Its About the Struggle Part IV; lust

   Lust is a desire for.. (sex). Its like a craving inside you to really want to be with someone and it is selfish. it is driven by the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen – in both men and women. A lot of people tend to confuse love and lust unfortunately, thinking they are in love when they are really in lust and the problem with lust is that it is extremely damaging while love is extremely good for a person.

    When you are in lust with someone, you go through the following stages:

Adrenaline

The initial stages of falling for someone activates your stress response, increasing your blood levels of adrenalin and cortisol. This has the charming effect that when you unexpectedly bump into your new love, you start to sweat, your heart races and your mouth goes dry.

Dopamine Helen Fisher asked newly ‘love struck’ couples to have their brains examined and discovered they have high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This chemical stimulates ‘desire and reward’ by triggering an intense rush of pleasure. It has the same effect on the brain as taking cocaine! Fisher suggests “couples often show the signs of surging dopamine: increased energy, less need for sleep or food, focused attention and exquisite delight in smallest details of this novel relationship” .

Serotonin

And finally, serotonin. One of love's most important chemicals that may explain why when you’re falling in love, your new lover keeps popping into your thoughts.

Does love change the way you think?
A landmark experiment in Pisa, Italy showed that early love (the attraction phase) really changes the way you think.

Dr Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa advertised for twenty couples who'd been madly in love for less than six months. She wanted to see if the brain mechanisms that cause you to constantly think about your lover, were related to the brain mechanisms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

By analysing blood samples from the lovers, Dr Marazitti discovered that serotonin levels of new lovers were equivalent to the low serotonin levels of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder patients.

Newly smitten lovers often idealise their partner, magnifying their virtues and explaining away their flaws says Ellen Berscheid, a leading researcher on the psychology of love.

New couples also exalt the relationship itself. “It's very common to think they have a relationship that's closer and more special than anyone else's”. Psychologists think we need this rose-tinted view. It makes us want to stay together to enter the next stage of love – attachment. 

And how do you fall into lust? Simple.

And finally … how to fall in lust

• Find a complete stranger.
• Reveal to each other intimate details about your lives for half an hour.
• Then, stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes.
  
  

  The lust crave is also selfish as the person doesnt realize it but they really only want (sex), than you dont care about their happiness or well being and just want to get something out of them, you dont care about their feelings, you dont even care about their well being, its like a self serving thing. Only a self serving thing. Purely animal instincts.It is usually based on inappropriate thoughts or pornographical display of the person which creates that craving that creates lust inside yourself and a lot of times people misinterpret that to be the love feeling, (because they want something so they start idealizing that) It is also short term based unfortunately as it lasts from 6 months and uptil 2 years. And than it fades, and now you are living with a person your entire life.
but dont be confused because love does exist.

    Love is based on compatibility, companionship, ideals and morals. 

    Love is also more selflessness. It is about giving, it is about honesty, commitment and mutual peace and happiness. Somebody that you could feel happy around, someone that you can trust whenever you need somebody to be there. Someone you can depend on and can share things to have in common.

    The secret to love is mentioned to us in the Qur'an where Allah (swt) tells us to desire chastity over lust. Pureness. Real love can only be achieved after you have build your own character to the state of giving, after you are pure yourself. Love ccan only come when you truly know how to love. For purity attracts purity.
The fitra of the person. Imagine the fitra of a swine. A swine will eat things including dead insects, worms, trees, bark, garbage and even dead pigs. A lion on the other hand will only eat fresh meat.(leftovers) even if you were to put fresh food infront of it, and a lion will only eat fresh meat and would never eat the leftovers, and  a human will only eat cooked biryani etc. Similarly, all that is good and pure will attract good and pure things, while all that is filthy and impure will attract similarly impure things. What we love also shows who we are. A spiritual person will like other spiritual beings and will value much higher things (which include compassion, kindness, just treatment) etc and will see other spiritual beings. Love, it can only be from the human spiritual perspective as all that is good and pure is from Allah (swt) and those who are connected to him.

    The thing you have to know is that you could have lust in mind for somebody that is very chaste. You could have lust in mind for somebody very moral and good so at the end of the day it is only you that you have to work at, but the other way to look at it is that it is impossible to not have lust for someone that tries to be lustful. But in the end, most of it has to do with character and values that make love. Love includes for someone to be religious so they value things like giving, honesty, modesty, peace and happiness. They dont seek selfish reasons out of you that are self serving, and its always important to remember in every relationship (which ofcource is "love" that is in relationships) that you focus more on what you do for the other compared to what they do for you. A moral characteristic in relationships is about your dealings with people that have to be more understanding and giving. Because when you love the person, you want to make them happy, listen to them in times of need, support them throughout every situation, care about their well being while you are away from them, and keep their respect after they are gone.

    So controlling lust, the answer to it has also been given to us in the Qur'an. It says, to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty (and do men's hijab which is below the knees and upto the bell and for women that they should lower their gaze and cover their entire body except for what must be appeared infront of non mehrams. Because lust sees with the eyes, but love is truly blind but sees with the heart. And Allah (swt) also says in the Qur'an, that he put love and mercy between you and the one one that Allah made for you. And that is real love.