You Don’t Need More Intentions. You Need to Feel Your Desire.

Author’s Note:

This piece is not a call to indulgence, nor an argument against intention or discernment. Boundaries and clarity have their place. What I’m exploring here is the quiet work of allowing ourselves to feel desire consciously, without suppression or unconscious grasping. Desire does not mean entitlement. It does not mean recklessness. It is simply the current that moves life through us, whether or not it takes the form we imagined. My hope is that these words invite reflection, not prescription. Take what you need and leave the rest.

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Desire is a dangerous word.

We are told to manage it. To tidy it up. To turn it into something we can hold without burning our hands.

Desire makes people uncomfortable. Because desire is not reasonable. It isn’t predictable. It doesn’t care about timing or logic or social scripts.

But desire is the birth of all things.

It is the seed of every new life, every new idea, every piece of art, every revolution, every child conceived in heat and love and risk.

Desire is the moment of spark. It is a force that rises from somewhere beneath thought, from the oldest place inside the body.

It is not interested in being tidy.

Yet we press it into the dark, musty basements of ourselves, hoping it will stay there. But desire rarely goes quietly. When pushed away, it doesn’t vanish. It shape-shifts. It arrives sideways, dressed in the cloaks of longing, addiction, anxiety, numbing, or perfectionism, amongst other things. Because desire is built to be met. And if it is not met directly, it will demand attention in other ways.

It’s not that every desire we hold will be fulfilled. Or that life owes us its delivery simply because we ache for it. But desire is not random.

It’s information.

It’s energy.

It’s alive.

Especially when it comes to love.

In modern dating, we’ve diluted desire into something much more palatable.

We call it “intention.”

In the healing and wellness worlds, in the self-help books, and in the coaching programs, we speak endlessly about intentions. We write them down carefully. We build vision boards and recite affirmations. We make beautiful lists of what we want. We balance these intentions gently, as if they might shatter like Humpty Dumpty if jostled too eagerly.

Intention often becomes a way to keep us just far enough away from the raw current underneath.

Because to feel desire fully means stepping into something we cannot control.

Intention says: I know what I want, and I’m choosing it wisely.
Desire says: I ache for this. It stirs in me. I’m terrified by how much I yearn for it.

Desire asks us to get honest, and it asks us to come out from hiding.

I see this all the time in the women I work with.

They can tell me their intentions, their checklists, and their non-negotiables.

But when I ask: What is your desire?

There is a pause. A moment where words sputter and cheeks flush. Because desire drops us into the part of the body that trembles, and wants and cannot be rationalized.

It is not the skim milk of an intention. It is the full-fat cream of an ice cream cone careening down your chin on a hot day.

Intention as Armor

When I lived in Colorado, I was dating with precision. I had an intention: I was ready to meet my husband and have children. I was disciplined. I curated my profile to reflect my intention; I attended the right events and I went on thoughtful dates with good men who wanted what I wanted.

And I met wonderful men. Men who were kind, emotionally available, ready for partnership. They wanted the same things I did: marriage, children, and commitment.

But there was no wellspring of desire.

No overtaking of the force of love.

Because I was dating from my head, and my need to “get” something.

What I couldn’t feel at the time was that my intentions, though wise and clear, were keeping me out of my own body. They were a kind of armor. I was leading with the part of me that wanted to solve for outcome, not the part of me that wanted to be met.

It made me wonder: when do we ever let desire take the wheel?

It only happens when we trust that it is natural and healthy to be in relatiosnhip to our desire.

We don’t trust desire. We’re afraid it will take us over, undo us, embarrass us, and make us reckless.

And it probably will.

But it harms if we try to keep it unconscious.

Unmet desire becomes dangerous. Held desire becomes holy.

The Permission to Want

Many years ago, I was moving through a breakup that left me hollow. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. The ache in my chest felt so acute that I sometimes wished for some small emergency — anything that might briefly distract me from the relentless weight in my chest.

I arrived at a session with my teacher, brittle from days of crying. I told him, determined, that I had made an intention.

I would heal within the week. I would do all the things. Green juice. Yoga. No Juul. No pizza. No reality TV. I would cleanse myself of this heartbreak with discipline.

He looked at me with so much softness it disarmed me.

“If you want to vape, then vape,” he said. “If you want pizza, eat pizza. But do it with your whole heart. Let yourself want it. Let yourself enjoy it. Feel the wanting.”

I didn’t expect that permission.

So I went home and I prepared myself to revel in minty clouds and pools of grease. I set out the pizza. I placed my vape beside it like a pairing. I let myself get excited about them. I let myself imagine the pizza crust, sopped in pepperoni grease and mopped in ranch dressing. I let my body anticipate the pleasure of every bite, every breath of metallic vapor.

I ate. I vaped. I watched some mindless show.

I tasted every flavor and texture.

I melted my body againt the shiny pools of cheese and I loved every single second of it.

I breathed in every bite and crackle, and I let every sensation overtake me.

And then, not even a third of the way through the pizza, something shifted.

I was full. The vape made me a little nauseous and dizzy.

I didn’t want more.

Because my desire had been met. Not starved. Not shamed. Not micromanaged. Simply seen. Fully held.

There was nothing to fill, no untamed wildlands of my heart to wander, and nothing to satisfy.

Desire, when met consciously, has its own natural completion. Like a child who only needs to be heard, and then settles.

My heart didn’t need more discipline and fewer calories. It needed to be seen in its mess. In its tenderness. In its hunger.

This is what makes desire so confronting. It asks us to surrender control.

We like intentions because they keep us safely managing the story. They let us pretend we are in charge of how life unfolds.

Desire brings us into the mystery.

Desire, Suffering and Surrender

Some will say that desire is the root of suffering. And sometimes, it is.

Desire becomes suffering when we attach to its outcome. When we grip it. When we demand it unfold in the shape we have imagined.

But desire itself is not the cause of suffering. Desire is simply aliveness. Desire becomes dangerous only when we believe it must be fulfilled in the exact form we’ve prescribed.

There is a kind of desire that is clean. That moves through us like breath. That does not bargain or cling or tighten. It is desire held with open hands and an unguarded heart.

This kind of desire nourishes. It softens. It becomes a devotion rather than a demand.

When we allow desire to live as yearning — not as entitlement, but as a felt truth in the body — it can transform us without needing to possess what it points toward.

I continue to hold the desire to get married. To be a wife. To build a life with my beloved.

But it wasn’t until I let myself feel the full ache of that desire that something shifted in me.

I became feelable.

And my yearning became a kind of prayer, not a project.

We think we need to keep it all together. To keep our desires hidden under tidy plans and polished profiles.

But desire will always ask us to come closer.

To let ourselves yearn. To let ourselves ache.

To feel the pulse of something older than strategy.

To be splayed opened by life itself.

This is the real hero’s journey. We avoid the call until it drags us beneath the surface. We try to stay afloat until the waters of yearning demand our surrender. We meet the beast we once locked away. And we find, so often, that the beast was once a child. Soft. Hungry. Innocent.

When we meet desire like this, it no longer controls us. It liberates us.

Because in truth, desire is not dangerous.

Desire is the river beneath everything.

Desire is the birthplace of life itself.