Lust or Love

When a relationship is still in the new stage, how can you tell the difference between love and lust?

Well, one simple way to think of it is that usually you are attracted to the other person physically in the beginning. This can be called "desire" or at some point it can turn into "lust". If the relationship develops such that you want to be together for reasons other than sex, then it starts turning into love.

That's really a great question. I know I was asking myself that same question 45 years ago, and I never did find the answer. At my age, and considering the relationships I've experienced, you'd think I would have a good response by now.

I don't know that real "love," at least the kind you grow into over time, is possible "in the new stage." I think lust is a part of romantic love -- the strong, butterflies in your chest, aching, wanting part of it. The other thing about love is, it can mean one thing to me and something else to the next person. We can also change our own definition of love over time and with different partners.

One big part of love, imho, is full acceptance. I know the love I feel for someone is right when I don't want them to change in any way, yet if they do change, I love them even more after the change.

I think that you can tell love from lust by what you are thinking when you are not with the person. Are you thinking just about fucking them, or are you thinking how much you'd love to just sit quietly with that special someone, holding hands, watching the sun come up?

Lust is sex, love is sex and everything else.

It is possible to meet someone for the first time and feel love rather than lust, it doesn't have to grow. The thing is that love cannot be explained, only experienced. The other problem is that love and lust overlap: when you love a woman you want to have sex with her.

For me, I knew it was love because it was different to what I felt before, and I was able to analyse why this was so, why this person had affected me in such a way. Not everyone can self-analyse, but certainly if you have had crushes and obsessions then this is good training for learning what love isn't, so that when true and complete love comes you will be better equipped to recognise it.

A comic called Brother Dave Gardner said " When a 40 year old man falls for an 18 year old girl thats lust but when a 19 year old man falls for a 40 year old woman that's love brother!".

When I was a teenager, we didn't have MTV.
We had to take drugs and go to Rock Concerts!

its more infatuation than lust in the early stages of a relationship

This will sound weird but I think love can carry over from one lifetime to another. I believe my first wife and I had been lovers before we ever met. It felt that way from day one.

No Buffalo, I don't think that is weird at all. Just be happy that you are with the one you have loved before. Right now, I am involved with a cyber lover that I feel very strongly was my mate in another life, and he has told me he feels the same. Unfortunately, he and I are both married to other people now, so the feelings we have are very intense and melancholy at the same time.

Barbwire a.k.a. Cowboy Lover

We divorced after two kids but remained friends. She divorced again later and we both agreed we were done for this trip but expect to be together again someplace. She died right after 9/11 at the age of 51.

hmm i wonder lol

Lust is when you and your partner get really horny and fuck like rabbits after eating a lot of pizza and drinking a lot of beer. Love is when you clean up your partner's vomit and put him/her to bed after he/she has a little too much beer.

after a couple of years you should know.....

You know it's love, when you can share each others company naked, for more than an hour without getting self-conscious, uncomfortable or get the insatiable urge to screw each other.

Sounds a little weird, I know, but I think that's a good show of the both of you being entirely at ease and happy to be in each others company.