Desire and love often arrive together, so people confuse them. Many relationships are built on the confusion.

Desire is a self from Part II. It wants something for itself: pleasure, comfort, admiration, the feeling of being chosen. It sees the other person as the way to get it. When it is satisfied, it cools. When it is refused, it can turn to anger very quickly. That is one way to tell it apart.

Love is not a self. The books treat it as something from the Being, the deeper life of Part V. It wants the good of the other person, even when that good does not include you. It does not cool when it is satisfied, because it was never trying to fill itself.

Passion feels like love. It is intense, and intensity is easily mistaken for depth. The test comes later: when the person is tired, difficult or different from your picture of them.

None of this means desire must die before love can live. In most couples the two are mixed. The practice is to see which one is speaking, moment by moment, and to let love lead.

This is also why the couple’s path asks for love and not lust. Desire wants to spend. Love can keep, because it is in no hurry.