Love Vs. Lust

Love, everybody knows about love. “Love is patient, love is kind…” says the Bible. “Love is a battlefield” bemoans Pat Benetar. It’s found in “a moment” insists Kelly Clarkson over and over and over again. But seriously, you can ask anyone, love is complicated. However, what people won’t always tell you is love does not equal lust. Lust is another species entirely, but it is mistaken for love everyday.
Love is about or should be about internal qualities a.k.a. personality. If he/she makes you laugh, understands you, sees you for your personality. It is this indescribable bond between two people (and technically places, things, animals, etc. for the purpose of simplicity, people) that keeps them together through good and bad. Love is some crazy magic that makes people overlook flaws and want to stay together. There are so many different takes on love because love is never the same for any two people, but the main idea stays universal. Love is powerful, odds-beating stuff.
Lust, on the other hand, is all about the outside, the physical, the biological even. It’s about how chemically two people are attracted to each other. If people are in lust, they like how the other looks, dresses, etc. and basically are set up for a future of passion and separation in the long run unless love springs from said lust, not typical but not impossible. There is nothing wrong with lust; it’s in our chemical make up. We as humans want to procreate, but it doesn’t carry the same substance love does. Lust is what people think of as “love at first sight.” Many believe in it; I personally don’t. No one knows a person’s thoughts, actions, or disposition by looking at them. What really happens when someone falls in love at first sight is that one human finds another pleasing to the eye.
However, my definitions are from the perspective of a helplessly romantic female. A man could have quite a different sense of the two words. The stereotypical man will only lust after women, telling them whatever need be to get them to bed. The stereotypical woman will love foolishly and blindly after all the lustful men having their hearts broken. I, as all brainwashed society children, tend to lean towards these assumptions because I read that it is so, my parents tell me it is so, and movies/media/friends scream its existence. However, I love searching for the silver lining, cheering for the ignored underdog. I would say men and women can interchangeably have my definitions of love and lust. There is many a woman who would scorn my happy unrealistic take on love or live their lives lustfully calling it love. There are many men who will say my definition of lust is all wrong or that their love is more physical but they love all the same. Definitions are all with perspective, experience, and knowledge. I think men and women have different opinions as well as women have different thoughts than other women and men from other men.