Becoming Un-Desperate for Love

Kerrie Jones • August 1, 2024

Many of us are desperate for love and don’t recognize it. One telltale sign is when you find yourself stuck in the same relationship cycles and patterns that don’t serve you. These cycles leave you feeling hurt, confused, lonely, and sometimes ashamed because you’ve given so much and failed yet again. In your mind, ‘this time will be different’, yet somehow, you’re here again, and again, and again. Be encouraged! There is a way out.

 

Desperation is driven by unmet needs that no matter how hard we try we can never satisfy. We can’t satisfy them because they aren’t actual needs, they’re needs we’ve convinced ourselves we have, born out of painful childhood experiences; let’s call them phantom needs. Left unchecked, phantom needs lead to a lot of pain as we chase after the unattainable. The truth is we all have the need to be loved, first by our parents/caregivers, then by ourselves; and if we weren’t loved properly as children this need quickly becomes desperation if we don’t happen to stumble upon someone who’s willing love us properly. The challenge many of us face is while some of us may gravitate to the person who shows up willing to love us as we need, many of us will reject that person and gravitate toward the people who love us in similar ways to the people who failed to love us properly as children. This is the cycle, overlooking healthy love for toxic love that feels familiar, out of a need to resolve our childhood dilemma.

 

Childhood is the space we are given to learn everything we need to take care of ourselves for the remainder of our lives, including how to love and be loved. If you were loved properly as a child, you then love yourself properly and have a generally healthy approach to loving others. If not, the opposite is true. Children learn by example, our initial lesson is to receive love, and as we learn, our priority shifts to loving ourselves. If you were not loved properly as a child, you will miss the cue to begin loving yourself as you have not been given the tools to do so. Instead, you will move into adulthood continuing to seek after the love you missed in childhood from romantic partners instead of recognizing your responsibility to give it to yourself first. Somewhere in our adolescent years (I imagine) is when the shift takes place and the cycle is put in motion, hence the boy crazy/girl crazy teen.

 

It's also important to note that our perception of love is informed by our childhood experiences. Because we are born with the automatic expectation to receive love, we understand love to be whatever it is we received or witnessed. Thus, no matter what we experienced, we interpret the treatment we received from our caregivers as loving, even if it was completely devoid of love. Generally speaking, if we were neglected as children, we will tolerate and accept neglect in our adult relationships and see it as ‘the way we love each other’. This is how toxic love is born.

 

Healing this type of trauma isn’t a linear process, meaning, there’s no true first, second, and third step to take. There are, however, steps you can take, in whichever order feels right for you, toward healing so that you no longer chase after love outside of yourself. The goal is for you to rely first on self-love and then look to others for love, as God intended. I’m going to provide you with a numbered process, but again, this isn’t linear; you’ll circle back and skip around according to your own needs. I will say, this process is best undertaken with the help of a trained mental health professional or a trusted friend or family member, so they can reflect what they see to help you make more informed decisions. If you have neither, there are things you can do right now in your own company with as little as a journal and a pen to begin moving the needle in the direction of healthy love; the key is to be honest and reflective with yourself about what you think and feel.

 

  1. Become clear about what happened to you. Who hurt you? When? How? What hurt the most about it? What message(s) did that hurt send to you about yourself? How did this hurt change you? Where possible, address your concerns with the people who failed you.
  2. Learn yourself. We are full of strengths and great characteristics, as well as flaws. Who are you? What do you enjoy? What are your strengths? What are your flaws? What are your values? It’s difficult to love what you don’t know.
  3. Know your worth. When we are improperly loved in childhood it can cause us to believe that we are not worthy of proper love because something is wrong with us. The truth is there is nothing intrinsically wrong with you, you are lovable just because you are.
  4. Learn to love yourself. Love is accepting someone exactly as they are, with all of their flaws and being willing to stick it out for life. The easiest way to learn to do this for yourself in adulthood is to surround yourself with people who show you this type of love; people who are willing to hold up the mirror to show you how great you are and how flawed you are, and are willing to love you anyway.
  5. Embrace aloneness. If you can tolerate, and even appreciate spending time alone, it’ll become difficult to settle for time with just anyone. Quality time will need to be quality.
  6. Become clear about what you want out of a relationship. Do you want to be needed or wanted in relationships? As healthy bonding occurs, the need for one another will increase as you grow to depend on one another; however, at the outset of a relationship being needed can create a dependency that can foster resentment down the line
  7. Address the symptoms of the trauma. One of the most common symptoms of childhood relational trauma is fantasizing. Many of us meet someone, and within weeks, or even days the fantasies begin. You begin to envision a future with this person without the evidence that they are a suitable mate. To address this, bring yourself back to the present, what behaviors do they display? What do these behaviors say about who they are? Don’t assume anything is true about them; if you don’t know, ask. Be clear and honest with yourself about the red flags that are present? If you’re making excuses for them, your fantasies have become stronger than your reality.

 

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s a good start. The goal here is to work through, process, or even resolve your childhood trauma around improper love so you can clear out the clutter and become more intentional about the love you give yourself and the love you expect to receive from others. By doing this, you become more capable of showing up for yourself and others from a place of worthiness and confidence, rather than from desperation. The truth is, from the moment of your conception you were lovable and worthy of being loved properly. You have the power to shift your mindset so you can achieve the loving relationships you were born to have.

 

If you’re in need of support, I invite you to join the waitlist for a community I’m developing to support singles in their quest for healthy love. Visit https://theothersidetherapy.com/news and enter your email address to join the waitlist under the paragraph entitled ‘Hey’. Additionally, if you’re interested in therapy, I have a few slots available for individuals and couples. Visit the website and book a free 15-minute consultation to determine if we’re a good fit for therapy.

 

Kerrie Jones,

Associate Marriage and Family Therapist (#143151)

Associate Professional Clinical Counselor (#15245)

Supervised by Dr. Glenna Anderson, LCSW (272046)

Why Leaving a Toxic Relationship Feels Like Withdrawals

By Kerrie Hudson • March 18, 2026
Understanding the Addictive Pull of Artificial Love
Woman peacefully journaling

Protecting My Peace

By Kerrie Hudson • March 10, 2026
There’s a lot of talk about protecting one’s peace these days, but what does that even mean? And how do you protect your peace? Let’s dig in. Peace is an emotion. In psychology there are five basic emotions that are widely accepted: anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and happiness. Unfortunately, of the five only one would be considered a positive emotion, though I believe all are positive in that they provide you with information. But I digress. Happiness, the more positive of the five is the one emotion you likely welcome with open arms, and when it comes, you want it to stay. You protect it. Peace lives on the spectrum of happiness, and like all other emotions, it is literally a feeling in the body. It feels like serenity; there’s stillness and a calm that comes over you. I’ve had folks identify peace in their bodies as the absence of the feelings they’re accustomed to: tightness in their chest, sweaty palms, stomach discomfort, etc. For many, peace is rarely felt, so when they feel it, or any other emotion for that matter, they fail to recognize the environment that nurtured it; and if you’re going to protect your peace, you’ve got to notice when you feel it and what contributed to it. Understanding peace as an emotion is necessary because the role of your emotions is to provide you with information about your environment. At times, emotions can be so intense and distressing that the focus shifts from the environment that ignited them, to suppressing or extinguishing them. But emotions aren’t the problem, the environment is. Every emotion is important, even those that you’ve identified as negative. They tell you that something in your circumstances or environment needs your attention, and when you ignore your emotions, you ignore the task at hand. Peace is a gift, and not everybody or every environment offers it. When you notice peace in your body, you also need to notice what nurtured it. Are there people who bring peace? Are there places where you feel more at ease? Identifying these sources gives you what you need to take care of yourself by accessing more of it. On the other hand, where do you experience the opposite of peace? Where, and with whom do you find chaos and confusion? If you’re going to protect your peace, these are environments and people who you need to limit contact with. If you’re going to protect your peace, you’ve gotta increase your self-connection by noticing your emotions, and allowing them to tell you what you need to increase your overall well-being. When you fight your emotions, you fight yourself and your best interests. Extended periods of suppressing emotions can lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions because two things are working against you: you are becoming more disconnected from yourself while existing in environment that don’t serve you. There’s no magic pill that creates more peace and happiness, it’s the consistent work of nurturing self-connection and meeting your needs, because you are the most important person in your world. May you grow exponentially in peace! If this resonated with you, you’re not alone. These are the conversations we continue inside Next Chapter: Notes from The Other Side, my monthly newsletter where I share insights, reflections, and guidance for women breaking toxic patterns and learning how to love themselves differently. Join Next Chapter here

The One Thing Standing Between You & Success

By Kerrie Hudson • February 8, 2026
The new year typically comes with a desire to be successful in an area where winning has been challenging. As such, we spend time thinking about what we want for the year ahead and commit to doing things that will help us achieve our goals. The challenge many of us run into is that we quit on our goals before we can clear the first few months of the year; so, while January is still with us, I want to share with you some information about what I believe to be the number killer of success, anxiety, and how to overcome it so you can have a greater chance at winning this year. Regardless of your goals, anxiety has a way of stepping in and stealing your motivation before you can gain much momentum. It’s the quiet voice lurking in the background telling you that you can’t have what you really want because it’s too hard, or you’re not good enough, or if you do attain it, something terrible will come along and take it away. Essentially, anxiety is at the heart of why you settle; you’ve listened to that little fearful voice that’s informed only by your limited experience and/or imagination, and convinced yourself you can’t have the thing you deeply desire; so your only option is to go without the tightened body, or the love you deserve, or the business that would positively impact the lives of others, which ultimately leaves you dissatisfied and even regretful. You’ve given up on your goals and dreams because of something that might happen, but probably won’t. If you’re going to disrupt this cycle the key is to challenge your ego. Many people believe the issue with the ego is cockiness and arrogance that leads one to see themselves as above others, and while that’s true, what most people fail to understand is the arrogance in perceiving fear as fact versus seeing it as just one of many possibilities. When you see your fears as fact you treat them as certainty and you make decisions that align with them, ultimately shortchanging yourself of the life you deserve. In reality, the ego can work for or against you, and combined with anxiety, an unhealthy ego will kill your ability to enjoy your life and achieve your goals. So, if you you’re going to succeed in anything and have a good time doing it, you must check your ego and anxiety so they don’t keep you in a constant state of settling in fear. If left unchecked, the ego will convince you not to invest too much or not to try too hard because “this probably won’t even work”, or “nothing good ever happens for me”. It will see losses as catastrophic events and overinflate the importance of a few outside opinions. Its goal is to keep you safe, when in reality, the things that pose a threat to you are likely not threatening at all. The key is balancing the ego by removing certainty from your beliefs, because anything that hasn’t yet happened isn’t certain, it’s a possibility. When you begin to see your fears as possibilities you can move from a place of guardedness to a place of curiosity; this helps you to open yourself to more possibilities than the one rooted in your fears, and when you see more possibilities, you can free yourself to take risks (which is necessary to succeed). With this shift, you can begin to see losses as lessons so you can use your setbacks as a setup to do better, to refine your approach, to put the proper supports in place; and as your gain more experience, you’ll begin to see realistic likelihoods of what can happen over possibilities and certainties, reducing the size of your fears. You begin to think “if I take these steps, it is possible that I won’t achieve my goal, but it is likely that I’ll be closer to it than if I settle here”, and when you take on this perspective beautiful things happen.