Freedom isn't Free

I'm having sex with my ex-girlfriend.
She's lured me back with the crafty way she does of begging, pleaded, of needing me and I am weak and have capitulated. She has always deftly and artfully played the damsel in distress card when I was furthest removed from her sphere.

She, in particular, pings me with is very adroitly.

She is in many ways exactly what I want. Submissive sexually, a great cook, knows how to be abjectly feminine, drop dead gorgeous.....yet, she is an eternal ingénue.
She's not of the heartbreaker/manbreaker variety per se, but rather, the master outright abject and indefatigable manipulator, perhaps unconsciously so.
She has mindfucked me harder than any other woman I dated and done so in record time.

"The devil comes dressed as everything you've ever wanted."

I leave to go to the gym and though life with her is half craziness and half peaceful calm.....I know I have roads yet left to travel.
I have nights and loneliness and struggles yet to face. She promises to stand by my side and I know she would/will....but that is not what I want.
--

I see a buddy of mine, he has the kids but minus the wife due to a divorce.

I see another friend who is settling into the coming arrival of a child and work and planning the kid's future.

I see my own life as a thinning list of men my age to know who are not encumbered with wife, children et cetera.

I see the days pass and that societal pressure and conditioning whispering in my ear that it would be easier to settle down again, to get married again, to find a good woman, to start building something that lasts....but these are all half truths and half promises....that speak nothing of when it falls apart and the quiet, slow death of a million hours of acceptance and predictability.

When do you cash out? When do you quit the game?
When do you stop running the race?
For a good looking, articulate, masculine man....there exists no shortage of quality women.....there never has been true scarcity in my life nor want for that.....so the real question becomes.....how much longer do I press on? How much longer do I stay intrepid?

What do I want?
That is the one truth, the one question....the one pursuit.

Freedom must be purchased over and over and over again. Every day. Every moment.
One stupid, careless, thoughtless decision and you can be sure, prison, marriage, adulthood, contract, interest, credit, or parenthood will take it away in whole or in part.

- Yrs. in Christ