If you are in recovery, it is important to surround yourself with healthy people and have healthy relationships. This makes it easier to remain sober and free from addiction to continue your path to recovery. When you are ready to date again, you may find someone who sweeps you off your feet. When this happens, you may wonder if it is love or lust, or have other questions related to love and lust. Here are a few of the questions you may have.
The Differences Between Love and Lust
Love is a bond and emotion that you form and feel with someone. It generally takes time to develop and you can love different people who have different roles in your life. For many people a romantic love relationship is very important to have and feel that bond. Lust is a sexual feeling. You are attracted to someone, usually on a physical level. This is very different than love, in which you ultimately get to know someone and love them for the person they are, not just on the outside, but on the inside as well.
Is Lust a Bad Thing?
Lust is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, many loving relationships start from lust. Most people have to have an initial spark of attraction to their future partner and that spark of attraction is usually based out of feelings of lust. However, lust can become a bad thing if one person progresses to feelings of love and the other person does not. It’s also important to prevent lust from becoming an unhealthy obsession.
When Should You Leave a Lust-Based Relationship?
If you are working to remain sober, or addiction free it is important to have healthy relationships. If your partner stresses you out, if you feel like you are in a toxic relationship, if your partner does not help you or encourage you to remain in recovery journey or if you fight and argue more than you have good times together, it is important to leave the relationship. Extra stress is an unneeded burden for a recovering addict, so it is important to know when to leave unhealthy relationships when you are ready to begin dating again.
Developing healthy relationships after being an addict is not always an easy task. This is because many of the relationships you had as an addict were likely unhealthy. After taking the time to focus on yourself, you may be ready to begin to build a healthy love relationship again. When you are ready, make sure you know the difference between love and lust and how they can affect your relationship.
Here at the My 12 Step Store, we are committed to helping you through every stage of your recovery. We have products, such as books, that may be useful to you as you learn to develop healthy relationships. Visit our store today to check out our inventory.