Love vs Lust

[chelzee]

I'd like to hear some of your thoughts on lust and love. In your opinion, what is the difference between the two and how do you know when your in genuine love or in lust with someone? Thanks to all who reply.

[mouseno4]

Love - feelings and emotions for them and you want to spend your life with them.

Lust - physical attraction so intense you want to do them right there on the spot.

[Vince99]

Love is not a feeling. It's a choice. The "falling in love" feeling is not love. It goes away. It's at that point you either choose to love them, or not.

[Stay_home]

I don't know what love is, but I know what it isn't.

 

Lust is the magnetic attraction to a person so deep that it feels like it may be love but it's really not.

[Pampus]

Lust to me is more about a high sexual attraction that feels like a need and you may not feel that you would put the person ahead of your own interest, unless you were getting sexually closer.

 

I think that love has two types, at least. 1) That love where you think about the person in narrow but wonderful ways and often and are head over heal- and then 2) as someone mentioned, the mature love, which is more to do with valuing and caring about the person and accepting them as they are, and seeing them as they really are, which in the head over heals stage we probably ignore the not so good bits that we all have. I do think love can be a choice but that chemistry thrown in helps.

[itsthethoughtthatcounts]

Lust is very intense, physical and immediate...it can happen anywhere/anytime and you don't even need to know the person. One look at a person and we can lust without knowing a single thing about them but love is a deep and mutual caring for one another, that also comes with an intense attraction etc but love takes time to develop and build and doesn't happen in a flash. That's how i'd describe it.

[The Archer]

Love is a feeling of caring. If it’s strong it can be almost overwhelming. If you are in love with someone you wont need the other person to feel the same way to get pleasure from this emotion although it certainly helps if both people feel the same way but love doesn’t really ask anything from the other. The more you are in love the more important the other person emotional state is and the more you forget about your own needs.

 

For me lust is simply sexual attraction. Quite different to love.

 

I’d like to add that from my perspective the hard thing for many people is separating love from infatuation.

 

Love is the feeling of wanting to give and infatuation is the feeling of wanting to take (generally the other persons attention etc).

I think infatuation is just as likely to break a persons heart and just as powerful as love. Lets put it this way: if your heart is broken because your partner has left you, that’s likely more to do with infatuation than love.

The only way I can imagine love being able to cause any real pain is by someone you love getting hurt.

 

Edit: I’d just like to add there is nothing wrong with being a little infatuated! I don’t like the way love is put on a pedestal and infatuation is something associated with immaturity.

But I stand by my above statement. When love is all your feeling at a particular moment then you would do just about anything for that person. Including letting them go.

[gingerlemon]

Love is not a feeling. It's a choice. The "falling in love" feeling is not love. It goes away. It's at that point you either choose to love them, or not.

 

Can you expand a bit on this? I've seen different people say this, but I don't really understand it (I even started a thread on it a while ago, if you feel like looking it up).