‘Yearners’ Are Sick of Playing It Cool on Dating Apps

On TikTok, Gyasi Alexander likes to hold “yap sessions” about all sorts of vulnerable topics—self-image issues, anxiety, why you shouldn’t romanticize forgiveness. He started posting videos like that last summer, following the end of an 11-year relationship, after a group of friends encouraged him to use the platform as an outlet to talk about his healing process. Lately, though, the 28-year-old retail sales worker who lives in Providence, Rhode Island, has decided to fully embrace, and talk about, his most vulnerable trait—being a yearner.

“Yearning is a little bit different from love in that it’s more intense,” he says. “It’s prolonged. It feels like you’re constantly reaching for more. Like, you deeply care about a person and you want them to know how much you care about them.”

Across social media today, the conversation around yearning—the action of showing an extreme passion for someone you want romantically—is having a moment. From Reddit and X to Bluesky and YouTube, be it discussions around AI or pop culture events like the hit reality dating show Love Island USA, yearners are making their intentions known, with some even christening 2025 “Yearner girl summer.” According to Keywords Everywhere, a Google analytics tool, and social listening platforms Brandwatch and YouScan, interest around the topic has increased 102 percent in search volume and 67 percent in social conversation over the past two years.

For anyone wanting to get in on the trend, you too, can learn the art of the yearn, romance author Vanessa Green urges in a recent TikTok. “Noticing the small things is very tried and true,” she says in the video, “Whether that be a cup of coffee shows up on their desk, exactly the way they like it. Or it could be noticing their annoyances and planning ahead for those things.”

Yearners’ presence can also increasingly be felt on dating apps, where there appear to be more people responding to messages quickly and earnestly.

Alexander, who identifies as heterosexual, has always worn the badge proudly—at times to his own detriment. “I’m single now because I’m a recovering yearner,” he says in a TikTok from July, with a caption that reads, “I yearned [too] close to the sun (an avoidant),” referencing his former fiance’s relationship attachment style, which is known for being emotionally distant. “And I know if I get back into some shit right now, I’m back on the yearn. I’m hitting it again.”

“Wow. I’ve found my people,” one user commented.

“I’m convinced that yearning [for] an avoidant is a cannon event. It happens to the best of us,” another wrote.

Alexander believes the trend has caught on in such a way, especially among young men, because perceptions around masculinity are changing. “Especially online,” he says. “There are a lot more men who are able to be open and expressive about the fact that they’re in tune with their emotions.” A paper published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences last year by Cambridge University Press, which pulled from more than 50 studies of heterosexual relationships, found that romantic relationships are more important to men than previously believed.