*Lust can be twisted and manipulated into something that one could mistake for love, but the actual feeling itself is much more meaningful and sincere. The Scarlet Letter is not a love story, far from a Romeo and Juliet. It's an account of the strict morals of the Puritan belief and the hypocrisy of which these morals are nurtured. It is never Hawthorne's intention to lose the theme of the book by straying the reader's attention towards the love of Hester Prynne and the reverend Dimmesdale. Hester's love is simply fabricated in order to cope with the suffering she is obligated to endure, and Dimmesdale's heart is never meant for such mortal love with Hester. .
*Hester, so "youthful and fair" (Hawthorne 55), is doomed to spent eternity with a poor misshapen Chillingsworth, "a deformed old figure, with a face that haunted men's memories longer than they liked" (Hawthorne 158). But she is awarded another chance for love when Chillingsworth sends her to the "New World" to await his arrival. Time passes and Chillingsworth never returns for his bride. Assuming he's been lost at sea, Hester jumps at the chance to love another. And who better than the person Hester describes as the one who "knowest what is in my heart" (Hawthorne 101)? So "The Pastor and His Parishioner" (Hawthorne 172) in an act of passion, commit adultery, and in return are both punished for their acts of false love.
It's easy to see how Hester could confuse her love for Dimmesdale for her own feelings of loneliness and misery. Hester had been, what one could assume by her feelings towards Chillingsworth, forced into her first relationship, and in a whirlwind of events, blindly walked into her second. She had never experienced love, and thus only guessed at what it should feel like. Her heart simply yearned for somebody to love and be loved in return. .
Dimmesdale could not love Hester even had his heart allowed him to.