Lust Balance

The concept of the lust balance refers to the social organization and accompanying social codes (ideals and practices) regarding the relationship between the longing for sexual gratification and the longing for enduring relational intimacy. It thus draws attention to the balance between emotive charges in the desires for sex and love, and to changes in this lust balance. For although the two types of longing for sexual gratification and for an intimate relationship are clearly interconnected, these connections change in both the biographies of individuals and the histories of peoples. Nor is the interconnectedness unproblematic. Today, some people (mostly men) even view the two longings as contradictory. Moreover, the attempt to find a satisfying balance between the longing for sex and the longing for love may be complicated by many other longings; for instance, by the longing for children or by the longing to raise one's social power and rank. Therefore, the “balance” in the relationship between sex and love is a polymorphous and multidimensional tension balance. Yet it offers a wider theoretical framework that opens the possibility to integrate many different threads of long‐term developments, as is demonstrated by Wouters (2004), in a study pioneering lust balance as a central concept.