Is it LOVE or LUST?

Question

Is there actually love, or is it a temporary feeling know as lust?
I have recently felt what i think may be love as i have observed it in nature, animals, the eyes of children, they sheer beauty of women(women have more power than men by far, mabe not physically but mentally they out-rule men with their beauity)..

Or mabe I should redefine my question. Is LOVE permanent or temporary? And if its temporay, why would one expect a marriage to last for more than say a couple years...?

Answer 1

A long time ago I thought that love was something that you reserved for some special set of people that you had judged worthy of it.

After a while I got to thinking about what Jesus had said about turning the other cheek and loving our neighbor I put the two together and realized that he had made no exceptions in these statements. It became obvious to me that he intended that we exclude no one from the love that we are supposed to be giving. I started thinking about my idea of love and suddenly realized that I had not been loving anyone at all. I had simply been judging everyone and every thing.

Judging someone worthy of love is not love, it is only judgment. I actually started to cry when I realized this. I saw just how much of my life I had wasted being judgmental, thinking of myself as a Christian, when I was actually doing just the opposite of what Jesus had asked us to do.

I thought about the verse judge not lest ye be judged, and I understood it for the first time.

I realized that I have a lot of catching up to do. So many opportunities were wasted. I now try to apply the love that I have for the world in a universal way like Jesus asks us to do.

If I start to feel afraid and think that I see someone that I should not love because of something I have thought or heard I try to catch my mistake as soon as possible. I tell myself that I have forgot the truth and have fallen for the same old trick that had cost me so many opportunities to be loving in the past. The horror of this realization is often all that is necessary to bring me back to my senses and make me drop the judgmental nonsense I was thinking.

I still have a lot to learn about love, but at least I’m making progress.

Love and blessings

Your brother
don

Answer 2

Lust and love are nearly interchangeable terms.

I, personally, believe that most everyone is under the illusion that there is true love. Unconditional love. I find that all to be rather fairytale-like. As a species, we are programmed to "fall in love" in order to reproduce. It's nature's trick, in a way. Lust is the same deal: feel strongly towards a person in the pursuit of biological continuity.

Of course, since the vast majority of the population believes in love, not in the form of what I believe it is, but as something greater, I can "act" that way toward a potential mate (I find the words I'm using here highly desensitizational). If 99% of the world is delusional, they think they're right and the 1%'s wrong. I'll play along, fool myself into believing in deeper meaning, because I only live once, in a tiny blip of eternity.

Answer 3

I believe love is both permanent and temporary, depending on the situation and who you feel that you love. I don't think that we, as ordinary humans, can always differentiate between love, lust or temporary love when in a romantic situation. However in retrospect, everything seems quite clear.

That being said, I think people who get married just to end up divorced in a few years aren't making mistakes, they're just doing what they feel is right and going with their true feelings.

In the end, when it is all said and done, I think we'll be able to look back and say who our real loves were. Maybe we just have one, like they say. Then what about unrequitted love, that has to be real on some level as well, I don't think it can just be dismissed as meaningless. So to end my little schpiel here, I'd say even lust is some form of love as well, and after a great deal of time to think about it, we can decide what is a more valid love to us.

Answer 4

There actually is love. I have seen it, though I've never experienced it. I'm referring to the type of love that comes with years of committtment and caring between individuals.
When my Father was dying, I saw this love in his eyes for my Mother. It was something far beyond lust, although I'm sure that had alot to do with them getting together in the first place, 57 years before.
The full bloom of lust may be temporary, but true love (though rare) can stand up to the test of time.

Answer 5

While lust is almost always involved to one degree or another, love is a decision that is made by the people involved. It is a desire to want to be there with that other person come what may. So love transcends lust as the desire to be with the other person matures into what we call "love". It is also well known that there are 3 kinds of love. They are "Eros", or lust, 'phillio", or friendship, and finally what is known as "all truistic" which is a love that is based on the highest form of love known to anyone. It is the kind of love that puts a person in harms way to protect others, as one of many examples of love. For the 14 y/o, she is to young to really understand what love is, yet.

Answer 6

Love, real love, is not temporary. Great and wonderful when both feel it and yes, lasts forever and ever. When only one is feeling it, is a problem exactly because it is not temporary. But God provides the ways to calm the hearts and learn to thank that gift.
Sometimes we get involved thinking and waiting for an idea of love that the real one doesn't match about it - whenever collateral reasons make us begin serious relationships we might think its love and our inner notion about it making it look for real. Like in all for compassion relationships, for instance. Love is simple, like you describe it, yes - make us laugh, notice the simplicity of things in nature, all that...
A compassionate relation is only running in solidarity and sadness rises if there is not such a joy that love has in its power like no other. Love is one thing relationships based on other sort of emotion are not of true love. And those are temporary. This one is unique and those of us who know it are lucky, although scary for nothing makes us so fragile.

Answer 7

There really is no such thing as love. Love is simply a label we give to a very strong and intense emotional codependence we create in our emotional minds, out of a social desire not to be lonely. Love is artificial in that it is created by our minds. Lust is real. It is an innate, instinctual, physical attraction for the opposite sex. It's a biological necessity to get two members of the opposite sex together to mate for the sole purpose of replication. Love is not biologically necessary, and therefore is not real. Our minds and bodies are nothing more than gene machines, designed for the sole purpose of perpetuating the species. Sounds kind of cold and distant, but that's the reality of love, lust, and life. I highly recommend reading The Selfish Gene. It will really put love and lust in perspective for you.

Answer 8

I think true romantic love, the kind that keeps 50 year marriages alive, is a combination of trust, respect, and lust (or a physical desire to be with that person). Anything short of that is temporary and is just attraction, obsession or lust.

Answer 9

to me love is knowing that you'll always be there for one an other and you wouldn't hurt by cheating or beginning abusive to them in any way.

sure their are moments in a relationship where you might drive each other crazy and start question yourself but you know it's love when you get through the other side and you're still together.

lust on the other hand to me is just temporary, something you want until you get it, then you realise you didn't really want it after all.

you can have lust in love but you can't have love in lust.

Answer 10

Love is lust but with respect, understanding and the desire to be with that other person for more than physical pleasure. Lust starts with the eyes..has anyone ever said "Wow! Look at her integrity!" or " I wanna get up into her really hott brain!" , that comes later...after the lust