Lust is..

• A very strong sexual desire
• An emotion or feeling of intense desire in the body
• An overwhelming desire or craving
• A large physical attraction for an individual, that is sometimes uncontrollable and completely unreasonable

Love is..

• An intense feeling of deep affection
• An emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment
• When you always want to be together, and when you’re not, you’re thinking about being together
• Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

I acquired the definitions of lust and love from various sources, such as Wikipedia, the Bible, urban dictionary, Merriam Webster, etc. Just looking at these definitions, it is obvious that lust and love are extremely different. Lust is an emotion in the body. It is physical and sexual. Love is an emotion that goes deeper than the body. It can be sexual but it is also mental. It makes a person what to be better for another person (patient, kind, calm, truthful, protective, trustworthy, selfless, humble, etc.). So why then, if there is a clear difference between the two, do people still mistake lust for love?

I think there is a simple response. People forget that lust in uncontrollable and love is. They confuse pleasure, gratification, temporary happiness, and visual and bodily stimulation for adoration, devotion, metal stimulation. In my humble opinion, I do not think a person can honestly choose who they lust after. It is almost like the body has a mind of its own. One sees the way a person looks and you feel some sort of hormonal attraction towards them. However, I do believe that you can choose who you love. Love is an action. It is a decision one makes when they allow themselves to become closer and closer to a person. Also, love grows as people get to know more and more about each other.

In relationships, some people become fixated on physical appearances or materialistic possessions. These are the two main aspects of a relationship that people usually lust after. Women can be fixated on a man’s money or social status just as a man can be fixated on a woman’s looks or vice versa. Or both member of the relationship can be fixated on the idea or being in a relationship more than loving the actual person.

The main reason I wrote this blog post is because I once read in a book that it means so much more to say you love a person than to say that you have fallen in love with them. I thought that this idea was ironic because in our society, we consider saying, “I love you” in relationships huge, but we consider saying, “I am in love with you” even bigger. The argument was that falling in love with a person is uncontrollable like lust, but choosing to actively love a person is true love. What do you think?