Love is acceptance of you and the people around you. I view love in a peace and harmony sense. Love is having a good outlook unto yourself and those around you, and generally good natured feeling.
Love...lust... I think they are words that are barely definable - and for the most part, can only be defined via our own personal experiences, which is why almost everyone that you ask has a different answer. Personally, even in romantic relationships, I believe that the two 'beasts' have different natures entirely, though they can exist in unison - sometimes harmoniously, sometimes not.
They differ from each pair of people to the next, and even from moment to moment between the same pair of people. So why would anyone expect either term to be keenly definable. However, I don't feel that the presence of lust in a love relationship invalidates the love. There is no disgrace in two people taking pleasure in one another's bodies and appreciating each other. Whether it passes or changes doesn't mean it's not real.
If you mistake lust for love you'll have an unhappy marrage, if you mistake love for lust you'll miss out on life, so sometimes you've got to follow your first instinct on what you think it is and go with it.
That is so well said...and actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Love and lust, both are very real and once that moment finds you...nothing is ever the same again...even if the feelings do pass.
Totally right. Also, there's a big difference between the lust/infatuation that characterizes a young relationship, and the mature love that develops between a couple that has been through a lot together. There's no timeline for this. You can't say, "Oh, we've been together for 15 years, so it must be love." Longterm marriages break up all the time. In contrast, some couples reach this maturity much sooner than others. How does that song go? "Time makes lovers feel like they've got something real/ But you and me, we know they've got nothing but time." The other thing I was thinking about is the difference between this kind of love, and the unconditional love you're supposed to have for your family and your children. I mean, you can't choose your kids, and you can't choose the family you're born into. So...wouldn't the relationship between you and your spouse be more valuable, since you choose it? Yeah, don't mind me, guys. Just thinking out loud.
like, i mean, i have no way of describing love, because, well, first of all, i am currently with the only love that ive ever had, but i can tell you that i know i am in love, its just that any words that i could ever use to describe the feeling are either going to be so vague, or they will just never be worthy of the feeling, for love is infinite and eternal, and love is different for everyone, so one trying to explain it could never find the right, true words, that everyone could agree with whole heartedly. but, from what ive read of everyone's posts about the topic, i can say that, in a sense, we are all right in what we believe, because it is what we feel and have experienced. for me, i know i love my girlfriend because we care about eachother deeply, we understand eachother well, and accept eachother. we are comfortable more with eachother than we have ever been with anyone else. whenever we are together, it seems like the whole world could be ending around us, but as long as we are there together, we are happier than we could ever be apart. we desire to see and be and talk with eachother very deeply, and when we cannot, we are both in pain (not physical) that only can be cured by hearing eachother's voices, or just with one sight of eachother. i know that i would die for her in an instant, and i would die for her without any second thoughts, just because i love her so much that i would want nothing bad to happen to her. we make eachother stronger, and better people, and we may be almost complete opposites in some situations, but we make eachother whole. and all it takes for me to know how much she loves and cares about me, all it takes, is simply a look in her eyes, or the way she smiles at the sound of my voice, or how her own tone in her voice seems to convey her feelings, and she knows that i love her from the same way, though i also express it with all the poems i ever write for her. now, this next part may have nothing to do with how i describe love, but we are devoted to eachother to the point that everything that we are planning to do after highschool involves eachother, college, housing, everything i love her with every fibre of my being, every ounce of my heart and soul, and without her, i can assure you, i wouldnt be able to survive