Love or Lust?

How to Discern Them? - Page 1

Love or Lust - and Attraction

Love or lust? How to tell whether the special feeling we have for somebody is merely lust, or... is it love? Are there some ways to discern them?

Love and lust are closely intertwined to each other. The feelings that love and lust bring are very powerful, often make the ones who experience it overwhelmed.

And the attraction factor that exists in both love and lust adds the complexity. It makes the feelings involved - in both love and lust - very similar, hard to differentiate. No wonder many people misunderstood their enthrallment as love while in fact it is lust, or vice versa.

If the interest requited and the relationship has been going for some time, problems will occur. If the relationship was based on love, they will do their best to maintain it and to fix things up. But if it was only based on lust, the desire to keep it alive will not be there, at least in one of the parties involved. 

But at that time, the relationship have gone far. Ending it is no longer an easy thing to do. Damage will occur, to both parties... and even to the families/relatives involved if the romance had gone farther.

Love and Lust - The Characteristics

Definitely, lust is not love, and love is not lust. Love is greater and has broader scope than lust. While lust is always a part of love, the opposite is never true.

Although love and lust have attraction as their common factor, love goes deeper than lust. While lust is mainly sexual in nature, and its attraction is primarily in the physical aspects, love is more complicated.

The one who is in love cares very much about the well-being of his/her love interest. If he is a man, for instance, he will be attracted to her, not only physically, but also to the wholeness of her as a person.

He will want to know more about anything related to her: her hobby, family, her favorite food, favorite color, favorite places, etc. He will try to do the things that he knows can make her happy. And he will have great attention on those things. On the other hand, he will do his best to not do anything that can make her sad or gloomy.

In theory, it's easy to differentiate between love and lust. But in practice, we hardly have that luxury, especially in the very early stages of relationship. But still, if we are willing to step back a little and examine our heart and mind, we should be able to know whether our enthrallment to that special one is love or lust (or just an infatuation).

Read Page 2 to know how to tell if it is love or lust

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