How to Deal with the Desire for Love While Still Building Yourself

No one tells you something when you’re focused on building yourself—chasing dreams, improving habits, and growing into your best self: the desire for love doesn’t just disappear.

In fact, sometimes it gets louder.

You’re waking up at 5 AM, hitting the gym, reading, working hard, and building your career or business piece by piece. You’re doing the “right” things. However, when you’re done with the day’s hustle, that ache creeps in during the quiet moments. The longing for someone to understand you. To share the silence with you. To see you.

And I’ve felt that.

Even while I’ve been investing steadily in myself—financially, emotionally, and mentally—there have been moments when I wondered, “Would all this feel more meaningful if someone was holding my hand through it?”

But here’s what I’ve realized: that longing is not a weakness. Instead, it’s a sign of our humanity. The real question isn’t how to eliminate the desire for love. It’s how to handle it without compromising the person you’re becoming.

The Myth of Choosing One or the Other

The saying “Focus on yourself, love will come” is one that we have all heard. Furthermore, even while it sounds good, it frequently feels like a spiritual Band-Aid. In actuality, wanting love and putting yourself first are not incompatible.

It’s entirely possible to be on a journey of self-growth and still crave connection. Nevertheless, the key is not letting that craving distract or derail you.

There was a point in my early twenties—I’d just started my SIP investments, began developing a writing habit, and was reading every self-help book I could find. I felt like I was on fire. Yet, when my phone stayed dry—no good morning texts, no late-night check-ins—I felt a kind of loneliness that success couldn’t mask.

That’s when I made a mistake, and I now see more clearly: I became overly available to people just to feel less alone.

As a result, that came at a cost.

The Cost of Being Too Available

This is where the transcript struck a nerve. The idea that being too available—emotionally, physically, psychologically—can make you predictable and even easy to manipulate hits home hard.

I remember saying yes to plans I didn’t want to attend and responding to texts immediately, even when exhausted. I bent over backward to maintain peace in connections not rooted in respect—all because I didn’t want to lose people who never really saw me in the first place.

And what did I get in return? Emotional exhaustion. Resentment. That strange emptiness you feel when you’ve poured into others but left nothing for yourself.

We often think love is about giving. However, real love—healthy, mutual love—doesn’t require self-abandonment.

Carl Jung’s concept of individuation teaches us that becoming whole involves withdrawing from what drains us and focusing on what energizes our spirit. When you’re building yourself, your energy is everything. If you’re not protecting it, you’re leaking power.

Check this video-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5jhc1Y65Lg

Becoming Selectively Unavailable

There’s a quiet kind of power in choosing your absence. By learning that you don’t owe explanations for your silence and understanding that your energy is not an infinite resource, you begin to regain control.

I started making small but powerful changes:

• Delaying my responses. Not as a game but to prioritize my peace.
• Saying “no” without guilt. Even to people I liked.
• Leaving conversations that felt draining. Mid-text, mid-call, or mid-thought if needed.
• Taking time to recharge without feeling selfish.

At first, I felt like I was doing something wrong. I worried people would think I was cold, distant, or arrogant. And yes, some did.

But here’s the thing—they weren’t reacting to who I was becoming. Rather, they were responding to the fact that I was no longer playing the role they had written for me.

Let me tell you something profoundly liberating: when you stop being available for emotional crumbs, you become available for peace.

Check my previous article-https://jnanasya.com/5-ways-to-break-free-from-approval-addiction/

The Desire for Love Isn’t the Problem—Attachment Is

I’ve come to understand that the desire for love is natural. It’s not the desire that traps us—it’s the attachment to how we think it should appear.

We chase love like it’s a finish line, thinking it will validate our worth. On the contrary, real love—healthy, soulful love—doesn’t come when we’re performing. It arrives when we’re rooted in who we are.

Interestingly, something surprising happened as I focused more on becoming whole on my own. I started attracting connections that didn’t require me to shrink or perform. Red flags became easier to recognize. I stopped explaining myself to people who weren’t listening in the first place.

Carl Jung once said, “Everything about other people that annoys us can help us understand ourselves better.” That one hit deep.

In truth, every moment I felt hurt by someone’s inconsistency revealed how inconsistent I had been with myself.

Building Yourself While Staying Open

Now, I’m not here to glorify isolation. Certainly, being alone is a powerful phase but not the end goal. The goal is wholeness. And from that wholeness, we can create relationships that don’t ask us to fracture ourselves.

Here are a few practices that helped me balance the desire for love with my journey of self-building:

• Journaling honestly. Not everything I felt was “enlightened.” Sometimes, I wrote things like “I’m tired of being alone.” And that’s okay. The page holds your truth without judgment.
• Creating “availability boundaries.” I began defining how much of myself I was willing to give away on any given day. It changed how I used my time—and who got access to it.
• Redirecting desire into creation. Whenever I longed for connection, I wrote a piece, worked on a goal, or reflected. Desire is powerful fuel if you learn to channel it.
• Letting silence speak. I stopped explaining every “no,” every pause, every change. Not everything needs to be justified. Some things are sacred.
• Trusting timing. I reminded myself: The version of me that settles out of loneliness is not the version that receives what I truly deserve.

Final Thoughts: Choose Your Peace

Simply concentrating on yourself will not make your longing for love go away. And that is all right. You are not a robot. You are a human.

But remember that you do not have to decide between self-improvement and love.

Simply put, you must quit choosing love at your own expense.

Real love won’t interrupt your healing. It won’t demand your constant availability. It won’t shrink you down to fit its mold.

So, if you’re in a season where you’re becoming a little quieter, more selective, more unavailable—it’s not because you’re bitter. It’s because you’re reclaiming your energy.

And when the time comes, you’ll love again. But it will be from a place of overflow, not depletion. Of wholeness, not hunger.

Until then, build. Protect your peace. And when in doubt, choose yourself.