Love or Lust?

One of the hottest relationships I've ever had was with a man who was able to satisfy me physically. The passion was so intense, and the time we spent together now seems like a total blur. Conversations, phone calls, texts all led to us being together. Inseparable. We'd sometimes only leave bed to take care of those things that could not be avoided such as working, running errands, and family functions. At the time, I could have sworn I loved him, but now I wonder if it was just lust.

Whats the difference between having an electrical physical connection, and love? If they are both dynamic forms of emotion that can overwhelm your body and soul couldn't they both be the same? As I think back to all of the hand holding, and affection I also recall feeling trapped. Being so close to another person all of the time would make me feel almost claustrophobic. Yet some of our biggest fights were about one of us leaving the other's presence.

As strange as it sounds, when you spend all of your time with one person it may be hard to grow in other areas. We were both successful at work and other ventures we took up, but it seemed that our families and friends thought we were in our own little world. We let very few people in. We spent hours upon hours talking and walking and sharing our thoughts and ideas. But when it came down to it, we couldn't let each other go long enough to execute any of them. That type of clinging hurt us tremendously. We never learned how to be together, and still be all of the things that our lives called for us to be. We became insecure and jealous of anything that took us away from each other. And our time together became fewer and farther between.

Love does not deprive you of anything. It gives you more of what you need. In my experience, you are better for it. You are strong within it, and can tackle anything with love as your security blanket. Being one of the seven deadly sins, lust is very powerful and not to be underestimated. It is very similar to love and it often takes on the same shape and form. We did ourselves such a dis-service by relying so heavily on our physical connection. Instead of working on venturing out and still being able to come back together, we just gave up. Craving some one's attention and affection can manifest into addiction. Some of the most unhealthy relationships stem from people not wanting their partner to live or function in life without them. People have told me to just let it go, but we haven't found it to be that easy. Like any addiction, you have to first be convinced that something is bad for you before you want to leave it alone. And for years we held out hope that maybe we were not as toxic for each other as the world seemed to think.

As time went by, we were unable to get our footing and establish a firm foundation for our relationship. But we were able to easily fall of the wagon, and right back into the physical connection that we have always shared. No words, no changes. Just us. Sometimes we would just sit there for hours in silence because we knew our issues were too big to even go into. And if we did go into them, where to begin? So we took the cowardly way out and left things as is until the next relapse.

What's odd about these sort of "relationships" is that when you are in them, you don't see the harm you are doing to yourself and the other person. It is a totally selfish and evasive way to handle things. Nothing gets solved yet you are still emotionally invested. So you can not really move on and in the back of your mind, you are thinking that you can always lean on that crutch. The love/lust rope can tangle you up so much that you may justify your involvement by masking it as love. It seems silly to continue something that is bad for you just for lust but we do it all of the time. As difficult as it may be, we need to focus on untangling ourselves from anything that is not beneficial to us. Lust is just another form of settling. We must be strong enough to look lust in the face for what it really is and run (don't walk) in the opposite direction. And we can only do that one day at a time. Second by second, we must make the choice to only invest ourselves in something that can bare the fruit we need to sustain ourselves.