Why Do I Want to Feel Desired?

You can be loved and still want to be looked at.

You can feel secure, happy, even deeply connected to someone and still miss that little charge of knowing someone wants you. And sometimes, the person whose attention you're craving isn't even the point.

You are.

There is something distinctly different about being loved and feeling desired. Love can feel safe, known and steady. Desire has an edge to it. It makes you suddenly aware of yourself: your body, your energy, the way you move through a room. Maybe that's what you've been missing.

Wanting to feel desired doesn't necessarily mean you want someone else

This is where women can be incredibly hard on themselves. You notice someone noticing you. You enjoy the attention. Maybe you think about it again later. And immediately comes the interrogation.

Why did I like that?
Does this mean something is missing?
Why do I care if someone else finds me attractive?

Maybe it means something. But it doesn't automatically mean you want an affair, don't love your partner or need a different life. Sometimes you don't want the person. You want the feeling they woke up in you.

Why does being desired feel so good?

Researchers have a rather academic name for something surprisingly familiar: object of desire self-consciousness. It describes the awareness that you are romantically or sexually desirable in another person's eyes. Research suggests that this experience can be particularly relevant to women's sexual scripts and fantasies.

In much less academic language?

Sometimes knowing you're wanted changes how you experience yourself. You aren't only being seen. For a moment, you see yourself differently too.

Maybe you miss yourself

This might be the more interesting question. When you say I miss feeling desired, what exactly do you miss?

The attention? The anticipation? Being pursued? The confidence? The version of you who walked into a room wondering who might notice?

There are times when wanting to feel wanted isn't really about needing someone else's approval. It's about wanting access to her again.

The woman who felt magnetic. The woman who was aware of her body. The woman who didn't need anything to happen to enjoy knowing that something could. She may not have gone anywhere.

Love and desire don't always speak the same language

Being understood is intimate.
Being trusted is intimate.
Building a life with someone is intimate.
But none of those sensations is identical to being wanted.

That's why a woman can have a loving relationship and still crave desire without that automatically being an indictment of the relationship. Human desire is more complicated than happy people never notice anyone else. And frankly, thank God.

The interesting part isn't whether you should ever want to feel desired. It's what feeling desired gives you that you don't want to lose.