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Persuasive Essay On Love And Lust

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Can love and lust go hand in hand? Certainly, life experiences will show us that it is possible to be sexually attracted to someone, but to not love that person. Yet, life experiences will also show us that we can be sexually attracted to someone and indeed love them very much. Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. says love distinguishes from lust, because love, “includes a desire for physical contact and intimacy, but also caring about the other’s needs as if they were your own.” (Riggio, 2014) Lust, as defined by Merriam-Webster, as a noun, is as unbridled sexual desire. (Merriam-Webster, 2017) There is no mention of lust being concerned about the other person’s needs in that definition. Love sounds, only so very loving, but we will see later it can take someone to extremes, that lust cannot.
Remember, Riggio mentions, you consider the other person, and that it is not all about you when you are dealing with love. Certainly, we see this scenario in love relationships that have nothing to do with sex. As parents, we consider our children in our life choices, and with our friends, if we are good friends indeed, we consider them in what we say and do. In love, there is a relationship, in lust no relationship is required, because we can consider only ourselves, because we are alone with ourselves. Compare love with what poet, Sharon Olds has to say about lust. In her poem, “Sex Without Love”, she writes, “they are like great runners; they know they are alone” (Olds, 1981) So lust

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