How to Help Your Teen Process Desire
My Story
I vividly remember desiring privacy from my parents as a teenager. I would spend hours in my room watching YouTube, Netflix, and playing video games. When I was out with my family, I was not present. Instead of looking my parents in the eyes, I was looking down at my phone. Instead of listening to the conversation, I was listening to my headphones. Instead of talking to them, I was usually texting some girl from school.
All signs pointed to me being your average teenager seeking independence from his parents. But beneath that sulky exterior and angsty struggle for independence, I longed for intimate connection with my family. In reality, that season of my life was marked by isolation and shame. I longed for intimacy and connection—to be fully known by my family and still fully loved. Instead, I taught myself that I could have my desires fulfilled and needs met through the broken cisterns of digital distraction and pornography addiction.
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” — Jeremiah 2:13
The Teen Perspective
Like my teenage self, young people today are flooded with longing, desire, and restlessness. This is completely normal—yet it’s confusing for everyone involved. A teenager longs to pull away from family and, at the same time, wants to be hugged. Their desires feel like they’re at war with each other.
The chaos of emotional swings is only amplified when teens depend on counterfeit relief to numb their desire—through porn use, digital distraction, overworking, alcohol, codependent relationships, people-pleasing, and more. Teens attempting to follow Jesus usually respond to their desires (especially sexual desire) in one of two ways:
Destroy Desire
Teenagers are often taught that desire only leads to temptation, so it should be destroyed as the enemy of their bodies. The only advice most receive when it comes to sexual desire is to “wait until marriage” or “flee from it.” While this is partially good advice, it removes sexual desire from the beautiful portrait God paints in Scripture and provides no outlet for engaging desire in a healthy way.
Serve Desire
On the other side, teens grow tired of trying to white-knuckle their desire. Pornography, sexual acting out, or redefining sexuality and gender can feel like the only way to express it. They feel powerless to their desire, so they give in to it as the master of their lives. Desire and feeling become god, determining their identity and actions.
While teens swing on this pendulum, parents usually respond in one of two ways:
Disregard desire and seek control.
The longings and vibrant emotions of teens are seen as melodramatic or immature, so they’re dismissed. Parents assume their teens are being unreasonable and don’t know what’s best (which is often true). But instead of helping teens channel desire, they crush it—creating a culture where “big” emotions aren’t welcomed. To survive within this system, teens learn to suppress desire, creating a ticking time bomb of restlessness bound to implode.
Ignore desire and abdicate responsibility.
Other parents assume their teen’s distance is a sign to let go. Giving a child increased autonomy is essential, but that doesn’t mean abandoning emotional engagement, physical affection, or spiritual guidance. Teens need to know their family is a safe place to express questions, doubts, and fears—especially about sexual desire.
What if there was another way forward?
What if your teen’s desires were actually a pathway to life with God?
How to Process Desire
“We don’t help or discipline our young people by making them feel guilty about sex or grandiosity. We must honor that energy in them, but connect it to the heart of life [God], in such a way that, feeling its sacredness and life-giving energy, they become infinitely more reverent before its great power.” — Ronald Rolheiser, The Fire Within
Teens have learned from their parents, the church, and society to either destroy or serve desire. We need to offer a third way: engaging desire.
The first step in engaging desire is learning to identify it. At the core of every desire is a longing to be home again with God—to walk with Him in the Garden of Eden, naked and unashamed. We were meant to experience perfect love, safety, connection, identity, autonomy, purpose, and healthy touch. You can think of these seven as the core desires of every human heart.
When we begin to connect temptation, longing, and restlessness to the human heart crying out, “I need help!”, even in twisted ways, we learn to honor desire. As Rolheiser describes, there is no good or evil energy; all life is predicated upon God giving it. How that life, or energy, is used depends on the individual. Let’s honor teens’ energy and desire as reflections of bearing God’s image.
Finally, giving teens an outlet to channel these God-given desires is essential. Finding ways to align desire with God’s design could look like emotionally vulnerable conversations to promote connection, regular physical affection, words of affirmation to express love, or inviting teens into decision-making to honor their autonomy.
But how do we engage desire when it’s impossible to fulfill it within God’s design?
What about when a teen desires sexual intimacy, independence as a minor, or belonging without community? Moments of emotional distress, conflict, and unfulfilled desire are guaranteed in this life. Instead of defaulting to numb these desires or chase counterfeit relief, we must teach teens to lament longing.
We teach them to vulnerably express their disappointment, pain, and distress to Christ and community. Parents become the evidence that God listens and cares deeply about their pain, even when He doesn’t immediately remove it. I recommend using the Psalms of lament as a template for honest prayer in these moments.
May your efforts to honestly engage your teen’s desire be a blessing to consider your own desires and know the God of the universe is attentive to every one of them.
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4
A Template for Engaging Desire
Identify Desire
Love, Safety, Connection, Identity, Autonomy, Purpose, Healthy Touch.
Honor Desire
Engage Desire
Align it with God’s Design
Lament unmet desire
Pray through Psalms of Lament (Psalm 13, Psalm 139 Psalm 42)