I have a major problem with the statement that lust is bad. Why? Because I think it is very badly misinterpreted. People sit and pass judgement on an unwed couple who are happy and who are sexually active, who are consenting adults, who feel they’re doing what’s best for them. They make comments about how lust is bad, you can’t have sex if you’re not married, etc. and then, they turn around and make judgements about a woman wanting to leave a bad marriage. A marriage where she feels controlled and abused by her husband. They tell her it’s a “shame on their family”. The woman has zero “chemistry” with her husband, hates having sex with him, feels repulsed by him, but it’s “ok” because they’re married. Not only “ok” but she HAS TO stay in it. In my mind that is so incredibly BACKWARDS that it’s not even funny. It’s totally completely messed up.
Lust is “bad” when we’re talking about child pornography. About men catcalling women from a construction site. About someone getting someone drunk and forcing them to have sex. Rape (and yes, that includes women forcing men too, for their own needs and desires). However, telling a woman she has to stay in a marriage where she FEELS RAPED is feeding the bad type of lust in our culture! It’s condoning it, pardoning it, and making it accepted and “normal”. I've been in that marriage and it is absolutely horrible. It's only after I got out and discovered what it's like to have chemistry with my partner, that I started to heal. If anything, I wish I had had MORE sex before marriage (not to be super promiscuous but to at least have some experience) because I might not have been damaged by 18 years of "bad lust" from my ex husband in a marriage that was like a wrecking ball to my sexuality.
Lust is actually good in general too. You lust after the body you want to procreate with and that is entirely normal. We would die out as a species if we didn’t procreate and lust is one way for us to accomplish that. Sure people twist it lots of ways but bottom line, if two people want to be together then they should. We, as a society, created marriage. Some societies don't have that ceremony. Many animals are not monogamous (some are...) and some cultures on earth aren't either. Marriage is man made. We did not create lust, or the need to have babies. It is inborn. We were created with it. And if we are born with the ability to take pleasure from a sexual act, and yet we deny that pleasure because of some cultural societal creation called marriage, we are denying our very existence. What we were MEANT to do. And I am 110% convinced that if there’s a god somewhere up there, that s/he is also shaking his or her head over the confusion WE have created over HIS/HER *gift* of “lust”.
I think it's really important to realize just how much society’s stigmas can be damaging to society as well…to the individual members who make up society. If we stop looking down on people, and start celebrating who they are, wholeheartedly and without cherry-picking and choosing, then we will ultimately be a better healthier society, as our members feel acceptance and freedom to really BE who they are and embrace it fully.
Lust is “bad” when we’re talking about child pornography. About men catcalling women from a construction site. About someone getting someone drunk and forcing them to have sex. Rape (and yes, that includes women forcing men too, for their own needs and desires). However, telling a woman she has to stay in a marriage where she FEELS RAPED is feeding the bad type of lust in our culture! It’s condoning it, pardoning it, and making it accepted and “normal”. I've been in that marriage and it is absolutely horrible. It's only after I got out and discovered what it's like to have chemistry with my partner, that I started to heal. If anything, I wish I had had MORE sex before marriage (not to be super promiscuous but to at least have some experience) because I might not have been damaged by 18 years of "bad lust" from my ex husband in a marriage that was like a wrecking ball to my sexuality.
Lust is actually good in general too. You lust after the body you want to procreate with and that is entirely normal. We would die out as a species if we didn’t procreate and lust is one way for us to accomplish that. Sure people twist it lots of ways but bottom line, if two people want to be together then they should. We, as a society, created marriage. Some societies don't have that ceremony. Many animals are not monogamous (some are...) and some cultures on earth aren't either. Marriage is man made. We did not create lust, or the need to have babies. It is inborn. We were created with it. And if we are born with the ability to take pleasure from a sexual act, and yet we deny that pleasure because of some cultural societal creation called marriage, we are denying our very existence. What we were MEANT to do. And I am 110% convinced that if there’s a god somewhere up there, that s/he is also shaking his or her head over the confusion WE have created over HIS/HER *gift* of “lust”.
I think it's really important to realize just how much society’s stigmas can be damaging to society as well…to the individual members who make up society. If we stop looking down on people, and start celebrating who they are, wholeheartedly and without cherry-picking and choosing, then we will ultimately be a better healthier society, as our members feel acceptance and freedom to really BE who they are and embrace it fully.