Ehmm... I should be sleeping by now (as I'm going to have a busy day tomorrow), but this thread is too interesting to be ignored and I think I'm not going to disconnect now that I can finally stay online for longer than a minute.
About this love / lust thing: I guess I have never been in love - or at least I hope none of the short relationships I have had through my 23 years of life have been "love", for none of them was really special for me. So, I'm kind of speaking from the POW of an unexperienced romanticer - which means that very little I say has anything to do with the reality you live in.
Anyway, lust is something I'm very familiar with; I experience it every day - and get rid of it with a shake of hand
. It is nothing special, nothing new, nothing exciting. There are people I feel lust for - and being what I am - meeting them has absolutely no effect on my daily life. It might make me think of them (instead of someone else) for those couple of minutes, but that's it. In short, lust is a simple thing that has no true meaning in my life.
Then, on the other hand, love is something very complicated for me (possible due to the aforementioned reason that I have never experienced it). I somehow see it spesifically as a unifying bond between two persons - a thing that supersedes all other humane "links" between people, because of it's pure intensity. Love is understanding - knowing who you are related to that
other and vice versa. In my mind love can pass and is not affected by sexual preferences, or other feelings (deep hate for example).
I never use the verb
to love when I'm speaking of myself. I do not love anyone - not my parents, not my brother, not my best friends.
To care, is what I do - I care about a lot of people, especially those who are close to me. But saying that I loved them... it would kind of ruin the whole word for me. If my caring of my mother means I
love her, do I also love the fifteen year old boy I'm helping on the streets one night, while he spits on my face? I believe I don't. I
know I don't. That's "just" caring. And I don't think love is just a "higher level of caring" or something.
Btw, although I'm purely heterosexual in physical terms (probably just do to cultural things - a vast majority of people would actually be bisexual, if our cultures wouldn't shape us like this), I care a great deal more of the men I know than of the women. There are no women I'd care more about than the five best male friends of mine (or, actually, there is one, but she is very special - I'll tell of her later...) and I don't think there will ever be! If I will find the love of my life, it doesn't matter - for love is not caring, IMHO.
Oh, and I second Atlantis' opinion about people changing and emotions changing and close relationships fading away - that's only natural to us two-legged, for we change in all other ways as well through our lives. Contradicting myself with my romantic views of love above? Well, yes. But as I said, love is something I can only image for now, and imaginations tend to contradict with reality...
-Villain (tired, exhausted - but still online!
)