What’s Your Yearning Style?

Learn More About Yearning

Yearning is having a moment. Search interest in the word has climbed, and people looking it up are also searching for related ideas like pining and limerence. Online, the phrase bring back yearning has become a rallying cry for anyone who misses slow, aching love stories where a single glance across a room carried more weight than a hundred messages.

So what is it? Yearning is a deep, sustained longing for someone or something that feels just out of reach. It is not quite the same as a crush, which can be light and fleeting, and it is different from heartbreak, which looks back on a loss. Yearning lives in the gap between wanting and having, and a lot of people find that gap strangely enjoyable.

Pining is its close cousin, usually used when the longing is one-sided or unspoken. Limerence is the more intense term, coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in the 1970s to describe an involuntary, consuming infatuation with another person, complete with intrusive thoughts and a strong need for the feeling to be returned. Most everyday yearning is far gentler than that.

Pop culture is full of famous yearners. Fans regularly point to characters like Conrad Fisher from The Summer I Turned Pretty, Jim Halpert from The Office and Noah Calhoun from The Notebook as the gold standard: people who feel deeply, wait patiently and say little until the moment finally arrives. Period dramas and romance novels built entire genres on the same idea.

Romance readers have their own vocabulary for it. Tropes like he falls first, mutual pining, slow burn and second-chance romance are all different flavors of yearning, and each appeals to a slightly different kind of romantic. Some people love the patience of a slow build, while others want the sweeping, all-in devotion of a grand gesture.

That is what this quiz is about. Nobody yearns in quite the same way. Some of us pine in silence, some of us announce it to anyone who will listen, and some of us mostly long for the past. None of these styles is better than another, and most people are a blend, but one usually leads.

If you enjoyed this, you might also like What Type of Lover Are You?, Which Attachment Style Are You? or What is Your Love Language?. Take the quiz above to find out your yearning style.