Though she had come to terms with her husband's absence, a painful longing wrenched her.

Her eyes were filled with painful longing.

But she never revealed these painful longings to a living soul.

Though the chimney seemed a long way off, the sight set off an almost painful longing in her heart for sunshine, clouds, and a distant horizon.

Something unfamiliar stirred in Elisabeth, a profound emotion in which painful longing - she knew not for what - was accompanied by anxiety.

She had come to Chicago to be with it, and it had deserted her, leaving in its place a painful longing, an unresigned despair.

And now I'm glad to know I am not alone in feeling "a most painful longing."

Would womanly hormones set off renewed, painful longing for Renna, her first, though chaste, male love?

Her painful longings for the past were swiftly replaced with a remembered sense of hurt and betrayal.

Groans that could only have been from painful longing tore from half the assembled Ocampa.