Ah then I would agree with you there. But I would say that while sex doesn't necessary equal love, they are not two "very different things". Sex most certainly strengthens love and closeness in relationships.
There's no mysticism about it either. It's just that lovemaking floods the bloodstream with a massive amount of oxytocin from the posterior pituitary. Which is why "friends with benefits" relationships always inevitably end up with one person "getting attached".
So sex strengthens love and love strengthens sex. But the desire for sex is present even in the absense of love.
That's assuming love based upon emotion and feeling. Love might be said to not be the fulfilment of a feeling or need, but rather the free giving of one's self who doesn't need it to another without the necessity for return. That is, a surfeit of one's self to be given freely, rather than a gap to be filled. In that case, they do become two very separate things.
Most of the time people see love as both parties having a deficiency, and it working as a sort of mutual fulfilment. As I've said, a dependancy or need. Again, what if love is rather that each person is complete in themselves, and the desire is not something empty that needs be filled, but a pure desire to give to the other person of one's self without needing anything in return? If two such are together, then the importance of having those feelings fulfilled, and the dependancy upon its variance, becomes greatly diminished.
Think about that for a bit. I'm sure people will argue to the brink of doom with me on this, and still claim love to be when one is overwhelmed in feelings. But I reject that, and see that as a slavish form of love. Kebrel, for example, you said the 'common idea that sex=love'. I don't think that's the common or majority idea. Most would agree with you. But I don't think very many look at it from the view I am taking. All the same, I am not railing against feeling, but what I am meaning is that feeling is hardly something one should take as a measure for if there is love or not, and that true love can be built upon feelings. Now this goes contrary to just about every commonly held perception, and I think most of you will fiercely disagree for that very reason. Yet I think there is merit to what I say.
Who was it earlier that said if there is bad sex, one of them will stray? Well, in that case, I will say there was no true love on that person's part. Because they are then making a decision based on one of their own feelings not being fulfilled. This means that their love was based on a selfish desire to see themselves completed in some way, rather than being complete themselves and giving freely to the other. If you want to call it love, fine, but I don't. To me, love is far stronger than that. I will never love someone just because they fulfill a 'need' in me, nor will it falter if I no longer feel they are fulfilling it. Were I to do it, I would be selfish, and it would not be love. Love, true love, is not selfish. A difficult ideal to achieve, but difficulty does not make it less valid. As best I may, when I give my heart, I do not give it because I need to give it, but because I wish to give it, and I give it wholly and forever. And it needs nothing, not even the return. A freely given gift. That, to me, is love.
So my frustration? That people think love is based on how it makes them feel, rather than what they do for the other person.
