On Being Remembered as Perfect

I've been talking a lot with someone worth talking to. It's good for me. It keeps me mentally stimulated. One of the many things I've taken time to reflect upon is my outlook on life. See, I'm not a pessimist. I'm not an optimist. I'm a romantic. I think everything should be able to stay beautiful forever. My exact quote from the other night was "I you can't always be perfect, you can at least always be remembered as perfect." I love the concept, but it's so hard to execute, because it requires you to walk away from situations you enjoy. I've only walked away from two relationships while they were still good. Once was intentionally to preserve the fact that we were on good terms. Furthermore, it's not constructive to walk away. If things are good, you should stay and enjoy them. Here's a smaller example. When hanging out with the person worth hanging out with, we were laughing and having a genuinely good time just talking to each other. Because of this, neither one of us wanted to call it a night, regardless of how late it got or how tired we became. I realized the only way this conversation was ending was with us no longer enjoy each others' company so much. We had to end on a less positive note than we were at, or we wouldn't end. Do you leave while still laughing and happy, so the two of you can say that the entire thing was awesome, or do you wait until things dull down and then leave? In this situation, it's less important and has less of an impact, but there are points in life when it is important. Lisa and I ended lower than we had been, on average, during our relationship. We didn't end on an extremely down note though, because Lisa knew that it was time to walk away before things got bad. In retrospect I realize things would have gone bad. It's best that we just walked away, but it's hard to know when. I've got no real answer to all of this. In fact, I need to get headed to work, so I'm just going to leave this hanging. Perhaps I'll have more incite into all of this after speaking about it more.