Lust

The inspiration for this blog came from various films and things that I've read recently. The films that have made an impression on me are Dorian Gray and Bel Ami, and other little bits that have inspired me are things we've learnt at uni about psychoanalysis and a couple of sonnets about desire and adultery and all the horrible things that come with them.

In this entry, I'm going to try and figure out just what is so bad about lusting after people.

I always thought that the problem was lust was the hurt that it can cause.

Your partner being unfaithful, feeling used after a one night stand, the person your friend likes preferring you to them, and of course the ridiculous amount of sex in the media. Of course lust hurts people. I'm not alone in thinking that lust is only a problem if it hurts people though. If I was then why would we have clichés such as 'what he doesn't know won't hurt him' and the like?

However. Recently, my opinion has changed. If lust was only wrong because people get hurt as a result of it then why do we all not just give into every seedy impulse that we may have and just make sure that nobody finds out?

The opportunity for a drunken fumble with a stranger on holiday presents itself to you. Nobody at home ever need know. So why not give into temptation and never speak of it again? After all, as Oscar Wilde said, 'the only way to rid a temptation is to yield to it'. Right?

Well no actually. It isn't right. You see, it's not so much other people you need to be thinking about with regards to the damage that lust creates. It's the effect of it on one's soul. Lust is more than sex. It's lying, becoming two different people, putting your own desires before anybody else's.

Once we begin to live like Dorian Gray or Georges Duroy and doing whatever we want, safe in the knowledge that nobody will find out, we convince ourselves that our actions will have no consequences. And  though they may not have a direct impact on our lives, the indirect damage that is caused will still be there, we just may choose not to see it.

As our conscience becomes weaker and it's voice grows quieter, we don't notice the growing distance between ourselves and those that we are lying to. How can you be close to somebody if you can't even be genuine enough to be honest with them, never mind the fact that you shouldn't have anything to own up to in the first place?

We lie to ourselves you see. We justify things, masking them in fact and logic. 'He'll never know', or 'it meant nothing so what's the point in creating unnecessary drama' or even 'it's none of his business'. See, we put things on other people too much, blind to the fact that we're becoming cold, callous liars with no concept of what love is. We separate sex from love and use this as our excuse to do whatever we please, lying to people and manipulating them in order to get what we want.

So what if we never get found out? It doesn't make it right! If a man masturbates over his daughter but never acts upon his desires or speaks about them to anyone, he is no less of a paedophile than if he'd raped her every night.

Because as Oscar Wilde also said 'It is in the brain, and the brain only that the great sins of the world take place', and as Jesus himself said 'I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart'.

The Bible, with it's strict attitudes towards sex, stresses time and time again that God looks upon the heart, not the actions. Being deceitful of anything you may have done is worse than hurting people with the truth. Whether or not you believe in God or Christianity, this message is an important one and cannot be denied. The intentions of the heart determine what kind of person you are, not how talented you are at maintaining a double life and 'protecting' your wife from the knowledge that while she thinks you're working late you're actually paying for a happy ending at a massage parlour or shoving banknotes down a stripper's thong.
I guess what I'm trying to stress is that our ideals are all wrong. Most people I meet (girls as well as boys) see sex as something that doesn't matter. They see promiscuity as something that should be aspired to rather than shied away from, and you're not considered normal in today's society if you haven't had a drunken threesome, a fuck buddy and a whole list of one night stands that you've picked up in the coolest indie nightclub.

I guess it doesn't matter if you're single and being upfront with the people you're involved with about what it is you want, but if you're not, if you know that you are using people and that your life would be different if people knew your real intentions then you might want to think about just how bad what you're doing is.
Giving into lust does not satisfy anybody. It is the most imperfect pleasure, a lie. It promises to fulfil your desires but all it does is temporarily cool you down before coming back and burning with an even harder flame. It leaves you lying in bed with a stranger thinking 'is this it?', with an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach that only makes you want even more meaningless, illicit sex in the hope of filling the void.
It won't work.

Lust is like opium, and giving into it is taking that first drag. At first, with your 'man points' and list of gorgeous conquests you may feel on top of the world but it won't be long until everybody around you has settled down and you're left in the same clubs with the same chat up lines, wondering why nobody will stick around long enough to love you, wondering why you find it so hard to be really close to somebody and to lust after them and them alone.