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When Longing Becomes Your Lover
What 40 Years as a Virgin Taught Me about Intimacy, Desire, and Feminism
Brief Description
What does it look like to be hopelessly, serially, persistently, and stubbornly in love not with someone, but with longing itself? Journalist and late-in-life virgin Amanda McCracken dated over 100 men before she realised she was addicted to longing, setting her on a 10-year journey to...
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See moreFrom the author of the popular New York Times articles "Is It a Crush or Have You Fallen Into Limerence?" and "Does My Virginity Have a Shelf Life?", When Longing Becomes Your Lover is a complete tell-all about Amanda's dates, intimate encounters, and wrestling with cultural and Christian ideas of virginity, sex, and self-worth.
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Description
What does it look like to be hopelessly, serially, persistently, and stubbornly in love not with someone, but with longing itself?
Journalist and late-in-life virgin Amanda McCracken dated over 100 men before she realised she was addicted to longing, setting her on a 10-year journey to understand the fallacies behind her beliefs about love, sex, and commitment. She invites you along for the sometimes thrilling, sometimes heartbreaking, always insightful ride.
As Amanda endured one disappointment, letdown, and torpedoed fantasy after another, she began to understand that longing feels good. In fact, it can feel even better than actually being in love. Longing gives us a sense of control in our uncertain lives, and when we can always envision a more perfect relationship, we can ignore the very real problems that all relationships face. But longing can also become an addictive neurochemical boost that derails us from forming healthy, intimate relationships.
Amanda describes her early childhood hero fantasies and how they evolved in her tween and teen years into a commitment to the purity movement espoused at her church. As she grew into young womanhood, her obsession with an idealised version of love led her to become addicted to longingβconstantly craving the ideal partner in the ideal location at the ideal time, revelling in the high of anticipating the sex she knew she wasn't going to have. It became a protective mechanism in a "sex positive" dating world that demands physical intimacy but admonishes emotional intimacy, where options seem plentiful but connections ambiguous.
In this searingly honest book, Amanda chronicles her many romantic encounters in today's dating world and what she learned about a concept called "limerence": an obsessive rumination on a version of someone that doesn't truly exist. Amanda weaves together her personal journey with research, storytelling, soul-searching questions, and quotes from experts and nonexperts alike to reveal the addictive nature of longing while providing hope through her journey of overcoming it and ultimately choosing the path towards healthy, authentic intimacy.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781546008538
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 26 February 2026
Country: United States
Imprint: Worthy Books
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 24.0mm
Width: 156.0mm
Height: 232.0mm
Weight: 380g
Pages: 224
About the Author
Amanda McCracken is a journalist passionate about experiences that highlight the intersection of wellness, travel, and relationships. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Vogue, National Geographic, Elle, NPR, Outside, ESPN, SELF, Runner's World, and many others. She published her first article about longing in 2013, which led to additional articles featuring personal anecdotes and deep research and interviews with the BBC and Katie Couric. She is now considered a "limerence expert" and intimacy advocate. Her 2023 Ted Talk, "How Longing Keeps Us From Healthy Relationships," highlights how longing can become selfsabotaging and shares how to change our patterns of longing. McCracken is also a part-time university instructor, massage therapist, triathlon coach, and competitive athlete. Raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, McCracken put down roots with her husband and daughter in Boulder, Colorado, after a trip around the world aboard the Peace Boat.
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