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, love bombing, gaslighting, trauma bonding. Sometimes these words help us recognize genuinely unhealthy relationships. We've become professionals at identifying unhealthy behavior that we've almost forgotten how to tolerate ordinary human imperfection. Not every difficult conversation means incompatibility. Sometimes love is simply uncomfortable. Sometimes it requires patience, forgiveness and the willingness to have the same conversation multiple times. But when another person is always just a swipe away, it's tempting to believe that the right relationship shouldn't be difficult. So we move on. Or we never really commit in the first place.
We end up in situationships, tell ourselves we're fine keeping things casual and pretend we don't care as much as we do. We wait hours to respond to a message we've already read. We wonder whether asking to see someone again makes us look desperate. We want to know where things are going but don't want to be the person who brings it up. Nobody wants to be the one who cares more. We want to be chosen and know that someone wants us just as much as we want them. Unfortunately, we're terrified to admit this desire.
So we put our energy into our friendships, our careers and the things we enjoy doing by ourselves. And there is nothing wrong with that. But somewhere between becoming independent and learning how to protect our peace, we might have become a little too comfortable with the idea of never needing anyone. We're getting closer to thirty. Some of our friends are getting engaged while others haven't been in a serious relationship for years. We talk about wanting a home, a family or simply someone to come back to at the end of the day. Then we go on another first date, find something that bothers us and wonder whether it's worth seeing them again. We've mastered detachment. We've mastered being nonchalant. We've become very good at convincing ourselves that we don't need anyone.
But I think we do want someone. We want to fall in love, to be missed, to be someone's first call and to know that someone is genuinely happy to have us in their life. We want all of it, even if admitting that feels a little embarrassing these days.
The fear of not being wanted doesn't end with dating. It follows us into the way we imagine our future, our careers and into family and friendships. We hesitate to tell someone how much they mean to us, question whether we're qualified enough to apply for something we really want and wonder whether we're falling behind while everyone else seems to be moving forward. I wonder how many things we've talked ourselves out of simply because we were afraid of not being chosen. How many people we could have loved, places we could have gone and opportunities we could have taken if we had trusted our own desires a little more. There will always be someone getting married before us, getting the university spot we wanted or being invited somewhere we weren't. And there will always be people who don't choose us, no matter how much we wish they would. We've become so afraid of rejection that we've forgotten what our desires are actually about. The excitement of wanting something, the nervousness of going after it and the happiness when something you've hoped for finally becomes real. Of course it hurts when things don't work out. When someone doesn't feel the same, when an opportunity passes or when life turns out differently than you imagined. But even disappointment is part of caring about something enough to try. We won't always get what we want, and we were never supposed to.
But sometimes we will. Sometimes the person we love will love us back, the opportunity we've been hoping for will finally come along and life will surprise us in ways we couldn't have planned. I like to believe that life has a way of working things out. Maybe we don't need to know how everything will turn out to allow ourselves to want it in the first place. That alone is worth taking the chance to go after what we desire.
by Lareen Roth
Image: Nothing Hill (1999)
