My Year With Proust - Day 126

"What we now put off from day to day is no longer the end of the intolerable anxiety caused by separation, it is the dreaded renewal of emotions which can lead to nothing.  How infinitely we prefer to any such interview the docile memory which we can supplement at will with dreams in which she who in reality does not love us seems, on the contrary, to be making protestations of her love, when we are all alone!  How infinitely we prefer that memory which, by blending gradually with it a great deal of what we desire, we can contrive to make as sweet as we choose, to the deferred interview in which we would have to deal with a person to whom we could no longer dictate at will the words that we want to hear on her lips, but from whom we can expect to all of us, when we no longer love, that forgetfulness, or even a vague memory does not cause us so much suffering as an ill-starred love.  It was of such forgetfulness that in anticipation I preferred, without acknowledging it to myself, the reposeful tranquillity."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 669

I think I've talked before about how Friday (or, I guess, Thursday if you're in the UAE) afternoons are so indicative of the health of a relationship.  If the two of you are happy then you can't wait for work to end on Friday so that you can fly home.  Now, it could just be to tear each others clothes off as soon as you walk through the door and then collapse into sweaty sexual gymnastics.  Or, it could be stopping by a bar to meet friends, who you end up mainly ignoring because you're flirting with your lover and groping each other under the table - before clumsily leaving early to head home for sweaty sexual gymnastics.  Or, you could head home to prepare a quiet dinner together, that usually ends up something like the dinner scene at the inn from Tom Jones - and which quickly collapses into sweaty sexual gymnastics (there seems to be a theme here).  No matter the particular form it takes, you can't wait for Friday to come to a close because you can't wait to be together.  Then there is the Friday afternoon of an unhappy relationship where you pray for some sort of hostage event so that you don't have to go home.  Partially, it relates to the discomfort of being forced to spend time together when you're not getting along (and the only sweating relates to yard chores, which you throw yourself into because they're outside and she's inside), but mainly because the illusion that you're still in love can't be maintained.  During the week when you barely have time to talk you can keep that "docile memory" alive.  Not only can you maintain it, but, like all memories, you can adapt it, essentially falsify it, so that you are still in love.  I guess this is the microcosmic version of what Proust is discussing here.