Love & Lust

        Joe Biden seems to be the early front-runner to win the Democratic nomination for 2020, but Joe is burdened by a few handicap pounds under his saddle—his age, the Anita Hill business, and the charge of inappropriate touching and hugging that arose recently. Let me repeat what I’ve already said in one of my earlier blogs about hugging. Hugging is therapeutic. I don’t mean the kind where two people bend at the waist and pat each other on the shoulder. I mean full body hugging. More therapeutic than a kiss, especially the kiss on the cheek or forehead. Most men don’t feel comfortable hugging another man, but I do. The hug is comforting, saying by the act how sorry we are at the bad news the other has just received. Or how much the hugger loves the huggee. The world would be a much better place if we all gave each other a hug occasionally. I’m still trying to figure out what is or isn’t appropriate about touching and when exactly can an attempt at having sex with someone be all right and when is it not. The standard now seems to be when one or the other who’s about to have sex says no. That’s reasonable. But it can also lead to charges of assault or even rape. I was amused when I read what Dr. Ruth Westheimer (the 90-year-old Dr. Ruth of Ask Dr. Ruth fame), in a Time Magazine interview, said what she considered assault or consent and how this standard has changed in recent years: I think some people took it to an extreme. I believe that two consenting people, if they are in bed naked with each other and about to have sex, no way then can say in the middle, “I have changed my mind.” We also now seem to have a problem with expressing love. The very concept of love gets mixed up in emotional connection and sexual activity.

          For example, with the current rage for tweets and instant messages and texts and short notes on Facebook, there seems to be a trend away from the old niceties in letter writing. No one seems to have time to go into any detail in their correspondence, feeling obligated to use a minimum of characters and the annoying text shorthand ("LOL" especially annoying). And the old salutations and closures are now long gone. I was raised in a time when it was automatic to open any letter with a “Dear,” and close it with a “Yours truly” or a “Sincerely” or, when it was to a friend or relative, a “Love.” Now people are too uncomfortable to use that closure, instead opting for nothing but a name. People think I really mean I love them when I close with a “Love.” In many cases I do, but I don’t mean to make anyone uncomfortable when I say it at the end of a letter. It’s just the way I was taught in my youth. The “Dear” in the salutation doesn’t really mean I hold the recipient “dear” in my heart. The “Love” in the closing doesn’t mean I’m hot for the recipient. It’s just a nice way to open and close a letter.

          What then is the new definition of love? It’s our strongest emotion, stronger than fear or hunger, stronger than hate. But it’s a two-pronged beast made up of emotional love and physical lust, and too often people misunderstand one for the other. How many couples engage in sex and then assume that what they feel is love, feel it enough to spend the rest of their lives together, only to discover soon or late that lust wasn’t enough to bind them. Some live with it; some go separate ways. Otherwise, how can we explain that two out of three marriages end in divorce? That number would be even higher if we added in those who wanted to split but couldn’t, either because of religion or moral upbringing. Lust is the physical drive to satisfy our sexual appetites. It feels so good at the time, but what follows may not be love or even affection. The simplest solution is to find a fuck buddy: find a momentary satisfaction followed by a mutual separation. In marriage, after the sex tapers off or even disappears, we find two people who don’t really know each other or care for each other. They split or they stay together, unhappy. For a lifetime. Then there are extra-marital affairs, lust again. Real love doesn’t require sex. Sex may be part of it, but not necessarily. Real love involves affection for the person, with or without the sex. Real love can be between good friends, parents, siblings, or offspring. Real love can exist with many others, not just the one we live with. It’s important not to mistake lust for love.