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Thank you for your interest in the University of Pennsylvania.Are you in Love, Lust or with a Loser? Quiz
Do I Have a Love, Lust or LoserRelationship? Quiz
Instructions:
Answer the questions below honestly about the person you have feelings for and we'll
score the quiz and let you know the likelihood of love.
1. When we go to the movies,
We'll often discuss the movie afterwards over a drink or coffee
We'll often be so busy making out we don't remember much of the movie
Movies? We rarely go out in public together.
2. When my partner gives me a hug in front of others,
I often feel embarrassed and hope no one is looking
I often feel proud that she/he is in my life
I often got all hot and sexually aroused
3. When I look at my partner, I most often feel like:
I'm very lucky to have him/her
I'm invisible
Having wild, passionate sex
4. If my partner suggested that we try something sexual
that I've never tried before,
I would probably try it because I trust them
I would not do it because I would be too uncomfortable
I would try it because I couldn't resist their sexuality
5. When I took my partner to meet my family,
My partner couldn't keep his/her hands off of me!
My partner impressed my family with his/her charm and personality
My partner showed up drunk and cursed the entire time
6. My partner loves me for:
7. The first time we slept together was:
After we had been dating for a few weeks
On our first date
Unremarkable/I wouldn't know
8. For our three-month anniversary, my partner and I:
Stayed in bed in a hotel room the entire weekend
Exchanged poems, cards or gifts with one another
Had a big fight
9. My partner's feelings for me are like:
A broken leg wrapped in a wet noodle
A cozy warm bed on a cold winter's night
A raging fire
10. When I get upset, my partner usually:
Tells me to be quiet and stop complaining so much
Gives me a hug, holds me close, and tells me everything's going to be alright
Tells me that I look sexy when I'm upset and tries to kiss me
11. When I talk about my feelings, most of the time my partner:
Wants to leave the room
Gazes into my eyes and tells me how sexy I look when I'm being serious
Listens and ensures that they understand what I'm saying
12. Most of the time, the sex between us feels like:
Pretty okay but boring
An intense emotional connection
13. When I am sexually intimate with my partner, most of the time I feel like:
I want to take a shower
Warm, happy, and excited all over
I am on fire with electricity!
14. Compared to my ex, my current partner:
Could use a little improvement
Makes me feel very loved and cared for
Is dynamite in bed!
Last reviewed:
By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on
29 Mar 2015
&&&&Published . All rights reserved.
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Join Over 160,000 Subscribersto Our Weekly NewsletterFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the physical desire.
For other uses, see .
Detail: Luxuria (Lust), in , by .
Lust is an emotion or feeling of intense desire in the body. The lust can take any form such as the lust for knowledge, the lust for sex or the lust for power. It can take such mundane forms as the lust for food as distinct from the need for food. Lust is a psychological force producing intense wanting for an object, or circumstance fulfilling the emotion.
Religions, especially Christianity, separate the definition of passion and lust by further categorizing lust as an inappropriate desire or a desire that is inappropriately strong, therefore being morally wrong. While passion for proper purposes is maintained as something God given and moral.
Main article:
Lust holds a critical position in the philosophical underpinnings of Buddhist reality. It is named in the second of the , which are that
Suffering () is inherent in all life.
Suffering is caused by lust.
There is a natural way to eliminate all suffering from one's life.
is that way.
Lust is the clinging to, attachment to, identification with, and passionate desire for certain things in existence, all of which owe to the
that certain combinations of these things engender within us. Thusly lust is the ultimate cause of general imperfection and the most immediate root cause of a certain suffering.
The passionate desire for either non-existence or for freedom from lust is a common misunderstanding. For example the headlong pursuit of lust (or other "") in order to fulfill a
is followed by a reincarnation accompanied by a self-fulfilling , resulting in an endless , until the right way to live, the right worldview, is somehow discovered and practiced. Beholding an
puts one, symbolically, in the position of the one with the right worldview, representing that person who attains freedom from lust.
In existence are four kinds of things that engender the clinging: rituals, worldviews, pleasures, and the self. The way to eliminate lust is to learn of its unintended effects and to pursue righteousness as concerns a worldview, intention, speech, behavior, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration, in the place where lust formerly sat.
In many translations of the , the word "lust" translates the Greek word '?πιθυμ?ω', particularly in :
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust (?πιθυμ?ω) after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
In English-speaking countries, the term "lust" is often associated with , probably because of this verse. But just as the English word was originally a general term for desire, the Greek word ?πιθυμ?ω was also a general term for desire. The
lexicon suggests "set one's heart upon a thing, long for, covet, desire" as glosses for ?πιθυμ?ω, which is used in verses that clearly have nothing to do with sexual desire. In the , ?πιθυμ?ω is the word used in the commandment to not covet:
You shall not covet your neighbor’ you shall not covet your neighbor’s house or his field or his male slave or his female slave or his ox or his draft animal or any animal of his or whatever belongs to your neighbor. (Exodus 20:17, New English Translation of the Septuagint)
While coveting your neighbor's wife may involve sexual desire, it's unlikely that coveting a neighbor's house or field is sexual in nature. And in most New Testament uses, the same Greek word, ?πιθυμ?ω, does not have a clear sexual connotation. For example, from the
the same word is used outside of any sexual connotation:
: For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see the things which ye see, and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not.
: And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer: for I say unto you, I shall not eat it, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
: I coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. Ye yourselves know that these hands ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me.
: And when [the ] had spent all, there arose a mighty fa and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to one of the citi and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.
in a 13th-century manuscript.
representing lust.
According to the , a Christian's heart is lustful when "venereal satisfaction is sought for either outside wedlock or, at any rate, in a manner which is contrary to the laws that govern marital intercourse".
said that lust devalues the eternal attraction of male and female, reducing personal riches of the opposite sex to an object for gratification of sexuality.
Lust is considered by
to be a disordered desire for , where sexual pleasure is "sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes". In Catholicism, sexual desire in itself is good, and is considered part of God's plan for humanity. However, when sexual desire is separated from God's love, it becomes disordered and self-seeking. This is seen as lust.
The Latin for
(Latin: luxuria) – was used by St Jerome to translate a variety of biblical sins, including drunkenness and sexual excess.
placed Luxuria as one of the seven capital sins, narrowing its scope to disordered desire, and it was in this sense that the Middle Ages generally took luxuria, (although the
into English as luxury without its sexual meaning by the 14th century[]).
In , Luxuria is generally feminine, often represented by a
or a naked woman with breasts being bitten by snakes.
or Battle of the Soul had described
Luxury, lavish of her ruined fame, Loose-haired, wild-eyed, her voice a dying fall, Lost in delight....
For , Luxuria was both the first of the circles of incontinence (or self-indulgence) on the descent into hell, and the last of the cornices of Mount Purgatory, representing the excessive (disordered) while for
luxuria was synonymous with the power of desire.
The daughters (by-products) of Luxuria, for Gregory and subsequent , included mental blindness, self-love, haste and excessive attachment to the present:
has been seen as embodying such characteristics for a later age – as a daughter of Luxuria.
In the , Lord , an
declared in verse 21, that lust is one of the gates to
said: O descendant of Vrsni, by what is one impelled to
acts, even unwillingly, as if engaged by force? Then Krishna said: It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material mode of passion and later transformed into , and which is the all-devouring sinful enemy of this world. As fire is covered by smoke, as a mirror is covered by dust, or as the embryo is covered by the womb, the living entity is similarly covered by different degrees of this lust. Thus the wise living entity's pure
becomes covered by his eternal enemy in the form of lust, which is never satisfied and which burns like fire. The , the
are the sitting places of this lust. Through them lust covers the real knowledge of the living entity and bewilders him. Therefore, O Arjuna, best of the Bharatas, in the very beginning curb this great symbol of —(lust) by regulating the senses, and slay this destroyer of
and . The working
is st and he [the soul] is even higher than the . Thus knowing oneself to be
to the material senses, mind and intelligence, O mighty-armed Arjuna, one should steady the mind by deliberate
intelligence and thus—by spiritual strength—conquer this insatiable enemy known as lust. (, 3.36–43)
In this ancient manuscript the idea behind the word 'Lust' is best comprehended as the psychological force called 'Wanting'.
In , intentional lascivious glances are forbidden. Lascivious thoughts are disliked, for they are the first step towards adultery, rape and other antisocial behaviors. Muhammad also stressed the magnitude of the "second glance", as the first glance towards an attractive member of the opposite sex could be just accidental or observatory, the second glance could be that gate into lustful thinking.[] Islam does not advocate
but it requires marriage to conduct sex legally.
Main article:
In , all evil inclinations and lusts of the flesh are characterized by
(Hebrew, ??? ???, the evil inclination). Yetzer hara is rather, it is man's misuse of the things which the physical body needs to survive, and is often contrasted with yetzer hatov (Hebrew, ??? ????, the positive desire). This idea was derived from Genesis 8:21, which states that "the imagination of the heart of man is evil from his youth"[].
Yetzer HaRa is often identified with
and the angel of death, and there is sometimes a tendency to give a personality and separate activity to the yetzer. For the yetzer, like Satan, misleads man in this world, and testifies against him in the world to come. The yetzer is, however, clearly distinguished from Satan, and on other occasions is made exactly parallel to sin. The
is considered the great antidote against this force. Though, like all things which God has made, the yetzer hara (evil inclination) can be manipulated into doing good: for without it, man would never marry, beget a child, build a house, or occupy himself in a trade.
Few ancient,
actually considered lust to be a vice.[] The most famous example of a widespread religious movement practicing lechery as a ritual is the
. However, this activity was soon outlawed by the
in 186 BC in the decree . The practice of sacred prostitution, however, continued to be an activity practiced often by the .
In , lust is counted among the five cardinal sins or sinful propensities, the others being , ego,
and . Uncontrollable expression of sexual lust, as in rape or , is an evil.
According to , a spiritual organization which is based on , sexual lust is the greatest enemy to mankind and the gateway to hell.
For this reason followers do not eat onions, garlic, eggs, or non-vegetarian food, as the "sulphur" in them can excite sexual lust in the body, otherwise bound to celibacy.
The physical act of sex is "impure", leading to body-consciousness and other crimes. This impurity "poisons" the body and leads to many kinds of "diseases".
The Brahma Kumaris teach that sexuality is like foraging about in a dark sewer. Students at Spiritual University must conquer lust in order to find the , a heaven on earth, where children are conceived by an asexual power of mind, and lasting for 2,500 years in the peace and purity of a holy swan moving on earth, over water, and in air.
The spiritual teacher
described the differences between lust and love:
In lust there is reliance upon the object of sense and consequent spiritual subordination of the soul to it, but love puts the soul into direct and co-ordinate relation with the reality which is behind the form. Therefore lust is experienced as being heavy and love is experienced as being light. In lust there is a narrowing down of life and in love there is an expansion in being...If you love the whole world you vicariously live in the whole world, but in lust there is an ebbing down of life and a general sense of hopeless dependence upon a form which is regarded as another. Thus, in lust there is the accentuation of separateness and suffering, but in love there is the feeling of unity and joy....
Medieval prostitutes lived officially sanctioned in “red light districts.” In the book, Common Women, by Ruth Mazo Karras, she discusses the meaning of prostitution and how people thought the proper use of prostitutes by unmarried men helped contain male lust. Prostitution was thought of as having a beneficial effect by reducing the
in the community.
(Dos Mujeres y un hombre), c. 1820.
to the works of , characters have always been faced with scenes of lechery, and long since has lust been a common motif in world literature. Many writers, such as ,
and , have written works wherein scenes at bordellos and other unseemly locales take place.
Despite the apparent evils of , author of , he had once remarked, in regard to the artist, that:
The more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes... Only the brute is good at coupling, and copulation is the lyricism of the masses. To copulate is to enter into another—and the artist never emerges from himself.
The most notable work to touch upon the sin of lust, and all of the Seven Deadly Sins, is Dante's . Dante's criterion for lust was an "excessive love of others," insofar as an excessive love for man would render one's love of God secondary.
In the first canticle of
, the lustful are punished by being continuously swept around in a whirlwind, which symbolizes their passions. The damned who are guilty of lust, like the two famous lovers, Paolo and Francesca, receive what they desired in their mortal lives, their passions never give them rest for all eternity. In , of the selfsame work, the penitents choose to walk through flames in order to purge themselves of their lustful inclinations.
The link between
and lust has always been a problematic question in philosophy.
notes the misery which results from . According to him, this directly explains the sentiments of shame and sadness which tend to follow the act of sexual intercourse. For, he states, the only power that reigns is the inextinguishable desire to face, at any price, the blind love present in human existence without any consideration of the outcome. He estimates that a genius of his species is an industrial being who wants only to produce, and wants only to think. The theme of lust for Schopenhauer is thus to consider the horrors which will almost certainly follow the culmination of lust.
defines the sin of Lust in his Summa Theologia Question’s 153 and 154. Aquinas says the sin of lust is of “voluptuous emotions,” and makes the point that sexual pleasures, “unloosens the human spirit,” and set aside right reason (Pg.191). Aquinas restricts lust’s subject matter to physical desires specifically arising from sexual acts, but Aquinas does not assume all sex-acts are sinful. Sex is not a sin in marriage, because sex is the only way for humans to reproduce. If sex is used naturally and the end purpose is reproduction there is no sin. Aquinas says, “if the end be good and if what is done is well-adapted to that, then no sin is present,” (Pg.193). However, sex simply for the sake of pleasure is lustful and therefore, a sin. A man who uses his body for lechery wrongs the Lord.
Sex may have the attribu however, when a person seeks sex for pleasure, he or she is sinning with lust. Lust is best defined by its specific attribute of rape, adultery, wet dreams, seduction, unnatural vice, and simple fornication.
: St. Thomas Aquinas defined and discussed the topic of nocturnal emission, which occurs when one dreams of physical pleasure. Aquinas argues those who say that wet dreams are a sin and comparable to the actual experience of sex are wrong. Aquinas believes that such an action is sinless, for a dream is not under a person’s control or free judgment. When one has a “nocturnal orgasm,” it is not a sin, but it can lead to sins (Pg. 227). Aquinas says that wet dreams come from a physical cause of inappropriate pictures within your imagination, a psychological cause when thinking of sex while you fall asleep and a demonical cause where by demons act upon the sleepers body, “stirring the sleeper’s imagination to bring about a orgasm,” (Pg. 225). In the end, though, dreaming of lustful acts is not sinful. The “mind’s awareness is less hindered,” as the sleepe therefore, a person cannot be accountable for what they dream while sleeping, (Pg. 227).
: One of the main forms of lust seen frequently during the Middle Ages was the sin of adultery. The sin of adultery occurs when a person is unfaithful to his or her spouse, hence “invading of a bed not one’s own,” (Pg.235). Adultery is a special kind of ugliness and many difficulties arise from it. When a man enters the bed of a married woman it not only is a sin, but it “wrongs the offspring,” because the woman now calls into question the legitimacy of children. (Pg.235). If a wife has committed adultery before, then, her husband will question if all his wife’s children are his offspring.
: Simple fornication is having sex with one’s wife for enjoyment rather than for bearing children. Fornication is also sex between two unmarried people, which is also a mortal sin. Aquinas says, “fornication is a deadly crime,” (Pg.213). Fornication is a mortal sin, but as Aquinas notes, “Pope Gregory treated sins of the flesh as less grievous than those of the spirit” (Pg. 217). Fornication was a grave sin such as that against property. Fornication, however, is not as grave as a sin directly against G therefore, murder is much worse than fornication. Property in this case means that a daughter is the property of her father, and if you do wrong to her, you
therefore seducing a virgin or seeking pleasure from an unmarried woman is an invasion of a father’s property.
: Rape is a kind of lust that often coincides with seduction and is defined as a type of lechery. Rape comes with force and violence: Rape occurs when a person craves the pleasures of sex so intensely that he uses force to obtain it. Rape is committed when violence is used to seduce, or deflower a virgin. Rape harms both the unmarried girl and her father, because the girl is property of her father. Rape and seduction can be discussed together, because both sins involve the def however, rape can happen without seduction, as when a man attacks a widow or a sexually experienced woman and violates her. Therefore wherever violence accompanies sex, you have the quality of rape and the sin of lust.
: Seduction is a type of lust, because seduction is a sex act, which ravishes a virgin. Lust is a sin of sexual activity, and, “…a special quality of wrong that appears if a maid still under her father’s care is debauched” (Pg.229). Seduction involves a discussion of property, as an unmarried girl is property of her father. A virgin, even though free from the bond of marriage, is not free from the bond of her family. When a virgin is violated without a promise of engagement, she is prevented from having honorable marriage, which is shameful to herself and her family. A man who performs sexual acts with a virgin must “endow her and have her to wife,” and if the father, who is responsible for her, says no, then a man must pay a dowry to compensate for her loss of virginity and future chance of marriage. (Pg.229)
Unnatural Vice: Unnatural vice is the worst kind of lust because it is unnatural in act and purpose. Unnatural vice happens variously, but Aquinas provides several examples including
or intercourse with a “thing of another species,” for example animals. Aquinas said, “bestiality goes beyond the bands of humanity” and is therefore, unnatural. (Pg.245). , both male with male and female with female intercourse, is unnatural and known as, “.” (Pg.245). Unnatural sex encompasses all included consummated acts finished outside the "vas" or vagina. Lustful people use unnatural sex for pleasure and not as a “generative act.”
states that lusting is simply thinking or fantasising about an
and private parts of the body. The action of thinking or fantasising stirs the natural, pure sexual energy into a coarser, more degraded emotional form (lust). Long encourages lovemaking as the practice of converting sexual energy into the knowledge of love: "You don’t need a celibate body, you need a celibate mind".
Main article:
Lust, in the domain of
and , is often treated as a case of "heightened ". A person is more likely to lust over someone who does not resemble oneself. Self-relatedness is a cue of kinship and causes an instinctual reaction to not be attracted. Therefore, self-resemblance decreases attractiveness and sexual desire in a person while less resemblance increases attractiveness and sexual desire creating a higher possibility of lust.
Frob?se, Gabriele, Rolf Frob?se, and Michael Gross (translator).
Royal Society of Chemistry, 2006. .
Richard Lazarus with Bernice N Lazarus, Passion and Reason: Making Sense of Our Emotions, 1994, New York: Oxford University Press
Pope John Paul II, Mutual Attraction Differs from Lust.L'Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 22 September 1980, p. 11. Available at
Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy (1994) p. 37
Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy (1994) p. 39-40
J. Jerman/A. Weir, Images of Lust (2013) p. 30
Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (1968) p. 48
Dante, Hell' (1975) p. 101; Dante, Purgatory (1971) p. 67 and p. 202
C. J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury (1994) p. 97-8
Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy (1994) p. 37-9
Robert Liddell, The Novels of Jane Austen (London 1963) p. 22
Bava Bathra. pp. 16a.
Through open doors: a view of Asian cultures in Kenya. Cynthia Salvadori, Andrew Fedders, 1989
Exploring New Religions. p. 196, George D. Chryssides, 1999
Peace & purity: the story of the Brahma Kumaris : a spiritual revolution By Liz Hodgkinson
A history of celibacy, p. 172. Elizabeth Abbott, 2001
(1967). . Volume I. San Francisco: Sufism Reoriented. pp. 159–160. .
Karras, Ruth Mazo. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
Aquinas, St. Thomas. "Summa Theologia." Question 153 The Vice of Lust in General (n.d.): 189-203. Print.
. Barrylong.org.
'MAKING LOVE Sexual Love the Divine Way' Barry Long, Book
Barry Long, Gold Coast Talks audio, February 1997
Gold Coast Talks audio April 1998
Debruine, L. M. (2005). . Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 272 (1566): 919–22. :.  .  .
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