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” …if we are conscious of erring in one extreme we should aim at the other, and so we may reach the middle position, as men do in straightening bent timber.”

pp Aristotle

I like stripping things down to their most basic levels. I like to rip off the gift wrap, remove the fancy box, toss out the extras, and be left only with the thing itself–or as close to the thing itself as I can possibly get.

The thing itself is the part I want to know about. So if you ask which I prefer, I’d have to say that right now, I prefer Level One accommodations.

Why?

Because if we’re in a cheap hotel, there is no question as to what is the purpose. The purpose of being there is for enjoying each other’s company, nothing more. We’re not there for the fabulous dining or the luxurious bedding or the amazing service. We’re only there for us.

Maybe if in the past I’d had more experience with enjoying an awesome location and my partner all at the same time, I’d think differently about it. But in the past, having external niceties was often used as an excuse to avoid intimacy. The stb-ex and I would go on trips and spend so much time doing things that we never had a chance simply to be together.

We’d go out exploring and then be “too tired” for sex. Have an awesome meal and then be “too full” to be together. Hang out in public for several hours and then be “too brain-dead” for some quiet time alone.

I equate (erroneously, I know) the desire for too many “other” activities with the hope to avoid alone time with me. This is very wrong. I need to fix this perception. I’m working on it.

This error in thinking on my part extends from accommodations to the finer points of commitment. I’ve had all the visible trappings of commitment: The shared bank account. The house. The fancy wedding. The ring.

None of those things brought us intimacy. They didn’t make us work at keeping the relationship together. They didn’t transmogrify us into something better, something higher, something more pure.

I conjecture now that the ring and all its impedimenta mean nothing whatsoever, in exactly the same way that lovely accommodations mean nothing whatsoever. At the moment, I’m quite pleased with modest hotels and an unencumbered finger—because at its most basic level, I have much more than I ever had before.

Right now, I have exactly what I need.

“If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. Though I have the gift of prophesy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everything, and though I have faith in all its fullness to move mountains, but if I am without love, then I am nothing at all.”

I Corinthians