Longing

Joel Dean, Founder of Joyful
Last updated October 30, 2026

Longing is wanting someone or something that's out of reach: a person who's gone, a place you left, a life you haven't lived. It pulls two ways at once, sweet because the thing matters and painful because it isn't here. In one study of 299 adults, frequent, intense longing went with feeling worse about life, and the link disappeared when people felt they had some control over it.¹

An ache with a direction

It points at something exact. A grandparent's voice. The city where you were twenty-two. A child you hope to have, or the life in which you took the other job.

It turns up in the quiet: late at night, on a long drive, when a certain song comes on in a shop.

Example

"Every time I smell cut grass in June, I'm back at my grandparents' farm. I want to go back so badly it hurts, and I know the farm was sold years ago."

Sehnsucht, in six parts

German has a word for deep, lasting longing, Sehnsucht, and Susanne Scheibe, Alexandra Freund and Paul Baltes studied it as a feeling in its own right, defining it as an intense desire for other states and ways of living.¹ They described six parts.¹

An ideal picture of how life could or should be.
A sense that life is incomplete, that something important is missing.
Past, present and future at once: missing what was, feeling the gap now, hoping for what might be.
Mixed feelings, bittersweet and never one thing.
A look over your whole life, because longing makes you take stock of where you are.
Rich symbols, where a smell or a place or an object stands for far more than itself.

The 299 adults they studied, aged 19 to 81, said their longings gave their lives direction and helped them live with what was incomplete.¹

The part in your hands

The same study had a catch. People who felt longing often and intensely reported feeling worse about their lives, and when people saw their longings as something they had some control over, that link disappeared.¹

In this study, the weight came from longing that felt entirely out of people's hands.

A longing for someone who died can't be fulfilled, though how you honor it is up to you. A longing for a different life may hold one step you can take this month.

Longing, nostalgia or heartbroken?

Feeling	Where it looks	What it feels like
Nostalgic	Back, warmly	Mostly sweet
Heartbroken	At a fresh loss	Mostly pain
Longing	At something out of reach, past or future	Sweet and painful together

A warm look back is nostalgia. A recent breakup or loss is closer to heartbroken.

Living with a longing

Describe it in detail. The person, the place, or who you were then? Detail turns a vague ache into something you can understand.
Find the piece you can influence. That's the part Scheibe's study points to.¹ You can't bring back a person. You can cook their recipe, visit their town, tell your kids the stories.
Let it point somewhere. For a life you haven't lived, write what that life has that yours doesn't, and ask whether any of it fits in a smaller form.
Leave some longings as they are. Some are a way of keeping close something you love, and they don't need a plan.

Journal prompt

What are you longing for, in as much detail as you can? Write it, then write one small part of it that's within your reach.

Answer this with Joy

Questions people ask about longing

Is longing the same as missing someone?

Missing someone is one kind. Longing reaches further, to places, times, versions of yourself and lives you haven't lived.¹

Is longing a good or bad feeling?

Both, which is the point of it. It gave people a sense of direction in the research, and frequent, intense longing weighed on them when it felt out of their control.¹

Can you long for something you never had?

Yes. Scheibe's six parts include hoping for what might be, and a life longing can be for a future or a life that never happened.¹

Heartbroken: when longing follows a fresh loss.
Nostalgia: a warm, bittersweet look back.
Melancholy: a quiet, lingering sadness.