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Love vs. Lust

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Nagash

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How do you really tell the difference? When you meet someone can you know if you could spend years in a relationship with them, or will the feelings just die off in a few months? How, and when did you first know you really did love the person you ended up being in a long term relationship with?

I ask b/c I recently started dating a guy who I'm really into. He's my second boyfriend, and everything feels completely different from what it did with my first. With my first boyfriend I felt this intense feeling of happiness from the start. Like I would explode from being so happy. We jumped into things really fast, and 4 months later we broke up b/c I didn't have feelings for him anymore, and I felt he should have the opportunity to find someone who loved him as much as he loved me. Yeah I broke his heart. I know I'm evil, you don't need to tell me.

With my current boyfriend, things are good. It's been over two years since my first relationship, and I feel complete as well as happy, but not to the overwhelming degree that I did with my first. This makes me think that it's something which will just grow with time. We have so much in common. We're completely honest with each other. He has issues with his past, and I accept them simply b/c they are a part of him, and even though I don't get to see him that often b/c of his work schedule, I'm not really frustrated b/c I know I can wait for him. I don't feel rushed, and I trust him to be faithful to me.

The thing is I don't know if it's a growing love, b/c I have never really felt it before. I'm not about to tell him that I love him, only to find out later that I really don't. To me, thats one of the worst lies you can tell someone even if you didn't realize you were doing it at the time. I will only say it when I know it's true.

So you guys who have been in a relationship for years. How did you know? What do you think of my situation? I know I'm the only one who can ultimately identify it, but help me out here.
:help::help::help:
 
Honestly, the only true answer I can give is: "I do not know."

Every BF is different for a full host of reasons. And there is no universal recipe/rule here.

I take it all one day at the time. I do love my BF and I do plan to spend the rest of my life with him. It took me almost a year to deeply fall in love with him. But I did. Equally so, I am ready to move on and be on my own, meet up with other guys and eventually enter a new relationship, should our present relationship come to an end.

I neither own him nor do I have an unlimited lease on his future. The very same applies to him to.

I experience love not only as a very precious feeling but as a very dynamic and living emotion. I am praying that my BF comes to me and tells me that he wants to move on, should that be the case, rather than go into a prolonged 'relationship tenebrae' with all its awful workings.

Letting your 'ex' go, once your love for him ceased was one of the best and most honest things you could do in your life. It makes you a good and decent man and not an evil one, in my books, that is.

His personal happiness as well as mine are my chief concerns, and should he at any point of time see his fields of happiness as being better shared with someone else or kept to himself, I wish to be the first to know.

He, too knows, that I should not hesitate and that he would be the first to know, if I felt the same.

No one owns love and no one knows how to control it.

But we can always work very hard towards achieving our own, fully individual sense of happiness and fulfillment.

SC
 
Lust is instantaneous and comes with a stiffy. Love is retrospective - you recognise it by looking back. It's the endpoint of a relationship, not the starting point.

'Falling in love' and actually loving another person are quite different experiences. All the stuff about having to be in love before you begin a relationship is a lot of romantic crap. You only have to review other cultures that have arranged marriages, or other historical periods where people married for reasons other than love and ended up many years later loving their partners.

The very fact that it WAS your first relationship, especially as you seem to have a strong desire to be in a LTR, is enough to account for the overwhelming emotionalism. Affirmation of your sexuality would be another reason. It was probably relief as much as love.
 
So you're saying that people don't know when their in love? What if the relationship doesn't end? Do you never really know until death? Is it never really appropriate to say "I love you" b/c you don't know until it ends? I'm not being a smartass I'm just trying to make more sense of what you said. Also I knew I was gay years before my first relationship, and had been having sex years before as well. I had the opportunity to have sex with my current bf the morning after I met him, and we didn't, despite it being really obvious that we both wanted to. All we did was sleep together in the same bed that night.

spreadeagle said:
Lust is instantaneous and comes with a stiffy. Love is retrospective - you recognise it by looking back. It's the endpoint of a relationship, not the starting point.
Click to expand...
 
Lust: yes it's pretty obvious, and i can tell the very first time i see the guy.

Love: Not obvious at all and takes some time. I think that it is not like: i love you, and then ask him if he wants to be your bf. I think it's the other way, you like each other, start a bf relationship, and that's when you REALLY start to know that person, and it's when you can really fall inlove.

I think you sholud slow down and relax, this is not like: month 1 = i love from here to eternity.


p.s. 'love' is kind of ambiguous word.
 
Nagash said:
So you're saying that people don't know when their in love? What if the relationship doesn't end? Do you never really know until death? Is it never really appropriate to say "I love you" b/c you don't know until it ends?

No, I'm just drawing a distinction between 'falling in love' and 'being in love' - really, we should give them different names in English. Falling in love is the first chemical, visual, physical, gut-wrenching attraction; the flood of hormones to the brain that stops you seeing or thinking straight and keeps you awake at night. It usually lasts about three months and unfortunately within that period people often make life-changing decisions like marrying, becoming pregnant, moving home, making financial commitments. Awareness that this phase doesn't last is one of the main reasons that the concept of an engagement ever evolved.

I'm not saying that the relationship necessarily ends, but that the nature of the relationship changes after the 'falling in love' phase is over. You know you love someone when you're cleaning up their vomit rather than when you're feeding each other chocolates by candlelight. You love someone BECAUSE of their annoying, disgusting little habits, not DESPITE them.

It's always appropriate to say 'I love you' if it's a genuine expression of the way you feel in the moment. It's never appropriate to say it because you think you should or because you hope to hear the same words in return. The words 'I love you' are simply an affirmation of what you demonstrate on a daily basis through your behaviour. If your everday actions and attitudes are not loving then 'I love you' is just hollow gush.
Click to expand...
 
By most measures I am one of the old ones. But my memory is still pretty bright and I know the difference between lust and love. Lust is the animal possessive kind of urge and comes pretty close to contemplating sexual union regardless of the response of the person who is the object of the lust. It is too dangerous to be urged on the young. ( Why else do we have our hands to provide the release?)

To the extent that one can curb the urge to rush and take, I think the advice of those of us who are thinking members of the older generation has to be to go slowly. Make the person a friend and know that friends after a time come to be more than friends. When one reaches the point where the physical is the appropriate next step, I have found that the thing happens quite naturally and the sex is awesome.

Romantic? Well, if that's the only word we can come up with, I plead guilty. Lust may yield to and be sated by the momentary thrill. Love can last.

Peace!
 
Thanks for clearing things up spreadeagle. To the rest of you, I intend to move slowly. That was my intention from the beginning. If theirs one thing I learned from my first relationship, it was to move slow, and make sure I get to know the person. I was asking b/c things feel so different this time around. Mainly what I feel is more subtle. We've also spent a lot of time talking which I didn't do with my first. 2 months into our relationship, my first bf proposed to me, and I shot him down b/c I realized we didn't know anything about each other. All we ever did was have sex. With this guy, we talk every night, even if it's just about what he did at work, and I'm happy with that. His schedule makes it difficult to see each other, but it does force things to move slowly. In the end, what seems like a nuisance right now, might actually turn out to be rather beneficial.
 
I hate to say this but you have to take in consideration your age. everything is confusing at that age. I actually knew at first sight who my long term boyfriends would be. It's so odd but it worked that way for me. I felt a twing of something in my gut. Each twing was different though. My first bf I also felt happy like you did. we lasted 3 years but we broke up cause I felt that twing for my best friends boyfriend. We lasted 5 terrible rotten years. Now he was mostly lust looking back.I felt it again for someone else and than for my BF I am with now. I had total lust for him in the beggining but now it's 4 years later and it's what comes after lust and the blinders comes off that is love. We don't tear each others clothes off like we use to but we have that connection and we can talk to each other so easy. We fit together. I also think it's lust when you jack off thinking of that person and love when you imagine a life with that person. That's as simple as I can put it.
 
I am taking my youth, and ignorance/inexperience into consideration. Thats why I'm asking advice here. As for "blinders", I don't think there really are any with us. We're pretty honest with each other. He's told me things about his past which would make most people dismiss him. I can deal with it. Hell, in a sense I like it better that way, because if it wasen't a part of him, then he woulden't be who he is today.

We've been dating for less than a month, so it's a bit early to be thinking about spending the rest of my life with him. I can easily see us living together in a few years, but as of yet, I can't picture us in our 70's. Then again I can't even picture myself at 70. Lol. Thats youth for you I suppose. But anyway, I do *|*thinking about him, and I haven't even seen him naked, because we want to take things slow. I've never done that. All my masterbation materiel consists of past experiences, and NEVER with clothes involved. I'd hardly consider that a bad thing though, and I don't think that, by itself, means it's just lust. We've even talked about the possibility of us not having sex at all, because we don't feel it's necessary. Don't get me wrong, we both want to:sex:, but it's not something we MUST have. It's really weird for me to admit that, being 21, and saying that I think I could survive on just kissing, and cuddling alone. I guess time will just be the determining factor in all this.
 
If the relationship is going great other than the fact that "I don't know if I'm completely in love with him", then by all means keep going. My first relationship was a mess of emotions - I remember sitting in the shower crying because I loved and wanted him so much. My second one was more gradual, more friends-first-and-then-more, and yes, I questioned if I really loved him. Nine years on, I can say without hesitation - "Yes, I do."

Lex
 
Oh trust me, you'll know. I have a feeling that if you can't imagine yourself with him at 70, it isn't the real thing yet. What is it with guys not seeing one another naked or having any physical realtionship until weeks have passed. Until you know if there is passion as well as friendship, I don't think you'll know if it is the real thing.
 
I'm absolutely sure there would be passion there. We're both more than eager, we just want the usual routine of STD tests done first. An second, we just wanted to take things slow instead of diving into each others pants on the first night. Also we don't get to see each other that often, so the chance hasn't really come around other than the first night I met him.
 
Hey nagash,

Mate...hold up. Stop. Take a breath. Slow down, relax and enjoy the ride.

Try not to spend time over analyzing and seeking answers. Love is an emotion as complicated as life itself and if you spend precious energy wondering about its intricacies you'll miss whats right in front of you.

Dont worry about your age, your level of expereince or what you might be doing at 70... value the time and the feelings you have now. Bask in the emotions that wash over you when you think of this guy and that warmth in your chest when you hear his voice.

Take your time...savor the journey and share and learn with each other. Do things at your pace, build experiences and pleasures together.

And dont worry about what to call it...love or lust...it doesnt matter mate. The best advice we can give you is to make the most of any connection you make with anyone who is close to your heart.

Learning, sharing and growing...compromising and forgiving...they are all the things that come with loving someone.

It doesnt matter how this started for you...what matters most is what you do with it. For now enjoy the safety security and excitement of having someone special in your life...and know that tomorrow is in your hands.
 
spreadeagle said:
Lust is instantaneous and comes with a stiffy. Love is retrospective - you recognise it by looking back. It's the endpoint of a relationship, not the starting point.

'Falling in love' and actually loving another person are quite different experiences. All the stuff about having to be in love before you begin a relationship is a lot of romantic crap. You only have to review other cultures that have arranged marriages, or other historical periods where people married for reasons other than love and ended up many years later loving their partners.

The very fact that it WAS your first relationship, especially as you seem to have a strong desire to be in a LTR, is enough to account for the overwhelming emotionalism. Affirmation of your sexuality would be another reason. It was probably relief as much as love.
Click to expand...

Great stuff spreadeagle! Though not my thread, your advice boosts my optimisim for a loving relationship with my BF.
 
Thanks Tallguy297. To some degree, I had been wondering if I was overanalyzing the situation. Not that stressed thinking about the topic or anything.
 
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