2025: The year that brought back men who yearn!

From Conrad Fisher to Yang Gwan-Sik, 2025 was all about men who loved longing for the love of their lives!

Who is a yearner, one might ask? Someone who sadly, deeply and passionately longs for the love of his life to come back to him or love him back like he does. A yearner is also just someone whose love feels so intense that we can feel it through our screens. Maybe characters who yearn tend to strike a chord with us because somewhere all of us have yearned for someone in our lives and the feeling of watching it on-screen just tends to resonate with people universally. 2025 felt like a refreshing return to something softer, deeper, and far more human. 

This was the year on-screen men were no longer afraid to yearn, wait, ache and love with unwavering devotion even when love was uncertain or out of reach. Across genres, languages and cultures, there were a plethora of stories that centered around men who loved loudly in their silence. They were men who watched from afar, always chose patience, and put the happiness of the women they loved above their own pride. From Conrad Fisher’s painfully visible longing in The Summer I Turned Pretty to Sang Yan’s near-mythical love in First Frost, 2025 gave us men who defined romance through consistency, sacrifice and emotional availability.

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Here’s who made it to our list!

Conrad Fisher - The Summer I Turned Pretty

Conrad Fisher has to take the award for the number one yearner of 2025! The Summer I Turned Pretty’s final season was heavily focused on his yearning for Belly and the way he could no longer hide his gaze while she was busy marrying the wrong guy. Whether you were Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah, there’s no denying that Conrad’s pain and being a hopeless romantic for Belly struck a chord with women around the world!

Yang Gwan-Sik - When Life Gives You Tangerines

Gwan-Sik was the kind of man who could fight the world for Oh Ae-Sun and at some points he actually did. Be it quite literally swimming the ocean to get back to her or giving her all the happiness in the world and more, he truly became an entire green forest for the viewers and set the bar high for what a good husband should be like!

John Pitts - Materialists

John yearned for Lucy even after their break up. The scene where he tells her that even if it requires him to give in and do jobs he does not want to he’d do that, but he’d never not give them the life that she wishes to have. His unconditional and undying love for her is what made her go back to him in the end as compared to settling for someone who is materialistically rich!

Gong Ji-Hyeok - Dynamite Kiss

A fake dating scenario leads to Ji-Hyeok and Da-Rim actually falling for each other. He fell first and he fell harder, to the point where he is always there for when she needs him. Even when he thought she was married, he took care of her with no questions asked and longed for her to be his every single day!

Krish Kapoor - Saiyaara

Leaving his music career at its peak, Krish decides to take care of the love of his life, Vaani who can barely remember him. When she is lost for years on end, he relentlessly looks for her in every corner of the world yearning for their love and their days of being back together to come back soon. Krish’s feeling of going above and beyond for your loved one clearly seems to have resonated with the audiences who garnered praises for Krish’s character.

Sang Yan - First Frost

Sang Yan defines longing and yearning to its fullest! He was the kind of ideal male character who fell for one woman all his life and loved her like he was always born to do that! He did things like keeping his old phone charged for eight years just in case the love of his life replied to him. Or played the same video game every single day just in the hope that she’ll log in and talk to him someday. Or miss his own graduation so he can be there to witness hers because she has no family! He communicates, he listens, he wants to make all her wishes come true! There never was and never will be a bigger yearner than Sang Yan in the C-drama world!

Kang Tae-Poong - Typhoon Family

While Kang Tae-Poong knew from the very beginning that Oh Mi-Seon is the girl he wants to be with for the rest of his life, she, on the other hand, was hesitant to date someone at work and wanted to focus on building a stable income for herself. Instead of pressuring her to change her mind, he patiently waited and loved her regardless, gently and with all his heart. He longed to kiss her, to flirt with her, to confess his love out loud but only when she would be comfortable with him to do so and that was yearning enough to make our hearts melt over him!

Which of these characters did you love watching on-screen the most this year?

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