the truth about lust

first the good thing about lust - it's almost as strong a bond as love; maybe even stronger, since it's far more tangible. you can see, feel, smell, sense, touch, taste it; it can burn in your veins and make you tremble with desire and want and need.

now for the not-so-good-news - lust lasts even less than love. of course love fades just as certainly, but it makes a more determined effort to hang around and be sociable. lust, now she's a selfish mistress. one fine day - poof! i know this for a fact, and i know this to my cost. three relationships, each where can't-keep-hands-off-each-other was a given, suddenly turned to dust because the lust took a hike.

of course it helped too. each of these three times the same thing happened. one fine day i found myself no longer turned on by the man - usually very suddenly - and almost instantly, the rest of the relationship went cold too. obviously there wasn't much to these relationships, because they didn't survive the departure of lust.

now lets take married man, the one i'm having an affair with. he and i used to be wild and crazy and almost constantly sexual; each conversation turned to sex, we sent erotic msgs and graphic descriptors of what we'd like to do to each other, we shared fantasies, we were just a lot about sex. but over the past few months - i'd say 4-5 months - he's been less 'physical' in every way. we're honest enough with each other for him to tell me if he was sleeping with another woman, so i know it's not that. what it is is that the sex doesn't mean as much to him now as other things do. sex in general is taking a backseat in his mind and life currently but our relationship hasn't suffered for that at all. i'm relieved, i'm intrigued and i'm curious to see where this goes.

the truth about fidelity

i'm in a good position to talk about fidelity, i think. i've been unfaithful, had people be unfaithful to me, and am condoning someone else's unfaithfulness at the moment.

that's the strange thing about fidelity - you have to have been unfaithful to discuss it with any kind of realism. otherwise, you're an idealist who has the noble idea, but you're in no position to talk about it with certainty.

till a few years ago, i was 100% convinced that every single human being can be faithful if they want to be; that people who make excuses for their infidelity are doing just that - making excuses. i still believe that. what i don't believe anymore is that fidelity is something to aspire to above all else in a relationship. sure, it's very important, but even more so is total, complete, brutal honesty. it can make your relationship survive what nothing else can.

also, the whole definition of fidelity is suspect. mostly, faithfulness seems to be about sex - get physical with anyone other than your partner and you're unfaithful. but what about an intense, close relationship that's not physical? what about sharing your deepest thoughts and concerns and passions with someone other than your partner? what about chat sex, or phone sex? what about lusting after someone else all the time? can you ignore all of these and feel hurt only when your partner sleeps with someone else? does the fact that someone else is privy to his or her deepest feelings and emotions not cause as much hurt? what is fidelity, then?

that's my point. fidelity, like everything else, is not black-and-white. and the moment you've got shades of grey, you've got trouble.