In what might be the greatest love story of Greek mythology, yearning ends in tragedy.
A grieving Orpheus, desperate to return to the world of the living with his deceased love, Eurydice, makes a doomed deal with Hades. He can leave the underworld with Eurydice so long as he doesn’t look back at her on their return.
He agrees, but as the story goes, just as Orpheus steps into the light of the sun, he can’t help himself, and he glances back at Eurydice. She then disappears into the shadows, now lost to him forever.
For as long as humans have been able to record stories of love and heartache, we have been told what it means to yearn. From Orpheus to Heathcliff, literature is full of tales that ache with desire, where love is just as much about loss as it is gain.
A younger generation has discovered the delicious pull of yearning, thanks to a slew of television shows and films that romanticise what it means to be in a state of unfulfilled longing. In Heated Rivalry, Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie) spend the entire first season trying to fight their true feelings for each other with agonising results.
In recent Prime Video hit Off Campus, people have gone wild for the emotionally charged protagonist Garrett Graham (Belmont Camelli); and lest we forget when even comfortably queer adult women were pining for Conrad Fisher, the tortured teen heartthrob from The Summer I Turned Pretty. Not to mention the Bridgerton behemoth, and Wuthering Heights adaptation that saw grown women turn feral for Jacob Elordi’s aching Heathcliff.
In these stories, as in the myth of Orpheus, it is the yearning man who drives the plot. In the context of romance fiction, yearning is very much associated with men, says Hannah McCann, senior lecturer in cultural studies at the University of Melbourne.
“Yearning is a masculinised version of the crush, which romanticises men’s desires,” McCann says. “Yearning sounds more serious than ‘crush’, which speaks to a gendered double standard.”
The allure of these fictional men is heightened by our current socio-political climate where misogyny has been made cool again by manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate, and their younger looksmaxxing counterpoints such as Clavicular, who openly admit they have no interest in women’s pleasure, let alone pining after them.
“The fantasy of the yearning man taps into a desire for empathetic men who are not caught up in the rampant misogyny of this period.”
But it isn’t only men who yearn. In February, dating app Tinder released a report in which they declared “2026 is the year of yearning”. After surveying 500 single Australians aged 18 to 25, they found that more than three in four Gen Z singles want to experience stronger “romantic yearning” in their relationships, and 81 per cent believe yearning plays an important role in early emotional connection.
“There’s a strong sense of ontological uncertainty in Gen Z,” says author and academic Dr Lisa Portolan. “There is a sense of economic precarity, housing and geopolitical instability and climate anxiety, which is destabilising. Yearning functions as an emotional orientation toward stability that feels unavailable in the present.”
As tempting as it is to view a person’s ability to yearn as a sign of their commitment to you or of their emotional competence, our desire for the person isn’t a virtue in and of itself. Orpheus died alone and heartbroken, after all.
“I spend much of my time with clients talking about the flaws of chemistry and attraction when it comes to finding healthy, secure love,” says Phoebe Rogers, clinical psychologist and relationship therapist. “Yearning is similar; it speaks to a deep, often unrequited, and not-acted-upon longing … [but] when yearning is a state of constantly longing, there isn’t a chance for reciprocal love and connection.”
Rogers notes that in those early stages of love, we’re often actually projecting, with the intense feelings and longing more about our past than the person standing in front of us. “I have worked with clients who feel deeply for a new love interest, however, the feelings are naive in a sense,” Rogers explains.
“The feelings seem too strong for someone they’ve just met and do not really know; they have formed an idealised version of this new person – a person that will choose them, that they begin to imagine a future with. Yet, they do not know this person – their character, values, traits – it’s too early.”
Portolan points out that depictions of yearning overlap with what attachment theory would describe as anxious or avoidant activation systems being triggered by ambiguity rather than actual relational depth. “When people become used to yearning, narratives – especially those shaped by shows, music or social media – can start to confuse intensity with compatibility.
“The emotional high of uncertainty (will they/won’t they, almost-but-not-quite, delayed gratification) can feel more ‘meaningful’ than the steadier, less dramatic experience of someone who is actually available. The relationship itself becomes less relevant because the yearning is the central part of the story.”
For singles serious about finding love, Rogers suggests we leave yearning to the realms of myth, poetry and fiction, rather than letting it jeopardise our real-life relationships. “A better prediction of a healthy relationship is kindness, reciprocity and good communication,” she explains.
“We’re much more empowered to find healthy love and build connection if we choose curiosity and openness, and understand that a bit of effort in communicating can go a long way in building love.”
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