Life Cycles

Disclaimer: once again, you find me indulging in a spate of creative writing. Take it for what it's worth - my overactive, glandular imagination expressing itself in luridly purple prose.

The guilt is there, waiting in the background, ready to pounce once we’re no longer in each other’s presence. It picks at us, and nags us, berates us mercilessly about our faithlessness. We cycle through our relationship, moving elliptically closer then far apart as the remorse tears at our consciences. Always friends, sometimes lovers, we are drawn together yet flow inevitably apart.

Softer with our spouses, assuaging our culpability, we are kinder than they deserve. Small gestures and tokens of affection are proffered where there used to be none. A dinner cooked with extra care or a distasteful chore done without asking serve as atonement for our unsuspected sins. We compromise more readily, argue less, and seek to please those who push us away. When they push us, though, we enter each other’s orbit, where forces stronger than we are take hold.

It is during those times, when we turn to one another to fill a space that others have left empty, that we rationalize our behavior. If we no longer have this need that the other cannot, or will not, fulfill, then are we not better partners? If my bien aimé holds me close and touches me gently, will it still bother me if my husband does not? If I steal his breath with my kisses and make his head spin with my caresses, will he be kinder to his wife? When we come together, sometimes in desperation to be close to someone, will it prevent conflict at home?

As we move through these cycles of carnality and contrition, I wonder at our relative inertia. Stuck in the same winding gyre, will either of us ever fly freely again?