SEPARATING LUST AND LOVE
SYNOPSIS:
Is the first things that draws us to other
people our sexual response?
But because lust responds to abstract characteristics of the other,
we might find sex a deficient basis for an on-going
relationship.
Parallel to our sexual response, do we also 'fall
in love'?
This emotional response has deep roots in Western culture.
But romantic love is also a deficient basis for a meaningful
relationship.
Beyond lust and love, it is still possible to create
relationships
based on the persons
we are inventing ourselves to be.
Beyond our sexual and emotional responses,
we can love Authentically, freely, & creatively.
OUTLINE:
I. LUST—RESPONDING TO IMPRINTED SEXUAL FANTASIES.
A. Where Does Lust Come From?
B. Does Our Lust-Response Mature Over a
Life-Time?
C. How Should We Respond to the Lust We Find within
Ourselves?
II. ROMANTIC LOVE—HOW OUR HEARTS LEARNED TO 'FALL IN LOVE'.
A. Where Does Romantic Love Come From?
B. Does Our Romantic Response Mature Over
a Life-Time?
C. How Should We Respond to Our Romantic Feelings?
III. BEYOND BOTH LUST AND LOVE—CREATING UNIQUE RELATIONSHIPS.
A. Where Do Relationships Come From?
B. Do Our Loving Relationships Mature
Over a Life-Time?
C. How Do We Conduct and Transform Our Loving
Relationships?
SEPARATING
LUST AND LOVE
by James Leonard Park
I. LUST—RESPONDING
TO IMPRINTED SEXUAL FANTASIES
A. Where Does Lust Come From?
Lust is the sexual feeling we find arising within
ourselves
when we meet a person who triggers our sexual responses.
Our sexual responses were imprinted into us at an early age
—probably before age 20 and perhaps during
adolescence.
Do we believe that our sexual responses
come from biology
—that
we have sexual feelings from our animal ancestors?
But that would not explain why we are aroused by
words, stories, myths, settings, clothing, etc.
We get 'turned on' by many things with strong symbolic
content,
which is not possible for the other animals,
since they do not use abstract symbols.
But it seems safe to assume that human lusting
has been happening for at least 100,000 years,
which marks the beginning of our symbolic capacity
and the emergence of human language.
These early humans probably had different sexual imprinting,
but were they 'turned on' by sexy stories just as we are?
Which people really 'turn us on'
—even if we
do not know them personally?
What are our best lust-objects?
Heterosexual
males find themselves sexually attracted
to conventionally-sexy females.
Heterosexual females find themselves sexually attracted
to conventionally-sexy males.
Just
switch the lust-objects for most homosexual males and females.
We grow up knowing that we lust after certain kinds
of people.
B. Does Our
Lust-Response Mature Over a Life-Time?
When we were teen-agers we lusted after others our
own age.
And it now appears that those we lusted for in our youth
remain inside our sexual brains for the rest of our lives.
Thus as our bodies and minds get older and more mature,
our sexual responses do not mature along with us.
We still find ourselves 'turned on' by images that aroused us as
teen-agers.
We might find ourselves torn between
the mature adults we have become in every other way
and the 'adolescent' sexual responses that still control our sexual
brains.
C. How
Should We
Respond to the Lust We
Find within Ourselves?
Even tho we discover that we cannot change the lusty
stories in our brains,
we are always responsible for the behavior we create
from those impulses.
Some of us experience no conflict between our sexual imprinting
and the behavior that naturally follows from it.
We might actually enjoy the resulting sexual behavior.
But as we become more mature adults,
we might question the specific sexual response we find within ourselves.
Then we might have the difficult task of re-creating our sexuality
so that it reflects more the persons
we have become in adulthood
than the teen-agers we were
some years earlier.
II. ROMANTIC LOVE
—HOW OUR HEARTS LEARNED
TO 'FALL IN LOVE'.
One of the most common alternatives to lusting
is loving.
But the kind of love we usually mean is romantic love,
which also might create problems.
A. Where Does Romantic Love Come From?
Just as we might believe that our human
sexuality is 'natural',
so we usually assume that 'falling in love' comes automatically.
But historical investigation has discovered
that what we know as romantic love is only about 800 years old.
This seems shocking and impossible to us as first,
since people have been mating and reproducing for millions
of years.
But if we clearly separate lust
from love,
perhaps lust might account for the sexual behavior of
our ancestors
even if they could never have understood a romantic Hollywood movie.
Romantic
love is a cultural construct,
which has been spread over the whole Earth by the mass media.
Before radio, television, and movies—100 years ago—
large parts of the world had never heard of 'falling in love'.
They still had sexual relationships and families, of course,
but the fantasy of romantic love did not run their relationships.
Romantic love is an emotional story we
tell ourselves.
By means of the mass media, we have been programmed
so that we 'fall in love' following the patterns prescribed in
Hollywood.
We try to reproduce a fantasy feeling.
We 'fall in love' with the Dream Lover inside our own heads
when we set out to find "someone to love".
B. Does Our Romantic Response Mature Over a Life-Time?
Because we have learned how to 'fall in
love' from our culture,
it is also possible to unlearn this emotional programming.
However, if we enjoy the game of romance,
we might not want to be awakened from that dream.
Only when the romantic delusion starts to fall apart
do we begin to look for more mature ways of loving.
Thus, romantic love can be
replaced by relationships
not based on emotional
responses learned from the culture.
Rather, we can love as the persons we are inventing ourselves to be.
Meaningful loving relationships can be created
completely beyond the romantic mythology.
C. How Should We Respond to Our Romantic Feelings?
Many of us have few problems with our romantic
responses.
We enjoy the game of falling in and out of love.
And we might seek new romantic adventures for the rest of
our
lives.
We might decide that the game of romance is
harmless,
as long as all players realize
that they are trying to re-create a story they saw on television.
But after a few more cycles on the
merry-go-round of love,
we might ask whether we want to repeat this fantasy-script.
A more mature response can leave the romantic
fantasies behind
and proceed to create relationships
beyond romantic illusions.
III. BEYOND BOTH LUST AND LOVE
—CREATING
UNIQUE
RELATIONSHIPS.
A. Where Do Relationships Come From?
Can we create relationships beyond our
imprinted sexual
fantasies?
And can we love beyond our emotionally-programmed romantic feelings?
These relationships will be based in something much more substantial
—in the new persons we are creating ourselves to be.
In other words, loving relationships based in
Authenticity
emerge from the interaction of the two people creating a
relationship.
Piece by piece, we can create new patterns of being together
that have never been attempted before.
We are not prisoners of our imprinted sexual fantasies.
We need not replicate the romantic feelings we leaned from the
movies.
Whatever we choose as our basic purposes in life
can also become central to our loving relationships.
In freedom, we can re-create our selves—and our relationships.
B. Do Our Loving Relationships Mature Over a Life-Time?
When our loving relationships are based on our own
free choices
rather than our imprinted sexual fantasies (the lust response)
or the romantic traditions we picked up from society (the romantic
response),
then we are also free to change our relationships as the years
go by.
In fact, it is very likely that we will create new dimensions of
our
relationships.
Some older aspects of our love will die away as no longer meaningful.
If we focus our Authenticity in new ways,
those changes will also show themselves in our relationships.
Our imprinted sexual responses will probably remain the same.
And the romantic tradition will continue into the foreseeable future.
But as free persons, we can create new kinds of relationships.
C. How Do We Conduct and Transform Our Loving Relationships?
When we were still allowing our
connections with
others
to be shaped by our sexual
responses and our romantic
dreams,
we had to fight against these influences
if we wanted to do anything that was definitely our own.
But once we begin to re-invent love
for the two persons we are
and are
becoming,
then the next phase of our relationship will be whatever we decide.
We conduct our relationship by making daily
decisions
about what we will do together.
And we make major transformations of our relationship
by discussing and deciding what new dimensions we will try.
With each new experiment in our relationship,
we will evaluate the results as seen from both sides.
We will abandon the changes that did not work for us.
And we will continue and develop the new dimensions we both like.
Lusting and 'falling in love' are only the
beginning.
After we get beyond sex and romance,
we can use our creativity to
re-invent love.
first
published Spring 2005; revised
11-4-2006; 9-16-2007; 5-17-2009;
2-27-2010; 11-13-2010; 8-25-2014;
1-31-2015; 7-7-2018; 1-21-2020;
To
measure your own level of romance,
take
The
Romantic Love Test:
How
Do We Know If We Are in Love?
This
180-question test divides the phenomenon
of romantic love
into 26 manifestations (the A-Z of romance).
To read
more books critical of romantic love,
see the Romantic
Love Bibliography.
If
you are skeptical about romantic love being only 800 years old,
here is a website looking for counter examples
—that is, signs
of romantic love from times before
the Middle Ages:
When
Was
Romantic Love Invented?
Several other links for exploring romantic delusions:
The
Romantic
Love Portal.
If you would like to love beyond sex and romance, go
to:
Loving
from
Authenticity,
which
is the second chapter of New
Ways of Loving.
And if you want to explore Authenticity
itself, go to:
Becoming
More
Authentic:
The Positive Side of Existentialism.
AUTHOR:
James Park has written extensively
about love and other relationships.
Much more about him will be discovered on his website:
James
Leonard Park—Free
Library
See the sections on love and sexology
for more thoughts along the lines of this essay.
If you have appreciated the new perspectives
offered by this essay—"Separating
Lust and Love"—
you might consider some other chapters from this book:
Heartbreak
Prevention:
Loving
Beyond
Romance, Sex, & Marriage.
Go to
the beginning of this website
James
Leonard Park—Free
Library