Love or Lust? How to Tell If It’s the Real Deal
You met someone. You can’t stop thinking about them. You want to spend every waking minute with them, talking to them, or talking about them to anyone that will listen. You feel high with emotion. This is so exciting! You’ve been waiting so long for this! It all seems too good to be true. Then, the question creeps up on you. Is it love or lust? How do you know?
If you’ve wondered about whether you truly love someone or have searched the internet for a love or lust quiz that can answer this question for you, you’re not alone. When we first meet someone, it’s easy to wonder if the attraction we’re feeling is simply lust, or something more.
Before we explore how to know if it’s love or lust, it’s important to understand what love really is, anyway.
Love or Lust: What is Love, Anyway?
In order to tell whether we’re feeling love or lust, we need to understand both emotions. So, what is love? According to the ancient Greeks, there are actually 4 types of love:
- Storge – kinship love
- Philia – friendship love
- Eros – romantic/sexual love
- Agape – divine love
Reading those, it seems crazy that English only has one word that is supposed to encompass it all. Love is such an intricate and complicated emotion with so many different levels.
For the purposes of this article, we are talking about “eros,” or romantic love. Arriving at that state of bliss can take many different paths. Some couples start out as friends and become pleasantly surprised when they catch a spark of desire in each other’s eyes. Other couples meet and instantly feel attracted to one another. Others break up and make up multiple times before truly falling in love.
And some couples think they are in love but over time, find out it wasn’t the kind of love that lasts.
It’s not always easy to know if we’re feeling love or lust, but we do have some ways of telling the difference, including the actual science behind love and our brains.
Love or Lust? The Science Behind the Feelings
Love has been a mystery explored by scientists, philosophers, poets and others throughout human history. But in more recent years, scientists have been able to determine more about the science behind whether someone is feeling love or lust. In this YouTube video, I describe the 3 stages of love and what happens in your body chemically. These stages are romantic love, the power struggle, and mature love.
Dr. Helen Fisher and her team of scientists studied the science of love in the 1990s and determined that romantic love can be broken down into three primary categories: lust, attraction and attachment.
Importantly, Fisher found that each type of love is characterized by a unique set of hormones released by the brain:
- Lust: Testosterone and estrogen
- Attraction: Dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin
- Attachment: Oxytocin and vasopressin
According to Fisher’s team, lust is tied specifically to sexual gratification. As such, it is the body’s sex hormones testosterone and estrogen that are produced by the brain when feeling lust.
Attraction, while it often goes hand in hand with lust, is actually slightly different. During attraction, the brain produces chemicals linked to the body’s reward pathways. Ever wondered why the early phase of a relationship can literally feel like an addiction? This is why.
Attachment, on the other hand, is an important factor in long-term relationships of all kinds, not just romantic ones. Oxytocin, often called the “cuddle hormone,” is commonly produced during attachment and is a key factor in making us feel bonded to a partner, friend or child.
So, now that we’ve explored the science behind love and lust, it’s time to take a closer look at how to recognize these feelings in ourselves and our relationships and answer once and for all: is this love or lust?
Telltale Signs It’s Love
Ready to determine if you’re feeling love or lust? One of the simplest ways is to take a close look at your feelings about your partner and your relationship.
Here are some telltale signs your lust is turning toward love:
- You look forward to being with him or her
- You prioritize your time together
- You give up opportunities to do fun stuff because you’d rather be with him/her
- You genuinely care about his/her thoughts and feelings
- You think about him/her when he’s not around
- You find his/her imperfections cute
- You start thinking about a future together
- You feel like a better person when he/she is around
- You want to see him/her thrive and grow for their own sake rather than for your own benefit
Another thing about love, that many people miss, is that love doesn’t have to be crazy and sudden and full of passion. There is this Hollywood notion that suggests true love is always a roller-coaster ride and you have to be falling over yourself and unable to speak in the presence of “The One.”
Sometimes love develops slowly over time and you don’t even realize it’s happened until one day you realize you can’t imagine your life without this person. It doesn’t make for a very exciting movie but the slow and steady love can make for a great life.
When Love Isn’t Enough
When we’re talking about love or lust, it’s important to understand that just because you’re attracted to someone, or even in love with them, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right for you.
In fact, there is evidence to suggest that attraction is an unconscious process, and it stems mostly from unhealed childhood wounds. In other words, sometimes we are attracted to others because of unhealthy family patterns that we were exposed to in early life. Our unconscious mind attracts certain people to us so that we can heal those wounds, but that doesn’t mean that those people are meant to be our life partners!
I mention this because I’ve seen many clients struggle to form healthy relationships because they continually seek out unhealthy partners who they feel strongly attracted to while ignoring possible healthy connections because “the initial spark wasn’t there.” Maybe the question of love or lust – and the idea of true love – isn’t about the spark at all. Maybe, it’s more about feeling comfortable with that special someone who doesn’t judge you for being you.
That’s the thing about love. It’s really hard to define.
Want to Talk More About Love or Lust?
Sometimes the question of love or lust is hard to answer on your own, especially if you have a history of trauma, have an insecure attachment style, struggle with trust in relationships or experience insecurity in relationships.
Talking with an online therapist can help. Working with a counselor can help you determine if there are old wounds at play in your relationship and can help you decide once and for all, if you’re feeling love or lust.