Love and Lust, Fear and Anger

Dichotomies in Emotional States of Human Beings

Wow, that title almost sounded scientific. Too bad this isn’t science.

I’ve accepted for a long time that love and lust are basically two sides to the same emotion. And, for the same reasons, I’ve accepted that fear and anger are two sides of the same coin as well. And I can use what little I know of psychology to back my position (any experts in psychology out there? Weigh in, let me know someone’s actually reading this crap, eh?).

First, let’s tackle love and lust. Lust is a biological drive—the need for sexual relations which all animals feel, including us of the human kind. Love is the desire for a continued relationship. Love is what allows a couple to demonstrate to others that they are committed. But what is the biological use for it? Science hasn’t been able to say. So, I’m filling in the blank with my own (very unscientific, gut-based, intuitive) theory:

Love is the drive which allows the chance for success in raising a child. If one parent or both are not successful within about 4-5 years, love fades (thus the divorce rate, etc.). Loving your partner is not merely about companionship for you; it’s about ensuring that a good parent is there for your child. In those who have similar values about children, and who apply these values as principles to guide their child-rearing activities successfully, we should expect that the divorce rate is roughly half the norm.

This will require more data to even reach a proper hypothesis stage, but it should still pretty much make the idea clear.

And now for the fear/hate mechanism. Fear is “flight” and anger is “fight”. They are part of the same mechanism in the brain, which we call the “fight or flight response”. When you feel either, your survival instincts climb. Maybe I shoulda started with the simpler one. Meh. It doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid. Not angry. Well, not about that, anyway.