Is It Lust Or Is It Love? - Impacting Righteously

When a man truly loves a woman, he will show it in how he gives her his time. He will show his love in how he treats her in a loyal and loving way. He will also be consistent. The woman on the receiving end of his love will not have to play a guessing game. The proof of his love will be in his behavior more so than in his words.

Other times, a man is simply attracted to a woman. I did not fully understand this for a while: that when a man pays attention to a woman, pursues her, and even becomes involved with her, he may not care for her at all! He may not like her, and certainly may not love her.

Inspite of what fairy tales and romance novels say, real love is not easy to come by. First of all, true love takes time to happen. In many cases, real love takes even longer for men, when and if it does happen for them.

Typically, society has not encouraged boys and men to fall in love, marry, and remain faithful to one woman. Often, fathers do not teach their sons this or demonstrate it for them.

• It could be that a man is only attracted to a woman on a very superficial level. This is common.

• A woman should relax and remain neutral, open to possibilities if she is interested in him.

• It is good for her not to get ahead of him, caught up in presumptuousness and fantasy about being loved by him. She should wait.

Depending on how much the man is attracted to a woman and how he behaves accordingly, a woman can mistake it to mean that he cares for her and wants a serious relationship with her.

This could indeed be the case, but the point is that it is good for women to remain calm, patient, wait and see. Let him prove himself with consistent actions and express himself verbally, without you jumping to conclusions first.

Did you know a man can hate a woman and still strongly desire her sexually? A man can hate a woman and still become sexually involved with her if given the opportunity.

• We see evidence of this when assaults are perpetrated against women as well.

• More commonly, some men do not care for the woman, but tell her that they do, and act like they do, in order to get what they want from her.

• This is an old trick, but there are still girls and women falling for it. Many girls and women are ill- informed.

A woman would have to be able to rightly analyze and make a conclusion in each particular situation. Atraction with complete absence of any romantic feelings or affection is much more common in men than women. This is another way men and women greatly differ.

Of course, there are certainly times when both love and attraction do coexist for men and women. In a relationship such as a healthy marriage, it is expected that love and attraction will exist together.

Often, I have heard people state, “He likes her.” What they were often describing was a man who was attracted to a particular woman for a particular time, and he wanted to have her for that reason in that season.

There are many times when someone simply has a passionate desire for someone else, but does not love that person, and are not in love with that person. They don’t even care about them. Often, I have heard people describe someone as “liking” someone, simply because that person lusted after the other.

Take note:

• A man can be moved into action by his desire to become physically or sexually involved with a woman without knowing her at all.

• A man does not have to feel affection for or care about a woman AT ALL, in order to sexually desire her.

• He does not have to feel affection for, or even like a woman to fully act on his sexual desire with her.

• A man’s attraction to a woman is certainly not necessarily a reflection of his love for her.

• His attraction and desire is simply that-his desire; his lust.

Women may mistakenly read too much into it when men are paying attention to them. Very often, a man’s interest can be quite superficial. Yet, a woman may be looking thirstily for, and seeing signs that he likes her or loves her, because he has noticed her.

As you may be aware of, long ago, players learned that most women LOVE love, and love being in love. Many women are relentlessly looking for love. Some men learned how to convince a woman that she was loved by them so that they could go ahead with their plans to have her body.

Men tend to be observant and visual generally, so they do notice women. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything beyond that. Some women may mistakenly believe that if a man pays attention to her, is attracted to her, or desires her, that he likes her or cares about her. This is simply not true in many cases.

Some men can even have hatred and feel hostility toward a woman and still desire and or be involved with her sexually at the same time, while having those thoughts and feelings about her. For some men (certainly not all), anger, aggression, violence, and sex are all part of the same package deal!

It is really important for women to understand these things. This is one of the many ways that men and women are wired and conditioned differently. As always, there are exceptions. Women ought to have very guarded hearts (Proverbs 4: 23-27).

Women should only respond to a man; not get presumptuously ahead of him, in her zeal to be cared for, wanted, and loved.

• It is good not to jump to conclusions. Sometimes, a man marches through the motions, his goal being his own short-term agenda for sex.

• He plays his cards just right and may have all the right things to say.

• In her mind, a woman may already have herself married to him with children.

• Yet, the man may not care, or is not serious at all about her.

• If a man shows interest in me, my response should be according to wisdom, caution, and guidance from the Holy Spirit.

Many of the mistakes women make in our dealings with men are due to:

Ignorance. Women are likely to view men through the lenses of femininity. Women can’t help this. We don’t automatically know how men tend to think.

Idolatry. Too many girls and women make an idol out of men, love, and relationships. Because of this, a woman can become overzealous and very confused.

Are all men only desirous to mate with a woman, but incapable of love? No!

This is not about all men being this way. It is about some men being this way. This is about women living in awareness, having knowledge and applying it in their decisions. It is about women having high standards, using wisdom and having dignity that is reflected in the choices we make.

The only man who deserves our body is the man who has fallen in love with us, put a ring on our finger, and married us!

( 1 Corinthians 6: 18; Corinthians 7: 8-9)

Therefore, women must guard our hearts and our bodies. Plenty men will be after our bodies. It is up to us to protect our bodies and hearts, so we don’t give them to people who are undeserving. Some realities in how different men and women are may seem quite harsh and disturbing, but knowledge is very helpful and very powerful.

“House and riches are the inheritance of fathers: and a prudent wife is from the Lord.” Proverbs 19: 14