Lovely Thoughts
Love and lust. Such enjoyable things.
Love (noun) :
1a (1): strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties <Maternal love for a child>
(2): attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers
(3): affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests <love for his old schoolmates>
1b: an assurance of love <give her my love>
2: warm attachment, enthusiasm or devotion <love of the sea>
3a: the object of attachment, devotion or admiration <swimming was his first love>
b (1): a beloved person : darling - often used as a term of endearment (2) British - used as an informal term of address
Love (transitive verb) :
1: to hold dear : cherish
2a: to feel a lover's passion, devotion or tenderness for
b (1): Caress (2): to fondle amorously (3): to copulate with
3: to like or desire actively : to take pleasure in <loved to play the violin>
4: to thrive in <the rose loves sunlight>
Love (intransitive verb) :
: to feel affection or experience desire
Lust (noun) :
1 obsolete a: pleasure, delight b: personal inclination : wish
2: usually intense or unbridled sexual desire : lasciviousness
3a: an intense longing : craving b: enthusiasm, eagerness
Lust (intransitive verb) :
: to have an intense desire or need : crave, specifically : to have a sexual urge
So WWWebster's says.
I, on the other hand, have a simpler, if more lax, set of definitions.
Lust (n): Physical desire.
Lust (v): To desire physically.
Love (1): Of friends or family, an unconditional liking. (not entirely unconditional - if they were to change drastically, this sort of love can be destroyed).
Love (2): Of a lover, the combination of Love (1) and Lust.
I think it's clearest put succintly like that, and still pretty accurate. It seems odd to
me that this suggests that love of a lover is more transient than love of a friend. However,
this is most likely (for me) to be only partially transient - from Love (2) to Love (1), not
to indifference or dislike (Though I admit to having become indifferent, I don't believe that
was from a starting point of Love (2)).
Though the definitions are simple, the recognition is not so easy. Lust has an annoying
tendency to make things up about its target to get its own way. For some people this is fine.
I'm picky. I don't want just Lust. Nor, in a partner, just Love (1), though that's a shiny
thing in a friend.
[ Think back... ]