Bringing Back The Yearning Man In The Era Of Embarrassing Boyfriends

Lovelorn, sometimes tragic, and deeply vulnerable, men who love without asking for anything in return have been a longtime favourite in books and shows marketed towards women.

Characters like Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy are classic examples of it, but this feeling of ache dominated how popular culture has been speaking about love since last year. The yearning man was ushered in through music in 2025, when Hozier’s soulful rendition of Arctic Monkeys’ Do I Wanna Know took over social media last January, eleven full years after the performance aired on the BBC. Sombre shot to fame with his song Back to Friends, and no matter how much you disliked The Conjuring: Last Rites, you can't deny that you have come across Ed and Lorraine edits to Can't Help Falling In Love on your feed.

Our silver screens caught on to the trend, too. Ahaan Pandey’s Krish Kapoor stood by Vaani Batra (Aneet Padda) through reluctant families, stabbings, and a deteriorating Alzheimer's disease in Mohit Suri's Saiyaara. In September, it was The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Conrad Fisher going all the way to Paris to convince Belly of his love. By December, Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler in Stranger Things broke up, though their love for each other didn't die, while Ilya Rosanov in Heated Rivalry waited for ten years before being open about his feelings for Shane Hollander. And now, in the upcoming Bridgerton season 4, the most lovesick of the Bridgerton brothers, Benedict, will go beyond social barriers and masked balls looking for the Cinderella-esque Lady in Silver.

You would be forgiven for wondering if 2026 is all set for a 90s-style romcom revival at this point. It's a symptom of the times, after all. If everything about pop culture is returning to the decades prior, shouldn't our portrayal of love also depict the old-school charm of it all?

But the older decades did not have the crippling ease of having people reduced to options on a dating app. What this gives us today are countless dates that we give up on at a hint of the smallest ick (what if the other person turns out to be a better return on investment?). Add to that an economy where dating itself is becoming increasingly expensive, and now we're left with countless talking stages that end in a matter of days. When everything happens this quickly, here does one begin to fall in love, and where does yearning begin?

This is also a part of the problem that led to the performative men discourse that took over our feeds last year. On paper, a man who is blindly in love with a woman, and is willing to cross mountains for them sounds like the dream. And although women today aren't scared to ask for what they want, they aren't stupid either. If anything, they are more informed of just how disappointing the world can be for them. So a stranger they've just met professing his love for them like some magical lovelorn movie character immediately makes police sirens blast off in their heads.

The problem with the performative man is not so much that he is well versed in feminist literature or that he listens to Laufey and enjoys his cup of matcha, it's that he does it to impress the ladies. His proclivities are endearing, only as long as they are his own, not something dictated by social media.

In fact, this last phrase is the crux of many of the problems the dating world faces today. Social media (and media in general) is not the answer to the problems in your life. Not should it dictate how you do anything. The trope of yearning men makes sense because their stories are written with their characters in mind. That same trope wouldn't apply to you, simply because your life is very different from, say, Ilya Rosanov’s.

Just because women online swoon over an Anthony Bridgerton forgetting Victorian etiquette at the sight of his crush, doesn't mean you should too. Just because the entirety of womankind nods its head at a (rather clickbait-ey) headline that declares “Boyfriends are embarrassing”, doesn't mean that the love is dying. When women fangirl over the yearning man, they appreciate the larger trope of a man who doesn't let society dictate how he should approach love. Should be swoon or should be cool about it, the important thing is that he is himself, unapologetically.

So the answer to the entire conundrum is to be yourself. Be truly yourself, because that is something an algorithm update or social media trend can't change. So that should you fall in love, it's love between two real, feeling people, and not keywords in a network of zeroes and ones.