Love vs. Lust
“Is loving someone purely based off of physical attraction? No, love is an emotional connection beyond the physical attraction — the willingness to commit to a person, and the ability to choose this person in both rough and good times.”
In a world filled with the constant pursuit of quick pleasure, high school students often become entangled with the question of whether what they are feeling is love or lust. How can people tell the difference between these two phenomena? This is a question many have felt during their high school life. There is a blurred line between the two due to society’s demands, short-lived moments, or even the obsession with social media. Now young people believe love and lust may be conceptualized as two completely different social constructs; however, we must start to explore what is healthy between these relationships and begin to understand the differences between the two in navigating the healthiest, most genuine relationship possible.
Love and lust are two passionate emotions that are usually intertwined, so let's talk about the difference:
Love is described in many different ways, but let's focus on romance. Is loving someone purely based off of physical attraction? No, love is an emotional connection beyond the physical attraction — the willingness to commit to a person, and the ability to choose this person in both rough and good times. This type of love requires patience, effort, care, communication and so on. Unlike lust, love is a foundation of a life that can be built into something greater. While lust fixates on the intense, immediate physical desire of a person, love is fixated on the constant growth between two people in a relationship.
On the other hand, lust is the initial physical attraction. It’s the feeling where desire steers the wheel. We are not saying lust is a bad thing, but it is often said that love can be confused with lust, and the confusion can lead to potential heartbreak or disappointment if the unrealistic expectations that lust places on a relationship are not met.
To better understand this, let's recognize the key differences between love and lust to avoid that heartbreak and disappointment:
Meaningful Commitment:
Love involves understanding and accepting your partner for their flaws to build an emotional connection.
Lust means being driven by physical desires rather than an emotional commitment.
Sustainability:
Love is built over time and requires mutual effort to create a long lasting relationship.
Lust is a short-term connection that eventually fades if other qualities are not added.
Focus:
Love’s initial attraction brings you in but it doesn't make you stay.
Lust is only focused on the initial attraction.
In our generation, we are all on some sort of technology. If it’s not your phone, then it’s that laptop or the iPads we see around the school. Social media has added another perspective on love and how we think of shaping relationships in general. Some people post high-school may indulge in dating apps to help find the relationship they're looking for either based on love or lust. All of these different platforms lead to more of the same thing, encouraging superficial connections rather than trying to build an emotional tie between another person. This instant gratification people are looking for in dating apps to tear down their own relationships on social media leads to lust-driven relationships rather than actually falling in love with someone. To be able to differentiate the desire of a fleeting attraction and a more profound emotional bond is a difficult task leading to: love bombing and manipulation.
This is a term I’ve heard thrown all over social media: love bombing. It refers to the manipulative tactic where one overwhelms their partner with excessive attention, gifts, and affection in an attempt to control them. This usually happens in a relationship that is based on lust over love, due to the manipulator wanting to create the illusion of intense emotional connection rather than a genuine bond. However, it is the selfish desire of the manipulator’s lust that causes the overwhelming affection that their partner has mistaken for love in order to remain attached. With the initial connection between them appearing as if it’s an intense bond, in truth it’s a type of emotional manipulation tactic used to create dependency.
An anonymous student shared this story with us: “I was in a relationship not too long ago, where in the beginning I was lavished with gifts, compliments, and what I thought was love. Initially I was swept off my feet thinking that I found “the one”. As time passed the arguments started to grow constant, but so did the gifts and affection. One day I had this big argument with her and it started to get progressively worse, saying if I leave her she’ll hurt herself. Not wanting to cause that type of pain to her, I decided not to leave, leaving me stuck. I became emotionally drained, seeking any escape at any time to not feel suffocated. Leaving her wasn't the easiest process but eventually I did but with long term effects. I became distrustful of my future partners, my self esteem was highly affected, and depression was yet another outcome. But the situation I was in left me to reflect on what I can do for myself — to redirect myself for the better.”
Lust is everywhere you go, particularly in our time now. You can go on Instagram and see it filtered with temptation all over your feed, or even in more extreme cases with young people getting introduced into things like porngraphy at the start of middle school. There’s Youtubers who have gone on the platform to discuss their own traumatic past with being introduced to this content at very young ages, like Jak Piggot. Just hearing his story and seeing the comments discussing their experience at the ages of 12 or 13 is heartbreaking. You see lust can be looked at as a good thing; however, how early people can get introduced to it is dangerous for young minds. When you lose touch of what your mind is consumed with lust, it can be detrimental to your self respect and potentially make you lose touch with the person you are.
In our world, where relationships are usually romanticized, this makes it confusing when it comes to love and lust. A lot of people get caught up in the emotional turmoil and aren’t really sure if they are really falling in love. So we must begin to understand the fundamental distinctions between passion and love to give us the ability to create more powerful, or simply intense, physical attraction. Building meaningful and long-lasting relationships requires being able to distinguish between passion and love, even though both are important to loving relationships.
The confusion behind these ideas lead to unrealistic expectations, toxic relationships, and heartbreak from confusing love with lust. We want people to avoid it, since many mistake lust’s intensity for love only to discover later that these were lies told by their “partner”. Knowing the distinction allows people to steer clear of emotional heartbreak, short lived ties, and make educated decisions. Understanding the fundamental distinctions between love and lust gives us the ability to create more durable, wholesome relationships.