Love and Lust and Sex

Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of introducing two of the cutest young men I know to each other.  Myself and a couple other people suspected that these two twinks might hit it off.

We had them (and other people) over for a barbecue and they seemed to hit it off pretty quickly, so we followed it up with an at-home movie night with myself, my partner, and these two young men.  There was an obvious attraction from both sides, but for various reasons, neither one made a move on the other.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to when one guy, who we’ll call Jeff, was lamenting on Facebook about his dating woes.  The other guy, who we’ll call Andrew, offered to meet him for coffee to chat about it.  They did.  And then they chatted about each other and the mutual attraction they’d felt during the movie night.  And with it all out on the table, all the misconceptions out of the way, they were able to say how much they were attracted to each other.  It had taken a while to get to this point, but it was love at first sight.

Andrew took Jeff home.

Jeff is one of my closest friends and given our ten year age gap, I think he might look up to me for advice sometimes.  So I heard all about the other guys he went out with before that fateful coffee with Andrew.  We’ve talked a lot about the differences between love and lust.  And every time he gets closer to finding love, he realizes that everything he had before was just lust.

He thought he’d figured it out a couple boyfriends ago.  He’d text me after he had sex and say things like, “Now I understand what you mean about the difference between sex and lovemaking.”  He’d been searching for that ever since that relationship ended.  And he seems to have found that in Andrew.  In fact, I think he’s come to realize that what he had before wasn’t truly love — it was close, but not quite the same.  What he has now is love.

Last night I received this text from Jeff: “Ok.. now THAT was making love.”

It’s been my experience, and Jeff’s experience reflects this, that lustful sex is full of passion and energy and focusses entirely on physical sensation.  Lovemaking may be just as full of passion and energy, but the focus is often more on connecting at some deep spiritual level, something impossible to achieve in lustful sex.  Because of that connection, lovemaking can be so intense and all-consuming that nothing else matters.

I’ll be honest — when I jack off, I have dirty fantasies in my head (or on my iPad).  I think about or watch pretty much every fetish you could name, full of dominating sex and giant dicks.  But if I were given the choice to live out a sexual fantasy or have vanilla sex with my partner — and if there were no consequences from making my choice — I would choose sex with my partner.  And that’s because sex with my partner isn’t just sex, it’s lovemaking.  Anybody watching us would probably find it boring, but to me, it’s thrilling, invigorating, and incomparable.

Lustful sex can be incredible, don’t get me wrong.  It can be adventurous and exciting.  But lovemaking can be these things, too, and so much more.



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Seduced by My Best Friend’s Dad (co-written with Sandra Claire). He is also the publisher and co-founder of Deep Desires Press  a publisher of erotica and high-heat-level erotic romance. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.