SEPARATING LUST AND LOVE


SYNOPSIS:  

    Connecting with other persons is an important dimensions of living.  

    One of the first things that draws us to other people is our sexual response.
But because lust responds to abstract characteristics of the other,
we might find simple sex a deficient basis for an on-going relationship.  

    Parallel to our sexual responses we also find ourselves 'falling in love'.
This emotional response has deep roots in our 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 sexual and emotional givens,
we can love freely and creatively.

OUTLINE:

I. LUST—RESPONDING TO IMPRINTED SEXUAL FANTASIES.

    A. Where Does Lust Come From?  

    B. Does Our Lust-Response Change and Mature Over a Life-Time?

    C. How Should We Respond to the Lust We Find within Ourselves?

II. ROMANTIC LOVE—HOW OUR HEARTS WERE TRAINED TO 'FALL IN LOVE'.

    A. Where Does Romantic Love Come From?

    B. Does Our Romantic Response Change and Mature Over a Life-Time?

    C. How Should We Respond to the Romantic Feelings We Find within Ourselves?

III. BEYOND BOTH LUST AND LOVE—CREATING UNIQUE RELATIONSHIPS.

    A. Where Do Relationships Come From?  

    B. Do Our Loving Relationships Change and Mature Over a Life-Time?

    C. How Do We Conduct and Transform Our Loving Relationships?


SEPARATING LUST AND LOVE

by James 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 most importantly during adolescence.

    We might like to think that our sexual responses came 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 all kinds of things that have 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 they were probably '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 Change and 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 the images that aroused us in our teen years.

    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 sexual 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 if as we become more mature adults,
we do not like the specific sexual response we find within ourselves,
then we 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 ago.


II. ROMANTIC LOVE—HOW OUR HEARTS WERE TRAINED 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 lead us into problems.

    A. Where Does Romantic Love Come From?

    Just as we might like to believe that our human sexuality is 'natural',
so we usually assume that 'falling in love' comes naturally.
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 we know that people have been mating and reproducing for millions of years.
But if we clearly separate lust from love,
we can see that lust might have accounted 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 basically 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 the Hollywood script.
We try to reproduce a fantasy feeling.
We 'fall in love' with the Dream Lover we brought with us
when we set out to find "someone to love".


    B. Does Our Romantic Response Change and Mature Over a Life-Time?

    Because we have learned how to 'fall in love' from the surrounding culture,
it is also possible to unlearn this emotional programming.
However, if we are enjoying 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.

    So, at least for some people, romantic love can be replaced by relationships
not based on emotional responses learned from the culture
but based on the two persons as they are re-inventing themselves to be.
Meaningful loving relationships can be created
completely beyond the romantic mythology.


    C. How Should We Respond to the Romantic Feelings We Find within Ourselves?

    Many of us have few problems with the romantic responses we experience.
We enjoy the game of falling in and out of love.
And we will continue to 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?

    As strange as it might seem to some people at first,
it is possible to create relationships beyond our imprinted sex-scripts (the lust response)
and beyond our emotionally-programmed romantic feelings (the love response).
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 actual interaction of two people who are building that 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 sex-scripts.
We do not need to replicate romantic feelings we leaned from the movies.

    What we choose as our central 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 Change and Mature Over a Life-Time?

    When our loving relationships are based on our own free choices
rather than our imprinted sexual fantasies
or the romantic traditions we picked up from society,
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
while we let some older aspects die away as no longer meaningful.
If we become more Authentic in new ways,
those changes will also show themselves in our relationships.
Our 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 it will be.

    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 things 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 that 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

Further Reading
    If you would like to explore the concept of imprinted sex-scripts, go to:
Sources of Sexual Fantasies
Best Books Supporting the Sex-Script Hypothesis

    If you would like to explore the sources of romantic indoctrination, go to:
Romantic Love is a Hoax! Emotional Programming to 'Fall in Love'

    If you would like to measure your own level of romance,
you might want to take
The Romantic Love Test: How Do We Know If We Are in Love?
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/RLT-WEB.html
This 180-question test divides the phenomenon of romantic love
into 26 manifestations (the A-Z of romance).

    If you want to read more books critical of romantic love,
see the Romantic Love Bibliography .
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/B-ROMC.html
Your college library or public library
should have most of the books reviewed here.

    Several other links for exploring romantic delusions:
The Romantic Love Portal .
http://www.tc.umn.edu/%7Eparkx032/P-ROMC.html

    If you want to know more about loving from Authenticity, go to:
Loving from Authenticity ,
which is the second chapter of New Ways of Loving .

    And if you want to know more about Authenticity itself, go to:
Becoming More Authentic:
The Positive Side of Existentialism .


AUTHOR:

    James Park is an existential philosopher
with deep interest in all dimensions of love.  
Much more about him will be discovered on his website,
An Existential Philosopher's Museum:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/
See the sections on love and sexology
for more thoughts along the lines of this cyber-sermon.


   James Park welcomes your comments and questions. 
Send you thoughts to him by e-mail: PARKx032@TC.UMN.EDU
Go to other cyber-sermons by James Park,
organized into 8 subject-areas.
Go to the opening page for Free Cyber-Sermons .

Go to Internet Resources for Campus Ministry .

Go to the UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST page.

Go to the opening page for this website:
An Existential Philosopher's Museum.

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.