LOVE HURTS AND LUST FULFILS
Love hurts and Lust fulfils. Having no opinion on the aforementioned made up phrase I set about asking friends what they thought and I received wide ranging opinions from the slapstick to the surreal.
"This is describing the potential that love and lust has, but not a quality of the same", came an opinion. Did it mean love has the potential to make one cry while lust does not? But lust too does make one cry, so it got a bit confusing. Lust has the potential to fulfil or as another friend said "Lust fills"! Love also fulfils or fills but in a more abstract sense. You cannot put a finger on it and say, "Here is my cup and now it runneth over with love" because love has no meter. It is a vast ocean which invites you to do a lap without telling you when to turn around whereas lust is a drop of honey that hangs tantalisingly close begging you to lick it, if you dare. I guess both Love and Lust can make you cry as well as be fulfilling so I pressed on.
"There is certain element of emotion involved in physical intimacy", said another. "And having love as a driving force is definitely more fulfilling and uplifting. Saying it’s just lust is probably a defence mechanism from rejection and hurt. Lust is a momentary thing ... a fling ... a moment of passing ... a one night stand." So Love fulfils permanently and Lust fulfils temporarily but what about the pain that love brings with it? The hurt caused by expectations and fantasies spun from the wild fire of imagination that sparks from the embers of love. Love is like walking on red hot coals while lust is the flame that burns the skin ... "Love takes you to heaven whereas lust brings heaven to you," and the answers kept coming.
"One who hasn't loved truly, or experienced the pangs of it, and undergone the sweet pain of it - has not lived." These powerful words hit me like a cyclone and I found myself spinning in a vortex of self doubt because I felt that the pain was only fulfilling in a romantic sense and that no sane person would want to actually feel it unless blessed with a masochistic tendency. Love fulfils one might argue, not just the body but your heart and spirit too and one has to undergo the pain to understand the reality of love. So love does hurt but this hurt is needed I concluded. A part of a journey fraught with sweetness and snares. What if the journey does not bear fruit? Would the pain still be worth it? The tossing of ideas continued until another friend responded.
"Lust is a natural animal instinct driven by attraction which fulfils the individual by giving pleasure to the senses momentarily, whereas Love is divine and demands sacrifice.The other person, being more important than yourself, which is many a time painful, yet beautiful! Love is a selfless giving whereas lust a selfish wanting and lust without love damages whereas Love with an element of lust is fulfilling, pure and ever lasting!" What could lust without love damage? Damage the moral fabric of a human being perhaps but morality is decided by the present time and societal circumstance thus it only led to or begged another question ... Does love hurt because we seek after it with ulterior motive? I received a reply,
"Love isn’t commonly found and requires a very deep understanding and at the end of the day human beings are driven more by temptation than by sacrifice." Probably as one gets older, the repeated cycles of love, lust, hurt and fulfilment endows a capacity to separate the two which the younger self finds very difficult to comprehend. Interesting to note though, is how that younger self, searches for the ideal, embraces the sorrow of rejection, and bounces back after repeated painful endings. For the younger self, lust comes as a byproduct of love. As age increases so also reduces the patience to enjoy that sweet pain as medically, life becomes more and more unpredictable. So lusty tangible experiences albeit short-lived take precedence, perhaps with the hope that there will be discovery of some form of love. So what do we make of this love and lust? What do our experiences teach us?
"Love isn’t commonly found and requires a very deep understanding and at the end of the day human beings are driven more by temptation than by sacrifice." Probably as one gets older, the repeated cycles of love, lust, hurt and fulfilment endows a capacity to separate the two which the younger self finds very difficult to comprehend. Interesting to note though, is how that younger self, searches for the ideal, embraces the sorrow of rejection, and bounces back after repeated painful endings. For the younger self, lust comes as a byproduct of love. As age increases so also reduces the patience to enjoy that sweet pain as medically, life becomes more and more unpredictable. So lusty tangible experiences albeit short-lived take precedence, perhaps with the hope that there will be discovery of some form of love. So what do we make of this love and lust? What do our experiences teach us?
"Experience teaches us that the abuse of love, hurts." The rejection, the manipulation, the blackmail of something so powerful when you are most vulnerable leads you on a path that is dark and lonely. The act of loving never hurts while on the flip-side, lust filled acts most often do hurt, but only in a physical sense which heals faster than the emotional scarring left after being wronged in love.
"An aspect of lust that many don't understand is that it need not always be physical." Lust rides high in a sexy song, a husky voice, an evening of good conversation without any physicality whatsoever. "The difference between lust and love at this juncture is a thin veil, with confusion reigning as to which backs which. "Can somebody love without reciprocation and lust expecting lust in return?
An opinion I received said that there should be quid pro quo, both in love and lust, and I wondered, does love automatically entail reciprocation? Is a feeling that you feel towards a person, an outcome of either you wanting to share your time with a person like that or you liking the feeling that the other person likes sharing his/her time with you? If you love without reciprocation, are you fooling yourself into a feeling that you have developed thinking it is mutual. And when you think about it ... If you are in the latter situation, where you like the feeling of being loved, does it mean the other person is a fool? Is it all fleeting? How can the other person not genuinely want anything in return? Would such a love be possible or would it be a bubble waiting to burst horribly? "It is not possible," came an opinion. "If you don't want anything in return, you are a sociopath. You do not have passion. And the other person will get to see that reality which would, yes, burst the bubble."
Then what about lust? How does one differentiate it from love? An answer proceeded to throw some light. "Lust is an individual feeling, selfishly so. You can control it, channel it or you can let it become an obsession without reason and get unduly anxious. It doesn't hurt because it simply skims the surface. It is a very basic need, like a food craving. You don't need love to lust. But you do need the lust to continue loving. Filling is fulfilling and lust hurts only when there is no lubrication."
Continuing the thread after that humorous interaction I received another comment that read such, "Love hurts is one end of the spectrum where love is concerned. It hurts because it can make you feel good and lift you up, and when you lose it, you come crashing down. Lust, on the other hand, is a much less complex feeling, an easier need to satisfy, so probably, easier to feel fulfilment." I didn't know whether that was a yes, no or an in-between so I pressed on. Agree or disagree I asked? "Partially agree and partially disagree," came the bewildering answer. "It's true, but it's not the whole picture...there's more to it...which makes it somewhat conditionally true. Perhaps it could be true, if one has been been disappointed in love....or if one tends to be cynical...or perhaps even too scared to feel too much. And untrue if one hasn't been disappointed or maybe disillusioned because of love and if one's needs are more emotional. That answer was straight out of the Civil Services handbook which would have made Sir Nigel Hawthorne proud. Convoluted and constructed to leave the reader scratching his head, thoroughly confused so I decided to sum it all up with a parting line that was given to me " Lust fulfils until Love hurts once again."
"An aspect of lust that many don't understand is that it need not always be physical." Lust rides high in a sexy song, a husky voice, an evening of good conversation without any physicality whatsoever. "The difference between lust and love at this juncture is a thin veil, with confusion reigning as to which backs which. "Can somebody love without reciprocation and lust expecting lust in return?
An opinion I received said that there should be quid pro quo, both in love and lust, and I wondered, does love automatically entail reciprocation? Is a feeling that you feel towards a person, an outcome of either you wanting to share your time with a person like that or you liking the feeling that the other person likes sharing his/her time with you? If you love without reciprocation, are you fooling yourself into a feeling that you have developed thinking it is mutual. And when you think about it ... If you are in the latter situation, where you like the feeling of being loved, does it mean the other person is a fool? Is it all fleeting? How can the other person not genuinely want anything in return? Would such a love be possible or would it be a bubble waiting to burst horribly? "It is not possible," came an opinion. "If you don't want anything in return, you are a sociopath. You do not have passion. And the other person will get to see that reality which would, yes, burst the bubble."
Then what about lust? How does one differentiate it from love? An answer proceeded to throw some light. "Lust is an individual feeling, selfishly so. You can control it, channel it or you can let it become an obsession without reason and get unduly anxious. It doesn't hurt because it simply skims the surface. It is a very basic need, like a food craving. You don't need love to lust. But you do need the lust to continue loving. Filling is fulfilling and lust hurts only when there is no lubrication."
Continuing the thread after that humorous interaction I received another comment that read such, "Love hurts is one end of the spectrum where love is concerned. It hurts because it can make you feel good and lift you up, and when you lose it, you come crashing down. Lust, on the other hand, is a much less complex feeling, an easier need to satisfy, so probably, easier to feel fulfilment." I didn't know whether that was a yes, no or an in-between so I pressed on. Agree or disagree I asked? "Partially agree and partially disagree," came the bewildering answer. "It's true, but it's not the whole picture...there's more to it...which makes it somewhat conditionally true. Perhaps it could be true, if one has been been disappointed in love....or if one tends to be cynical...or perhaps even too scared to feel too much. And untrue if one hasn't been disappointed or maybe disillusioned because of love and if one's needs are more emotional. That answer was straight out of the Civil Services handbook which would have made Sir Nigel Hawthorne proud. Convoluted and constructed to leave the reader scratching his head, thoroughly confused so I decided to sum it all up with a parting line that was given to me " Lust fulfils until Love hurts once again."
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