The Summer of Yearning

Is it sexy only when men do it?

What is it to truly yearn?

verb. It’s to want someone or something so very much, especially what you cannot have.

As The Summer I Turned Pretty, has a primarily girl audience, we have crowned Conrad our prince of an 80s-kind of love, and made him the symbol of yearning. He keeps a post card in his wallet, he cooks for her, cares for her as a traditional man, as a husband. Conrad’s yearning is further highlighted by Jeremiah’s manchild behavior — Jeremiah is the emotional duff to Conrad.

This got me wondering — as a professional yearner myself — is it only acceptable when men do it? We’ve all read the Tik Tok theories about how a heterosexual relationship only lasting when the man loves the woman more. After Reddit deep diving, common consensus stands that in cis relationships, the man should be more interested in the woman. In my last relationship, I believed this to be true and felt a difference in the state of healthiness when the man was more inclined to give me space to talk and be, rather than me making space for the man to exhibit his nonchalance. When women yearn, they’re quickly labelled synonyms of dumb. When we watch a woman yearn, we notice a level of pathetic-ness that makes them unattractive. On the other hand, a man yearning is sexy because it means he painfully cares and he only cares for his girl. A woman who is stuck up on a guy, who keeps a picture of him in her office downtown can be rather looked down upon. I think there is a constant battle between hyper-feminism and predetermined societal views of women. The woman is expected to be head over heels (but should she be?) And if she is not (shouldn’t she be?).

By Owen Gent. To me, it's the duality of humanness.

When the most stable relationship of mine, where I believed the man loved me more ended, I retreated back into what I know best — yearning. I’ve yearned throughout my life, whether for things, places or partners. I’ve yearned during relationships for what is to come, a future and the potential of happiness, a flicker of forever. And I’ve (obviously) yearned after a break-up. To draw similarities between Jenny Han’s manifestation of yearning through Conrad, and me — I too, pull out a polaroid image of us dressed up on my 23rd birthday in New York and look at it with longing — big smiles, unyielding and unaware of the pain that will follow less than a year later.

When I yearn, I don’t see or feel people interpret it as a forcefield of my connection with the man who left. But rather, I come across mopey and weak. The whispers of it having happened again, knowing better by now, having a manual ready to fall back on are swirling around. It is essential to have an ever pleasing smile, unfazed by internal trauma and chronic stress. A girl is pretty and respected by how she braves the storm, a soldier who strays away from the damsel. Let’s be real, no knight in shining armor is saving a yearning woman (why should he when she wants another man?) But he will save a heartbroken woman. I’m coming to realize the difference between being heartbroken and yearning. The first step is complete despair, the next is what you do with it. Well, Conrad Fisher’s therapist and mine are dealing with the same conundrum — our step two is to yearn and not get over it.

On me, the yearning makes me 10x uglier the more thoughts I give it. But it makes a man 10x hotter for his out of the blue and serendipitous emotional awareness. Does this make yearning an acceptable sport only for men? If I know what I want and yearn for it, I’m disrespecting myself — to some level, yes maybe I am by wanting somebody who undoubtedly brought me misery. Still, didn’t Belly by dating Conrad’s brother? By spewing out words of venom on that beach? Sure, he knew all along that she loved him. What if I say that I knew he loved me all along? Will it hold the same weight?

When I’m in one of my episodes of yearning, time slows down and a Taylor Swift song plays at the back of my head. I open up the receipts of our love and try to remember and hold onto the good to give me strength to move past the bad. I want to break no-contact urgently but know nothing good will come of it, I feel the sense of yearn and want in my chest, through the tears falling down my cheeks, and helplessness with which I lay unflinching and unable to take the yearn away until it settles by itself. Yearning is a part of every love cycle and what often makes it beautiful is that it is not anger but unadulterated love. During the yearn, my love enters its balletcore 2.0 phase, the soft hues and fabrics of romance have been crafted into armor with which I will face the army of nostalgia and utter want.

I guess it will never be very sexy on a woman — so much want, a desperation, the la puttana-ification of a woman yearner. Someday, all I can hope is to find someone who yearns more than me — if that is even possible.