A separation of physical and emotional attachments is a growing phenomenon. The spread of the Internet is driving this. Increasingly, partners are concerned that their better half is having an emotional affair, that is to say they are emotionally intimate with another without a physical relationship. People are declaring love without having had physical contact with the object of their affections.
Lust vs. Love
Is love just an emotional connection plus sex? Yes and no. No, because platonic love is possible and can be more intense than the love shared by lovers. However, lust is an important part of love. It is in no way shallow to say you must lust after your partner; it is just a fact. Shallowness is reducing lust to the purely physical. Personality traits (for example, confidence or the ability to make somebody laugh) are sexually interesting and important.
What we find individually attractive is different from what we collectively idolise. To my mind, some of the least sexist people are often society's deified icons of sex. Models, for example, often have disturbingly vacant eyes - something which turns me decidedly off. Generally we reduce things to a physical level because it is easier that way and impossible for us to know the objects of our fantasies on an individual level.
Loving somebody involves spending time with them outside the bedroom, so it has to involve more than lust. It has to be about a desire for a person as a fully rounded human being.
Monogamy
Monogamous nature is one of the great love myths. Why is it socially acceptable to love more than one person in a friendship sense but not in a partner sense? Truly loving more than one person in a lifetime is entirely possible and, although I have no statistical proof, is most likely the norm. Of course, complications are often caused by love's many-splintered nature. Anything capable of inspiring great good is also capable of the reverse - of bringing out a truly wicked side to our nature.
I have told a few people I love them and meant it. Each time it has been in a different way and for different reasons. They are different, individual people and again here we confront the specific nature of being in love. Some may turn out to be more loved and more treasured than others, but that doesn't lessen the sincerity of what I said in my eyes. As Shiloh, one of my ex's, rather flatteringly said when we were splitting up: I am blessed or cursed — depending on how you see it — with: "an ocean of love". This is true of most people, although right now, with the world as it is, you would be forgiven for not noticing it.
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