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The love and desire paradox

Guilt is conscience
Shame is hiding (your deepest longings)
-Esther Perel

Is it wrong to feel restored in the arms of another
To find solace and connection
When you do not keep it for you, selfishly
But bring it into your life
And restore those around you

Is the fountain that feeds your soul
Forbidden still
If you become the fountain
That feeds others

We stay with those we love 
And mourn the loss of desire
We want warmth and safety
But long for passion and freedom

There can be no shame in what is good
Even if there is guilt that the source of it is not found at home.

Where you are the protector and the saviour
You cannot be the man whose wildest needs will be met
By another, a different, an equal.

Where you are bound by duty and comfort
You cannot be the woman - the temptress, the dynamic self
Who is free to pursue her selfish pleasure
With your terrifying, intoxicating match.

Too much conflict is draining, but they say
Safety is knowing everything
Too many secrets left unspoken create distance, but they say
Desire is a mystery waiting to be revealed
The demands are many and interwoven
The satisfaction of some naturally means the abandonment of others.

Is there another possibility?

Where there is surrender - love thrives on intimacy
Can there also be awakening and autonomy - desire thrives on distance, on difference

Affirmation
When you can find the one
Who can stand in their essence and bring out your essence
There is undeniable attraction and excitement

Transcendence
When that same person can be vulnerable
And embrace you in your vulnerability
There is trust and beauty

If you can balance the two
You have achieved the ultimate paradox
Of love and desire:
You take me as I am, and you change me.
I take you as you are, and I change you.
And we are both better for it.

Love is not the mutual exchange of favours
Nor a calculated investment
But the acknowledgement and experience of difference
As it lives and influences you.

Desire is dancing in the beautiful space
Created between two whole entities
That circle one another, in orbit
Relentlessly starting over
Choosing each other
Again and again.

This is why time wasted with the person you find most fascinating
Is the best time spent.
The one who makes you hunger and relieves it
Is both your homecoming and the brand new destination.

Love is an act of imagination
Intimacy is an act of fruition
Not a protection against feeling alone
Not an elimination of otherness.
The success of living in that uncertainty
Creates the dynamic necessary
Of trust placed in tantalizing chance
In every transformative encounter.

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