BECOMING THE DESIRE I USED TO CHASE

The Older Pattern I Didn’t Realize I Was Living In

For most of my adult life, I moved through the world with an unspoken belief that desire wasn’t mine until someone else named it. If a man wanted me, I felt validated. If he didn’t, something in me tightened. My self-worth was tangled up in how quickly someone texted back, how warm their voice sounded, or how long their attention lingered on my body.

There were moments that should’ve told me something — nights when I offered my skin hoping it would translate into care, mornings when I replayed small interactions like they were signs, situations where I gave emotional access simply because someone found me attractive. I convinced myself I was being open, when I was actually making myself available in ways that stretched me thin.

I wasn’t desperate.
I was conditioned.

And because I hadn’t yet claimed my own desire, I kept offering my body like it was a question instead of a fact.

My Body Recognized the Problem Before My Mind Did

The beginning of my shift didn’t feel empowering. It felt uneasy — as if my body had stopped cooperating with the script I’d been performing. I noticed how my chest tensed when I waited for a reply, how my body heat changed when someone I liked grew distant, how my stomach dropped when I gave too much to someone who gave little in return.

The sexual parts of me — the parts that crave closeness, the brush of skin on skin, the electricity in a stranger’s touch — didn’t disappear. They just started reacting differently. What used to feel thrilling began to feel draining. Casual moments felt off when they required me to dim something inside myself.

That’s when I remembered Irenaeus’ idea that the glory of God is the human fully alive. Fully alive doesn’t mean constantly desired or constantly touched. It means fully present — in the body, in the breath, in the hunger, in the truth of who you are.

My body had been carrying truths I’d been avoiding.
And it was done pretending.

Desire Didn’t Leave — It Became Mine

One of the biggest surprises in all of this was realizing that desire didn’t vanish when I stopped chasing. It intensified. But instead of being aimed outward, it was anchored in myself.

I started feeling attractive in ways that weren’t tied to someone else’s hands on me. The post-workout sweat that clung to my skin, the way my chest rose and fell after dancing, the warmth of the sun hitting my shoulders, the heaviness of my breath when I pushed my body — all of that made me feel alive and, frankly, hot.

I found myself inhabiting my own body more deeply: the curve of my back, the softness of my stomach, the strength in my legs, the places I’d once tried to hide. Desire started to feel like something I owned rather than something I solicited.

This didn’t reduce my sexuality; it clarified it.
I still want touch, tension, flirtation, the kind of intimacy that blurs the edges of the moment. But now I want it for the experience itself — not to fix a part of me that someone else didn’t create.

This is recapitulation in the flesh: the theological idea that you gather back every part of yourself, rewrite the story, and come home to who you’re becoming. Not erasing the thot in me — but grounding him.

Rethinking What Alignment Looks Like (Without Making It About Relationships)

This shift has nothing to do with wanting a boyfriend or avoiding one. I’m not suddenly craving commitment, nor am I swearing off anything casual. I’m simply paying attention to what aligns with my body and my emotional reality.

I used to tolerate dynamics that left my body confused — situations where my skin was present but my spirit wasn’t, where the teasing felt exciting but the aftermath felt empty. Not because they were casual, but because they required me to disconnect from myself to participate.

Now, the question isn’t, “Is this leading somewhere?”
It’s, “Am I still with myself in this moment?”

I still want bodies pressed close, breath shared in the dark, the slide of skin against skin, the heat that rises between two people who don’t need to fake anything. I still want the thrill of being wanted and the adrenaline of desire catching fire in real time.

What I don’t want is to use my sexual energy as a bargaining chip for emotional crumbs. I don’t want my body to become the place where I negotiate my worth. And I’m uninterested in moments that require me to shrink in order to feel desired.

This isn’t a new boundary.
It’s a new orientation.
The thot is still here — he’s just more self-aware.

Becoming the Desire I Used to Chase

This transformation feels less like an epiphany and more like a slow, honest remembering. I’m gathering back the parts of myself I gave away too easily — the boy who wanted affection, the man who misinterpreted mixed signals as connection, the version of me who thought being touched meant being seen.

Being human, in the Irenaean sense, isn’t about overcoming the body.
It’s about reclaiming it.
It’s about letting desire, sex, longing, hunger, and embodiment all participate in your aliveness.

I’m not abandoning pleasure. I’m not diminishing my sexuality. I’m not becoming less provocative or less sensual or less thotty. If anything, I’m more in my skin than I’ve ever been.

I’m simply no longer chasing desire like it exists somewhere outside of me.

I am learning to live from it —
to feel it in my body before I hand it to someone else,
to let it originate within me instead of depending on someone else’s gaze,
to treat intimacy as an expression of my wholeness, not a request for validation.

This is what it means to become the desire I used to chase:
not to want less,
but to want from a place that is already full.