What Integrity Looks Like

What does integrity look like?

Sometimes it looks like flirting — playfully, freely, without shame — and still knowing where the line is.
Sometimes it looks like walking back into an old dynamic, fully aware of what it once gave you… and what it quietly cost.
And sometimes, integrity looks like telling the truth in real-time — not to shock, not to seduce, but to see clearly.

Today, I went for a massage with someone I’ve had a complicated dynamic with. She’s attractive, flirtatious, and we’ve always shared a kind of charged energy that blurs the line between professional and personal. For a long time, I didn’t have the awareness to name it. I just kept going back, letting something in me — some younger part — get fed by it. The attention. The touch. The ambiguity.

But this time was different.

I opened by telling her I hadn’t been for a long time because, honestly, I was coming too often. Not just for massage — but for something deeper I wasn’t really ready to admit. I didn’t have family around. I didn’t have a partner. And this space, strange as it sounds, had become a place where I was getting some of those unmet needs met — not always in the healthiest way.

And I was honest with her about that. Completely.

She flirted. I flirted. We joked about the tension, about the awkwardness. She even asked me to compliment her body, and I did — but I also told her, this isn’t really fair to me.
She’s married. She says it’s complicated. But at the end of the day, I’m not here to untangle someone else’s mess.

The truth is, she knows exactly what she’s doing. And this time, so do I.

I’m not angry. I’m not ashamed. I’m actually proud of how I handled it — playful but honest, grounded but open. I got to experience what it’s like to be desired again. I got to flirt and feel confident. And I got to say: this isn’t healthy for me anymore.

That’s what integrity looks like — not cold, not guarded, not avoiding life. But stepping into something with your eyes open and having the strength to leave it on your own terms.

There’s still a part of me that longs to be seen and touched and desired. But I want that part to be met in full, not fed in fragments. Not paid for. Not tangled up in ambiguity. I want the real thing. And the more I let go of the half-truths, the more space I create for something whole.

So this was likely the last time.
And I’m okay with that.

Because integrity, for me, means wanting more — not just from others, but from myself.