Explaining the human condition to an eight year old

Anthony told me: "Ernest has a girl friend now". Both have visited the Singapore Science Center multiple times to mavel at the sequence how new babies grow in a mother womb. So I felt it is time to sort a few things out with them along the lines: daddy explains how the world works. Before diving into the biological details (which I think would be a bit early) I felt explaining the confusion of feelings and finding a vocabulary would be important. I found a good starting point in the book Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different - And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men which talks about the difference between, Like, Lust and Love. So it put that into a picture.

We agreed that Like and Love is easy and that the grown-ups make a big huh-hah around everything remotely connected to Lust and that each of these three feelings has a place in the body. We also agreed that since the grown-ups make all this huh-hah it can't be that big a deal and that we will do more research into that topic when they are older. Also the three feelings are very different in nature. Like can exist on it's own, while Love mostly builds on Like (unless you got a broken heart). I didn't emphasis on "Lust can stand alone" that would be subject to later research. And once you find someone where you feel all three strongly, you want to be with that person for a very long time. "Is this why you stay with Momy?" Ernest asked. "Yes my son, this is why" I answered and with a smile Ernest went to sleep.