The difference between love and lust – again?!

Here I am writing out this post…again!  You know, I think I’ve finally got it, after such a long time of trying to puzzle out this issue in my mind.

So I was literally just now reading a post about “the difference between love and lust” and they said that lust was intense sexual desire, whereas love was a feeling of deep commitment.  And I thought/realised to myself: “That is all rubbish!”  That is, lust is intense sexual desire of course, while love is a lot more ambiguous. What is rubbish is the way that these two things are contrasted, and you are taught that it is wrong and dangerous to build your relationship on “lust”, but you need to be careful to make sure that it is actually (true) “love”.  This to me shows how this false understanding of “love” has so permeated society, and thoroughly undergirded our understanding of relationships, so that it is taken as a given.  The fact is, by this understanding, love too is a feeling, and as such it is equally dangerous to base your life on it.
Three points:
1. If you want to base your life on something at all, it has to be something more solid or substantial than a feeling, whether you call that feeling “love” or “lust”.  Marriage is literally your life, so it is unwise to base your marriage on feelings at all. And yet that is not to say that feelings are not important!

2. It is not at all inherently wrong to have a marriage with a component of strong sexual desire.  I’d go as far as to say that that is highly desirable!  What is unwise is to base the entire marriage on this.

3.  Lust/intense sexual desire is a lot easier to define or recognise than “love”. In the context of marriage, love is such an ambiguous thing, and so hard to define, which is why you have so many articles saying “How to know if you truly love him!”  Also, it can be deceptive, because you could genuinely embark upon marriage thinking that you feel “genuine love” for someone, only to quickly find yourself falling out of love with the way they actually behave, or things that they actually do.  Yet you certainly know if you have strong feelings of attraction towards someone else, or at least I do! I don’t need to read an article with twenty points etc. And yet, I can altogether imagine falling out of “lust” or intense sexual desire with someone if I discover unpalatable things about him.

You know what? You know what makes this whole thing so confusing? Intense sexual desire is not inherently bad.  And yet the word lust as used biblically is invariably bad, or a negative idea. It is not just “intense sexual desire” but that combined with the idea of selfishness; reaching out and taking something that does not belong to you, that already belongs to someone else, selfishly using someone else for your own sexual gratification. It is the very opposite of selflessness. So without a doubt, there is no possibility of redemption in the biblical understanding of lust, there cannot be even a tiny element of positivity in it.

You want to know my advice?  Or my current approach? This is incredibly radical. I would say, forget all about any confusing thoughts about “love” in your consideration of your spouse. Really. At least to start with. Focus instead on these three things, in this order:
1. Character
2. Compatibility
3. Genuine and intense sexual desire. You don’t want to fixate on sexual desire at first, but it is an essential part of marriage.

Yup! You know, I think it is dangerous that Christians especially characterise all intense sexual desire as lust = inherently bad. Because what then happens is that you get Christian relationships where people are not really all that crazy about one another, or act as if sex itself is inherently bad.  But strong or even relentless sexual desires are hardwired into many people, or so would suggest the countless cases we hear about sexual misbehaviour, and clearly these desires do not magically go away, and if they will not find expression with a legal spouse, then they are liable to leak out and seek expression elsewhere. (That said, I appreciate that sexual desire is also something that you could feed, as each instance of sexual gratification works as a dopamine hit, like an addiction, making you crave more and more, so perhaps if people don’t feed it then it will not grow so strong…I suspect that the key is not to fixate on your own sexual gratification, but with your spouse to each cultivate your sexuality to serve one another in marriage. Thereby I hope it is possible to enjoy your sexuality within marriage without giving it a chance to grow into an addiction.)

Character:
You know?  Whatever anyone says, marriage is conditional, otherwise we would not see any divorces at all, would we?  (Another reason why this emphasis on “unconditional love” is so misguided).  What tends to make or break a marriage is character. This is why I say “Don’t base your marriage on a feeling, even a good necessary feeling like sexual desire.”  Rather base your marriage on 1.Christ and His truth  2. Your mutual commitment to Christ  3. Your mutual commitment to pursue Christlike character.

Once you have established that your would-be spouse has excellent character, and is moving in the right direction after Christ, with deep intensity, then you can ask yourself whether you genuinely care for them, respect them, admire them.  If you can sincerely answer “Yes” to these questions, then guess what?!  You have solved the love question!  Because no matter how people talk about “unconditional love”, example after example where people relate their marital experiences shows us that in practice, love is utterly conditional on the character that your spouse demonstrates.
Sadly this is not always how it works but ideally, as long as you both continue to pursue Christ with that same intensity, continue to pursue Christlike character, and cultivate deep and honest communication between the two of you, then you will not need to worry about the love question.
So to summarise, where people talk about “love” (blah blah blah), ignore that, and evaluate instead for character, and understand that any deep affection you could ever feel for them will be utterly conditional on your mutually maintaining great character, and it is unrealistic to expect otherwise.

Compatibility
Once you have established a mutual respect of one another’s character, then you can consider compatibility. Are he and I sufficiently alike? Do we think reasonable alike? Do we have similar or compatible goals in life?  Are we on the same intellectual wavelength?  There were some people I assumed I was intellectually compatible with, only to find out how wrong I was. I like to read, think and reason, and think through big ideas, regardless of how relevant these issues are to my life just now and I could literally do that all day long. so unsurprisingly, some people (all people) think I am a dreamer! Other people are a lot more practical-minded, in that they literally just seem to learn what they need to learn for any particular situation, so they never have the mindspace to reason or argue with me about big profound theoretical ideas, because that is just not the way their mind works. In such a marriage I could imagine myself getting intellectually bored very quickly.

Strong sexual desire:  OK I must admit this is the big flaw or weakness in this argument: the idea that strong sexual desire is something that you and a potential spouse could easily banish and put on a shelf while you are evaluating one another for character and then compatibility. The point about strong sexual desire is that it can be so compelling. You want to jump straight to the action.  You want to release yourself to all the feelings. So I guess the challenge is to be mature and wise, and put strong safeguards in place.  Ideally, if I felt myself with those strong feelings towards someone whom I needed to evaluate, I would pray for strength to be able to put the feelings to one side, and I would also pray for clarity so that those feelings would not cloud my judgement.
Because of all this, I totally understand why some Christians prefer not to have these strong sexual feelings at all. However I think that that is the wrong answer.  I personally believe that it is better to learn how to control these feelings before marriage, than to try to banish them altogether from the expectation of marriage.

Basing your marriage on these feelings: Feelings of strong sexual desire can definitely stand alone, or exist all by themselves without any true commitment to character or compatibility. This is why it is so easy to make a mistake, and to accidentally base your marriage on this, and even deceive yourself that it is love. And then it will be within the course of marriage that you discover the truth about your beloved, and then find your marriage untenable, as so many others have done. So I believe there is a bit of tension there: on one hand, I definitely believe that these feelings are necessary and helpful; on the other hand I definitely recognise how dangerous it is to move ahead based solely on these feelings, as your marriage would be almost guaranteed to break apart.

It is a little bit like saying this, which is also true: that fun and excitement are absolutely crucial in marriage, but any marriage that is predominantly based on fun and excitement would almost invariably fall apart.

So ultimately, strong feelings of sexual attraction are not “true love”, but even “true love” is itself not reliably true love; rather any truly reliable feelings in marriage must flow out of an unwavering mutual commitment to strong character, and a genuine consideration of compatibility.

So then the true question then is not “the difference between love and lust”, but rather the difference between a marriage based solely on sexual attraction versus a marriage based on a mutual unwavering commitment to Christlike character and genuine compatibility with a healthy component of sexual attraction too.

My best case scenario would be to find a guy to whom I felt no deep attraction and evaluate him for strong character, and compatibility, then once those are securely in place, after two full years of coolly evaluating one another, suddenly start being very strongly attracted to one another. I don’t know whether strong sexual attraction is either there or it is not, I don’t know whether it is something that can reliably be prayed into being, I don’t know whether we would literally have to practise looking into one another’s eyes. Or do we both just have to find it wherever it exists within one another? Perhaps people who are already married can enlighten me. What I do know is that I don’t want to get married without it!  Hmm, I always thought that where I felt strongly attracted to a man, and unable to stop looking into his eyes etc that meant that the sexual attraction between was “real”. But perhaps that did not mean it was real, perhaps that merely meant it was indisciplined. I feel that I would not be able to categorically answer this question until the right guy comes along. I’ve never been in a position to ask God to pour out on me strong sexual feelings towards someone, which is why I don’t know whether this might work or not.

[I guess it is more than possible to have an otherwise excellent relationship that lacks strong mutual sexual desire, and I’m sure many people consider themselves very happy in such marriages, but to me that sounds somewhat dry and not at all optimal.]