VALUES:

• Adventure + Travel.
• Cooking + Food + Eating.
• Creativity.
• Curiosity (abt Life).
• Health + Fitness.
• Spirituality.
• Work to Live Mentality.

INTENTIONS:

• To create a rich, authentic and spiritual connection through daily action.
  • Based on seeing and hearing the other person and committing to ongoing growth.
• To build a quality home life (where ever that may be) from where the rest of my life can grow.
  • A stable ground, something on which we can stand.
  • Having our pack together - an understanding that though Weenie and Sadie are not with me full time, they are a large priority in my life. Also Thelma!
• To communicate shared vulnerabilities and remain open and willing to work through them.
  • Whether on the giving or receiving end.
• To create a deeper emotional intimacy.
• To become comfortable with autonomy within the relationships (yet knowing when we must come together to protect what we share.)
  • The understanding that both partners are responsible for maintaining the relationship garden.

WANTS:

• Quality time spent together where we are present to each other's love, priorities and issues.
  • Travel, homelife, fitness, sexual encounters.
• A respect for my family life and those sometimes sticky relationships - understanding when it's important to me to have support when I need it.
• An underlying knowledge about love - how it needs to be present in a relationship and how to take care of it.
• A companionship that inspires both parties to be pushed outside of their comfort zone - whether that means discriminating less or validating more.
• A home life where we can garden vegetables, water the plants and cook nice meals for each other and our friends.
• An open-ness in communication so when an issue is brought up neither feels threatened.
• Shared respect for each other's point of view.
  • Knowing I'm being held in my partner's heart.

GOALS:

• Long term relationship - a marriage? lifelong? - in general, something that feels like a long term investment.
  • striving toward longevity and working on a life together.
• Connected to a "we" mentality, knowing that my partner is "in it" with me.
• Sharing my life with someone who is excited and wants to see the same things with me. Someone who wants to show me things and wants to share their day to day with me.

CHALLENGES:

• When a partner doesn't want to accept my love, understanding that it is not personal.
  • At what point do I walk away bc they are showing me who they are and they don't want my gift?
• Knowing that just because I would do something or treat someone a certain way, doesn't make it the "right" way.
  • Remind myself there are multiple ways to do things.
• Knowing that one experience can be interpreted two or more different (opposing) ways.
• Sexual open-ness: ie, being OK with having sex with other people either separately or shared experiences with one another.
  • Knowing that in an open relationship my partner will sometimes want to be sexual without me. How does this not feel like I'm being put aside?
  • How do we create boundaries to make the relationship safe and sacred?
• Time spent apart: What is my limit on being away from my partner? 3 months? More? 
  • How do we remain connected when the partner is away When I am away?
• Moving away from Los Angeles and trying a new city.
  • I am ready to try something new.
• Leaving my "LA" career behind to pursue other styles of life with my partner.
  • See above.