How can you tell whether it is love or lust? Can my relationship exceed the wild sexual desires? Am I really in love or just obsessed with this person? These are some questions that therapists hear all the time, and there are reasons behind them. For example, most romance stories in Hollywood films or romantic novel books are about two people who crave each other and are madly in love. The story concludes as soon as the relationship falls under their demands; it feels more like lust than stable and healthy love.
Lust vs. Love
Love
Lust is a strong sexual allure and attraction for another person. Lust may be the lure that draws two partners together and allows them to develop a deep physical connection. But if it escalates at its worst, lust can be powered up by projection and fantasy of what one partner wishes to see in another rather than accepting them for who they are. According to many love lust story books, it is a dangerous and wild delusion that constant lust is the hope for a long-term fruitful relationship.
Lust
When we talk about love, it is a bit more complicated. One of the most popular and exciting books on romantic love tales depicts that love requires all the factors, whether its delights or sufferings. And many best suspense thriller books on romance portray love as a mystery, which is explained in infinite ways throughout the era of romance literature. From an attachment viewpoint, love is an essential human requirement that keeps two people bonded irrespective of their worst situation. A safe, loving affection with a romantic companion includes deep fondness, trust, and acceptance of a person with all their imperfections.
Author Rose Curiel presents her bestseller So Many Women a romantic thriller that makes the reader understand the difference between deceitful and lustful love and compassionate and true love, how a person can suffer through pain and agony in the journey to find true love!
Understanding the Main Dissimilarities between Love and Lust
Lust and love are usually perceived as two distinct feelings, but anthropologists hypothesize as they exist in a range that could be divided into three types:
Lust: The desire for sexual pleasure pushes humans to look for sex partners. Lust is obsessed with a hormonal yearning for sexual satisfaction.
Attraction: Also termed affectionate love. Allure and attraction are connected with feelings of exhilaration, desires for emotional connection, and loss in romantic thoughts about the beloved. It includes the brain’s reward center and can mimic the feeling of drug obsessions.
Attachment: Also termed companionate love, affection is categorized by sensations of emotional union, calm, and safety. This typically occurs in long-term relationships comprising families, friendships, and committed romantic companionship.
Distinct Signs of Lust and Love
While the two categories can sometimes overlap, various brain chemicals and hormones are concerned in each step. Here’s how you can identify the different signs of lust and love.
Signs of Love
Love can be broken down into two spheres — companionate and passionate love.
Passionate love, also characterized as infatuation or fascination, is a state of deep longing to be with another person. Emotional stimulation and sexual desire are protuberant elements of passionate love, and the people going through this phase of love are generally distraught and unhappy when their relationship goes away.
Companionate love is referred to by intense feelings of affection, intimacy, and sincere commitment to another person. It usually takes time to develop these feelings and can be observed in close friendships and long-term intimate partners. Companionate love includes the brain chemicals vasopressin and oxytocin, related to pair bonding in a tender relationship like a child and mother.
Signs of lust
Lust is characterized by utter sexual desire, typically accompanied by physical stimulation. According to psychotherapists and relationship experts, lust tends to occur within loving or lustful relationships. Therefore, lust should be taken as a natural human occurrence. It is not always something we need to act on; it is a genuine feeling of sexual interest.
According to many relationship experts, you may be experiencing lust if:
- When you think of your partner, your imagination immediately goes to what your physical self wants to do for one another.
- You start smiling, have sensations of excitement, feel flushed, and are being turned on right when you begin to think of your partner.
- When you see one another, you instantly get the urge to kiss.
- You don’t have much in common, but when you start touching each other, it doesn’t matter.
