On building a lifelong relationship.

I thought I would republish some words I wrote to a friend on the subject of lifelong relationship, i.e., marriage. I took out the personal bits and reworded a bit, but you’ll get the drift:

So many people go into these things (marriages) completely careless, and a lot of the time loveless, and if you have both care and love, you create so important a combination… And I’m confident that couples with those skills, over time, find that every day they feel stronger, after every fight or argument or event, after they’ve worked it out, it’s added a new brick to the relationship-building. I know I have that now, for the first time in my life… After I learned (and still learn) to let go of my own shit, to be a part of a ‘we’ and to be constantly focused on the building and investment, I really do love my partner more every day (and most fights make me realize how dumb I am at that moment). It’s still early on but I just hope we will be like this always, even as life gets more complicated and crazy…

You know your partner is right for you when s/he can serve as your mirror, and vice versa… I know if I’m being selfish or romantic or mean or clever by the way it shows in my partner’s face… and I’m pretty sure vice versa… S/he loves you, so you can trust that s/he is serving as a healthy mirror who reflects you… Sometimes, I hear myself in my partner and sometimes I hear elements of my partner coming out of my mouth… It’s such an intense thing to realize you are literally joining with another person…

It’s all a big learning experience; the trick is to love the person you’re along for the ride with – enough to lose yourself in him, let him lose yourself in you, not too much so that you don’t recognize your soul but enough that you’ve created something new between the two of you.

That’s how I see it anyway.

Making love for peace.

Hmm. We can’t always pick and choose what works… We can’t always control how conflict resolution will happen… Which is why open-mindedness is so important.

I present this:

Make love not war: Israeli adult Web site promotes reconciliation in new way

Parpar1.com shows amateur pornography only featuring Israeli Arabs and Jews.

There is one place in the Middle East where Arabs and Jews seem to be getting along quite well. It’s the Israeli Web site Parpar1.com, where amateur pornography features Arabs and Jews at each other’s throats – but only for erotic purposes.

Founded by two Tel Aviv computer professionals, the Web site has been serving up such X-rated fare as “Kosher Lesbians,” “The Rabbi’s Daughter” and “Sex Party in Jerusalem” since 2001. Parpar1 has hundreds of hours of video porn featuring amateur performers. It is a pay service that can be accessed on the Web or via mobile phone. (haaretz)