Love vs. Lust
I’ve heard men and women both say that they “couldn’t control themselves” when they decided to be intimate with someone that they didn’t love or knew very little about. I see this as lust. There’s science behind the principles of lust from many different articles. In my experience, lust doesn’t last while love remains.
Depending upon your relationship goals, figure out whether you are in a loving relationship or a lustful relationship. Elite Daily has an article called, “This Is Your Brain On Love And This Is Your Brain On Lust” that mentions how your brain is involved in love and lust. It mentions that “lust is primal” and “love is romantic.” “People who have been both in love and lust can often distinguish between the two more clearly than those who haven’t.” If you haven’t been in a loving relationship, you can confuse lust for love. If you want to satiate a desire, you may turn lustful. The article also says “lust is associated with the area of the brain responsible for pleasure, love is linked with the neural region involved with providing meaning for pleasure.” People that want immediate gratification will turn to lust, but may realize later on that it wasn’t what they really wanted.
Our society revolves around our needs being met through immediate gratification. It has become easier to get what you want. In terms of love, love requires true patience and understanding of someone else and acceptance of who that person is. We can have food brought to our door now immediately. We can connect immediately to people online. We can order what we want through various stores online doing searching and know the moment when it gets dropped to our door. We can have several apps on our phone to get various wants and needs met. In acquiring true love, we need to understand that immediate gratification may not be gotten at the time we want it.
Science helps us to understand that when our body is seeking pleasure that it is lust. If you want to know if you have a meaningful relationship with another person, answer these questions: Are you affectionate about each other? Is your relationship limited to your partner’s appearance? Does your partner know your likes and dislikes? Is there substance within the relationship?
Depending on your relationship goals, being lustful may be fine and you may not want a long term relationship. You may just want excitement, passion and a short lived experience. If you are being lustful and want a long term relationship, that’s where you need to assess yourself. The mindbodygreen website had a wonderful article entitled, “8 Ways To Tell The Difference Between Love & Lust” to help break down and assess if you are experiencing love or lust. It is important to be clear on what we are experiencing and if it aligns us with our love goals.
It’s a fact that science plays a role in relationships. There are chemicals that are released that make us feel a certain way. Cuddling releases chemicals. Holding hands can relieve pain and stress. The Broken Heart Syndrome can actually make us feel pains in the heart after heartbreak or a breakup. We cannot escape what science has made known.
It is important to define what we truly want in our relationship. Maybe we do not want a relationship at all. Maybe it isn’t clearly defined yet. Be honest with the end result that you want. A long term relationship is based on working towards similar goals, having compatibilities and being supportive towards your partner in daily life. Lust is based on a need for pleasure gratification. Clearly defined goals is the first step towards understanding what you want.
Patience is a virtue and using patience with ourselves and others is vital towards getting our end result. Sometimes we may not feel close to our end result, but we need to break down our thoughts and actions in such a way as to understand what we are thinking and doing first before we analyze what we can change. Society at this time praises self gratification. The quicker you get something, the better. This mentality does not jive well in operating in our long term relationships in a healthy way. So the question remains… is it love or is it lust?
