Subtle Sins

Sometimes in life people commit acts they are less than proud of, they do things covertly and find ways to be coy and less than honest. Perhaps it starts with a smile, a wink, a little flirtatious conversation and posturing. After all, you are not truly doing anything wrong, it is just a bit of flirting. I guess most of us have participated in this type of behavior a few times in our life, it is part of life's dance of courtship and is built into the core if our beings, no doubt a primal instinct that helped in ensuring sexual activity occurred and the population increased. The basal instincts in man and woman are just this, and some are better at this mating dance than others . It becomes a problem in modern day in that for me personally I have never been skilled at the art of being coy and flirtatious, I guess it's something we either excel at or fail at to one degree or another.

In many of my relationships this skill has been my undoing. Not so much due to my lack of finesse at performing and engaging in said activity, but in my past partners level of participation in these " subtle sins" with other females and their eventual wanderlust and straying outside of a monogamous relationship. Mild flirtation is to some degree tolerable, but when it escalates to a level that disintegrates a relationship, it crosses a boundary line that seems to become easier and easier to venture across. I fell prey to this the first time twenty or so years ago, I never saw it coming and was blind-sided and hit like a ton of bricks. I would say my first experience in this type of situation hurt the most, but I also learned the most from it. I would like to say it never happened again , but it has several times. Each time I have seen the signs earlier and earlier, but the situation has never been preventable on my part. I would venture to state that after the initial experience, I have just learned fighting back is futile for me. A big part of this is that my core feelings tell me when someone ventures down the slippery slope of this mating dance, that the wanderer is dissatisfied with their current partner and desires a new and more exciting experience. I shut down and let the person continue down their slope until they get to where they wish to be. By that time, romantic feelings and inclinations in me dissipate, and I am hurt to the point of no longer being interested in someone that I had been faithful to in every sense of the word . When one invests their core being in a relationship and this type of transgression is committed, trust levels dwindle to an extremely low level. Without trust, any type if relationship is bound to crumble, erode and split to pieces. I can honestly say I wish I did not have such a degree of understanding of situations such as these, but I do, having experienced it first hand as well as seeing others go through the dissolution of their own relationships. Personally, watching others endure some of the situations they encounter in their romantic relationships is far more agonizing that what I can personally attest to.

So it brings things around full circle, some would say they learned from what they went through and try again to enter into a relationship and attempt to reach that pinnacle of trust and love once again. Others will spurn any relationship in the future, only participating in shallow and non- committal experiences. You see when one has had the rug pulled out from under them, it is a very individualized psyche that develops and either lets us forgive, forget and either repair or move on to something different, or nothing at all. I lay no blame on either party or sex, it takes two to tango as they often say. For me better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all .I have hope and faith that life holds many good things in store for all of us, and continue to venture out on the proverbial limb to experience the joy and knowledge that relationships bring us. Certainly the price of such wisdom can be burdensome at times, but lessons we learn in life from all relationships we forge, including friendship, romantic, co-workers and family help us understand ourselves and others much more clearly.


       ~~~ balance in everything~~~