Jan. 24th, 2018

gemcode: A type of alpine parrot called a kea (Default)
When I was a teenager, I can remember being told that there is an important difference between lust and love. "Lust" is primarily sexual. It's irrational (in a bad way). It's selfish. "Love", by contrast, is not centred on sex in the same way. It's more romantic. It can still be irrational, but in, like, a cute way. It's kind, and giving.

The lust/love dichotomy suggests implicitly that a central way to classify desire for another person as "good" or "bad" is to ask "How central is sex to these feelings?" If sex is more central, consider that this might be a bad type of desire. If sex is less central, it's probably a good type of desire.

Many people would quibble, of course, with the conclusion that desire for another person is necessarily "bad" if sex is central to it. I generally agree with this kind of sex-positivity. But I think this critique misses something by ignoring the second implication of the lust/love dichotomy: the idea that if sex is less central to your desire for another person, then this is love and probably good. This implication is also suspect.
 
Consider the following story about Congressman Patrick Meehan:

Meehan, who is married with three children, allegedly professed romantic interest in an aide who was decades younger than him — first in a written letter, then in person. According to seven people who spoke to the Times, the woman saw the congressman as a father figure, not as a romantic partner. When she did not reciprocate his feelings and started dating another man, Meehan reportedly grew so hostile that she filed a complaint with the congressional Office of Compliance, started working from home, and eventually decided to leave her job.

Another story explains that Meehan thought of this employee as his 'soul mate':

He said he told the aide “that I was a happily married man and I was not interested in a relationship, particularly not any sexual relationship, but we were soul mates. I think that the idea of soul mate is that sort of person that go through remarkable experiences together."

A lot of people would react to this story by saying that Meehan was lying to himself -- or just lying to his aide -- in claiming that he was "not interested" in "any sexual relationship". They may not be wrong about that! But are the other, less sexual feelings that Meehan chooses to focus on entirely false?

A commenter who accepts the lust/love dichotomy might say that the deep romantic feelings that Meehan professes when he says he has found his "soul mate" are merely a form of self-deception. After all, he clearly does not love this woman. He treated her terribly! He drove her out of a job! And if this is not love, then it must be lust. Accordingly, Meehan's feelings must have been more sexual than romantic, and any professions to the contrary must be mere deception.

I am not convinced. It seems to me that the more sensible reaction to this story is to conclude that we ought not to dignify romantic desire with the designation "love" merely because sex is not central to it. 
Romantic desire, like sexual desire, can be either bad or good. Those of us who are not aromantic have the ability to feel a deep and abiding desire for connection with someone. This desire for connection can lead to beautiful things if it is reciprocated and allowed to flourish. When frustrated, it can be deeply painful to the person who feels it, and that pain can make people just as destructive and angry and selfish as the pain of frustrated sexual desire.

Recognising that love and romantic desire are not the same thing has important consequences. For one thing, it can help us to resist romantic coercion. Because we understand that sexual desire can be destructive, we often find it quite easy to agree, as a society, that a person has the right to refuse unwanted sexual desire. By contrast, the widespread conflation of romantic desire and love can make it trickier to refuse romantic desire while still receiving societal approval. Refusing sexual desire is entirely appropriate; refusing romantic desire is heartless.

It is noteworthy that attempts to resist this form of coercion frequently still pay lip service to the lust/love dichotomy. Consider the rebuke to "nice guys" that "women are not vending machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out." In order to counteract the false assumption that it would be wrong and heartless to refuse romantic desire, this rebuke creates a shield using a different false assumption: that "nice guys" are only in it for the sex, anyway.

Romantic coercion is no kinder than sexual coercion. Sexual coercion attempts to assert control over your body; romantic coercion attempts to assert control over your mind and your emotions. Even if this could work, it would be wrong, for the same reason that many of us would object to being kidnapped even if the kidnapper planned to hook us up to a happiness machine.

In the real world, though, romantic coercion generally doesn't work. Indeed, a great many people of all genders have had the experience of feeling like it would be bad to reject someone's romantic feelings, attempting to return them out of guilt, and having the whole relationship come crashing down not long after, causing even more pain than a simple refusal would have.

Making a distinction between love and romantic desire would make it harder for people like Congressman Meehan to be convinced of the purity of their motives. It is understandable, in our society, that a person could think to themselves "I feel romantic desire, romantic desire is the same as love, love is kind, therefore nothing I do to this person in the name of romantic love could possibly be unkind." It's important to recognise that this is false. Romantic desire absolutely can be unkind. It's up to us to make sure that it is not.

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gemcode: A type of alpine parrot called a kea (Default)
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