Love and Lust

I recently discovered a blog called The Grumpy Old Man.

I have to admit I loved the title. After all, he says it like it is. Can't beat that. And this old man is thinking back on life. Sometimes that is quite interesting to listen to.

I know, I know, why would a grumpy old man have anything to tell you?

Experience.

Some people actually learn and gain wisdom. Doesn't happen often, but some people do.

So here's what this grumpy old man, who writes far too rarely in his blog, wrote about love and lust. I added the images, just to lighten up things. So we don't forget what he is writing about. And I'm not saying I agree, I feel far too superficial this week to get that down and heavy and to actually start to think about things like love and lust.

But this, I just found it interesting to read:

Love and Lust

When I was younger I believed in love at first sight like many other people do. You see someone, they see you and there is that instant chemistry you both feel. You start a relationship and you may even get married but invariably this “chemistry” wears off, usually in a year or 2, and all you have left is love, or nothing if there never was love in the relationship.

In these later years of my life I have come to the realization that there is no such thing as “love at first sight” and it’s actually LUST at first sight we are speaking of. There is nothing wrong with lust. I believe it’s a necessary part of a good, strong relationship. But lust alone can’t carry a relationship. Love alone can’t usually carry a relationship either but it has a better chance.

Let’s talk about the difference between love and lust.

Lust is primarily physical and controlled by our hormones and genes. We have no control at all over this. We cannot choose what or who we are attracted to. We don’t choose to like brown eyes, we just do. We don’t choose the color of hair we prefer or what other physical features we prefer. We are drawn to what we are drawn to and that’s just the way it is.

Love is much deeper and more difficult to define. I like to think of it as being more at the soul level than at the exterior like lust is. Love takes time to develop. I would say 6 months at the least. Love is cultivated and it’s based on you and your partner’s emotions, personality and your ability to function together as a team. When you have developed love with someone it never goes away, even if you break up. Love is stronger than lust at a deep level and literally lasts forever. If it doesn’t it wasn’t love in the first place.

Love is always 2 way. You can’t love someone that doesn’t love you. It just doesn’t work that way. There is no such thing as unrequited love! It’s unrequited LUST.

Lust can come and go. You can be with someone for a while then they start to drive you crazy so you split up. Then months or years later you are drawn back to them and it’s all wonderful again……. for a while and then they start to drive you crazy again. A classic lust not love situation.

Lust is very powerful. MUCH more powerful than love. Lust can make you do really stupid things, repeatedly. Lust tends to cause you to overlook things in the other person that would be flashing red signs in any other circumstance. The power of lust is short lived however. It usually doesn’t last much longer than 6 months to a year. But while lust is stronger than love, love has the staying power.

Understand that I am not condemning lust. I believe it is necessary. Very few people would ever get together so there could even be the chance of love if it wasn’t for lust. Nature did a really good job there. Without lust mankind might not even exist today. We wouldn’t have reproduced fast enough to evolve and survive this harsh world. We just need to make the distinction between the two and understand that lust is not love nor is love lust.

It’s a crying shame that our society is so backward and prudish that parents can’t have open and honest discussions with their children about lust. We are raised with the belief that all attraction is either love or “infatuation”. The word “Infatuation” (or “puppy love” as it is also called) trivializes the strong feelings we have so we defensively call the feeling love and proclaim it is the “real thing” since no feelings THIS strong could be anything BUT love. Time, however, usually proves us wrong and we are left wondering what it was all about and if that wasn’t love what IS love and so on.

If people were taught about lust and what it is and what it isn’t and that it was a perfectly normal part of our lives the world would be a much more pleasant place to live in.

To make things even more complicated we have “chemistry”. The term chemistry when applied to a relationship is not solely lust. Lust is the major part but it also includes your personalities. The things you both like or dislike. Your backgrounds. Your sense of humor and such. But the same rule applies. Chemistry is not love and love is not chemistry. Having both is the perfect relationship in my mind but is also the hardest situation to achieve since lust seems to blind us to most of the important things about a relationship and love during the early stages of these relationships when it would seem it’s most important.

When the lust wanes and the chemistry starts to slip many, if not most people just move on rather than seeing if there is love there too. I am as guilty of this as anyone. Maybe if everyone acknowledged lust as a powerful and legitimate emotional force that has little to do with love we could all have better relationships and happier lives.