Duplicity as a quality for an imaginary friend?

I have been working on the usual problem these days...keep the figure or leave it...The figure in painting is like my crack...the abstraction always leads me to it...and I fall for it every time...then the abstraction attempts to lead me away from it, and I battle with the imagery to keep it. Painting, for me, is a duplicitous little imaginary friend who gets excited by seeing me sweat out the canvas for a while (is that a good friend or bad?)!

This is a detail from a larger painting that I am working on...