Preface: As you might be able to tell, there are certain things that I
choose to write about more than others. And despite the lack of it in my life,
romantic love is one of those things I quite enjoy thinking and writing about.
With it being so close to Valentine’s Day I thought this would be an
excellent time for this post. Because, really if not now than when really? Well
really whenever because Valentine’s Day is a crap day to celebrate, to quote
John Green “If you need to be reminded to like your romantic partner, you’redoing it wrong.”
So let’s get on to it already.
As usual when I compare things let us start with definitions both
current and past. Love as I have discussed before, is not the easiest thing to
pinned down but, for this purpose let’s focus on romantic love. And the top
dictionary entry for love is “an intense feeling of deep affection or fondness for
a person or thing; great liking.” And originally it was derived from words
meaning “desires”, or “it is pleasing”. But as we know Romantic Love is not a
simple thing. These definitions leave a lot to be desired, they don’t explain
how Romantic Love is not easy, and how “falling in love” is a myth because you
don’t fall in love. Falling is easy, but love is not. Or how Romantic Love is a
two way street, and that it takes two people for love, two people who are working
equally for love to be. I should be
clear about what I’m saying when I say work, I don’t mean some dead end minimum
wage job that you hate, I mean it should feel like your dream job: fun, love
doing it, not always easy but you learn from it, and it is something that you’re
passionate about. If you feel all of the above about your relationship, it’s
love plain and simple. And I will finish this with a quote "It’scomplicated. All this love shit’s complicated. And that’s good. Because if it’stoo simple, you’ve got no reason to try. And if you got no reason to try, youdon’t."- Adam Driver’s character to Daniel Radcliffe in What If.
Now on to Lust, and unlike love, lust is easy and simple. Lust is a
base animal instinct. The definitions; currently lust is a strong sexual
desire, whereas originally lust was desire, appetite, pleasure; sensuous
appetite. (But do I really have to deeply explain lust? It’s not a hard concept
to grasp. Tee Hee… hard. I know, I’m so mature). Pure and simple lust is solely
sexual attraction. It is exclusively a physical feeling, and often a temporary
one that can just as easily pass from one person you see on to the next. It can
be a very fleeting feeling, and the smallest of things can make it disappear
completely or even enflame it and make it burn even brighter. I am not trying to
say that lust is a bad thing, but I mean lust by itself can be very much an
empty thing, but also can be a very addicting thing. Lust combined with infatuation
can be very potentially useful in leading to love. Lust as said in less simple
terms is the wanting or desire to have sex with a specific person. Now I can’t
say that list is absolutely necessary for good relationships, because of course
then I would alienate any asexuals, that’s something I would not want to do.
But lust is a human thing and what we choose to do with it tell us a lot about
ourselves.
Okay, infatuation
now. This is the fun one, well kind of, I like it. So the dictionary says
infatuation is to be affected by an intense fondness or admiration, but
originally it was closer related to a variation of foolishness, to be more
precise inspire in someone a foolish romantic passion. Now I know what you
might be thinking, that this dictionary definition sounds incredibly close to
that one I attributed to love. But that’s wrong, because of course infatuation
isn’t love, it is very much from love. Well, very is a bit of a stretch, but
back on topic. Another way to put it that is easier to understand or convey, an
infatuation is a crush. Simple enough concept to grasp, and unlike love, a
crush is something what you
can fall into. They are easy, sometimes uncontrollable, and can happen in a
split second (not necessarily a literal split second). Now I know what you’re
thinking, but aren’t you supposed to crush on the one you love, and you’re absolutely
right. But the thing about crushes is that they can very much be one sided, you
can have a crush on someone and them not return those feelings. There’s also
the unknowingness of a crush because of course logic dictates that if you have
a crush on someone and they also have one on you as well you both know about
set crushes that something will happen between you two (in a perfect world that
is). But then you also have to take into account that you can a) have multiple
crushes at a time, and b) the crush lives on an intensity spectrum and if you
imagine the spectrum as a wave the crush surfs it quite regularly. Now, ideally
you’d want to match your crush’s’ position on the spectrum, and along with your
partner grow its intensity to the point where it becomes love. But sometimes it
just doesn’t work out and heartbreak occurs. Yes, heartbreak isn’t exclusively
related to love, it very much can happen with infatuation but with smaller
impact, you know, less lives ruined and blood shed spanning years andcontinents.
There it is,
Love, Lust, and Infatuation. Because if we didn’t have important words for
things where would we be. It also
certainly helps knowing when the right opportunity to use these words is, and
this is of course because the words we choose to use say a lot about who we
are. Now normally I wouldn’t choose to commemorate Valentine’s Day because it
is a pointless tradition, but it does make people happy, and I’m not one to
squash other people’s happiness. But as I quoted in the beginning, “If you need
to be reminded to like your romantic partner, you’re doing it wrong.”
Post Script: You
see that, two weeks in a row, now isn’t that just something. If I can just have
the time to finish the rest of the half-finished ones I’ve started because I
don’t really want to post just fluff.
