Definition 
Yearning 
/ˈjɜrnɪŋ/



  1. Profound and relentless desire for another that feels like it will never be relieved– and may actually go without satisfaction. This feeling goes beyond one person missing another, especially as it can be experienced once the other has been “had” so to say. It is experienced so deeply into the realm of need that it borders on psychosis. Yearning evokes a sense of despair so deep that it circles back around to pleasure as the feeling becomes torturously addictive. Sensualism and sexualism meet here in an ocean of longing that many lesbians (and other scholars) doubt a man has the emotional bandwidth or historical familiarity with systematic denial sufficient enough to truly understand.



Yearning exists strongly in the cultural lexicon today. Even on the big screen, as pictured above in Nosferatu (2024) by Robert Eggers, movies and other forms of storytelling center their stories on the woes of intense longing.