The Desire to Be Whole

Lately, I’ve been struggling again with the desire for a relationship. Whenever I think deeply about it, I can feel that the desire isn’t coming from the healthiest place. It’s not entirely unhealthy—certainly not abnormal in this day and age—but for me, I sense an unbalancing movement in it. It comes from a place of lack.

If I trace it down to one of its sources, I would say it stems from feelings of abandonment reaching back to my childhood. There’s a deeply felt, semi-subliminal belief that I’m unlovable—and that if I could just get someone to love me, I’d be proven wrong.

The struggle is: I know that’s not how it works. I know that external love will never erase that internal doubt.

When I’m unbalanced for other reasons—like buzzed from drinking—it’s much easier to act on the desire for someone to complete me. And that’s the view at its root: someone to complete me. Deep down, there’s still this backdrop belief that I’m broken. That I’m unlovable. And a relationship, in that moment, feels like a lifeline thrown to a drowning man lost in a sea of self-contempt.

This isn’t unusual. In fact, from what I see in others’ relationships, it might be the norm. The difference is—I struggle with it. I’m aware of it. A lot of people seem okay looking for someone to either fix or be fixed by. It just is what it is. Then years go by and they’re surprised. But it’s usually the other person they’re surprised by, not the fact that they were dragging around an unresolved wound the whole time.

Or worse, they internalize the collapse as confirmation of what they feared all along: that they’re too broken to be loved. So they spend years pretending they’re redeemable while secretly waiting for evidence that they’re not. Waiting for proof that the damned don’t get redemption.

But I don’t want to wait for that. I want out. I want to upend the whole cycle—this dance of self-loathing disguised as love. I want to be whole without needing another to validate it. And yet, as much as I know that, I still find the desire is a motivator. It grabs me the moment someone shows interest. Regardless of my insights, I’m like an addict when it comes to being desired.

When I’m quiet enough, my intuition will show me all the reasons a situation isn’t right. But then emotion clouds the vision. My clarity disappears. The voice of my higher Self gets drowned out in the noise, and I become spiritually nearsighted. Myopia of the soul.

And beneath all of that? There’s the sexual desire. If that’s active—if there’s physical attraction layered over my longing to be completed—then I’m almost guaranteed a spiral. It usually looks like an upward spiral at first, but that’s the illusion. Everything gets turned inside out, and I lose my center. I forget who I am. I become immersed in the drama, like being lost in a movie. I’m back on the rollercoaster of “love” again—five years old inside, heart open and naive, not knowing what’s coming, getting ready to spill my guts out by the end.

So I struggle.

And the struggle itself has become addictive. Real progress would mean turning away altogether—not just resisting temptation, but relinquishing the entire narrative. It would mean having faith in my real Self—not the swirl of thoughts and emotions, but the presence beneath it all. It would mean giving up the adrenaline hit that comes from the dance between desire and fear.

It would mean looking boredom in the eye—and instead of filling it with distraction, sitting with it. Making boredom my intimate friend. Making stillness my new lover. Until boredom disappears and I no longer fear my own company.

Until I learn to love myself—not as an ego turned inward instead of outward, but as a being already full. Already whole.

To truly move forward—not in a cycle of one step forward and two steps back—I need more than insight. I need embodiment. I need to live a new life to the fullest. I need to feed my soul a full existence, not just to heal, but to prove to the voice of lack that it was never right.

I am already whole. I am not missing any essential piece.

Nothing makes me need another in order to justify my existence. I am already a complete expression of a beautiful, harmonious, loving universe.

And if love arrives—if romance comes to dance—it will be just another dance, not the dance of my life.