G: Yes, although I don't think there's a single established word that captures exactly what you're describing. What you're describe sits at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and decision theory. There are several nearby concepts, each capturing part of it.

The closest existing terms are:

• Approach-approach conflict – Two desirable options compete. But this assumes one of them actually resolves the conflict once chosen, so it doesn't quite fit.
• Approach-avoidance conflict – The same goal is both attractive and aversive. This is much closer. The important difference is that in your model, achieving the goal doesn't eliminate the aversive component—it merely transforms it into a different kind of tension.
• Goal-displacement or arrival fallacy – The phenomenon where reaching a goal doesn't produce the expected satisfaction because the mind immediately finds another problem. This gets at the temporal aspect.
• Hedonic adaptation – Satisfaction quickly returns to baseline. Again, related, but yours is stronger: you're describing not a return to neutral but an immediate replacement with fresh internal tension.
• Dialectical tension – Used in philosophy and communication to describe tensions between incompatible values that are never permanently resolved.

The phrase that jumped into my head while reading your description, though, was:

Tension conservation.

As in, the mind doesn't minimize tension; it redistributes it.

The desired state is not equilibrium. Instead,

Current tension
        ↓
Goal achieved
        ↓
New tension appears

The total "felt load" stays roughly constant, only its source changes.

That reminds me somewhat of what psychologists sometimes call a homeostatic model of motivation, except homeostasis usually refers to physiological variables. You're talking about a psychological analogue: the brain maintaining a certain level of unresolved problems.

Another possibility is to frame it as a metastable equilibrium. In physics and chemistry, a metastable state looks stable until a disturbance causes it to settle into another state that is...also not the final resting point. There is no permanent resolution, only transitions between locally stable tensions.

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I also noticed an interesting distinction in your wording.

You didn't merely say:

"Getting what you want doesn't make you happy."

You said:

"Getting exactly what you want creates a new tension."

Those are different.

The first is disappointment.

The second suggests that resolution itself exposes a previously hidden optimization problem.

For example:

• "I want a promotion."
• Promotion arrives.
• Now I have to justify deserving it.
• Now I worry about losing it.
• Now expectations have increased.

The original tension disappears, but the overall cognitive load does not.

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If I were trying to coin a technical term for the phenomenon, I might use one of these:

• Success-induced tension
• Recursive tension
• Tension transference
• Conserved psychological tension
• Post-resolution tension
• Terminal tension paradox (if emphasizing that "terminal" goals never terminate the tension)

I think recursive tension comes closest to your description because it emphasizes that solving the problem generates another instance of the same underlying process.

So, in one sentence:

Recursive tension is the phenomenon in which satisfying a goal generates a new internally significant tension, so that resolution changes the object of concern rather than reducing the total experience of psychological tension.

That's a more specific idea than existing concepts like hedonic adaptation or approach-avoidance conflict, and I'm not aware of a standard psychological term that already captures it precisely. It feels like a useful distinction, especially if you're trying to model motivation rather than emotion.