What I want - relationship New Year's Resolutions for 2010

It's time to let go of the '00s.

Good riddance!

I call it the Double Zero Decade. That is more or less what this decade summed up to for me in my relationships, career and just about every other metric except money, in which it got off to a roaring start, and then, as it has for all of us, fizzled out.

After an incredible relationship and engagement to the man who stands out as The Love of My Life, my late 30s to 40s...whizzed by. A few "why did I let that nice guy slip away?" and a long list of users, losers, slippery liars and one or two men who could probably qualify
as outright con artists and sociopaths. (I think at least one appeared on "America's Most Wanted," and there were two guys I dated briefly who bragged that they'd been: "Kicked out of Burning Man," and several who had been banned from the wildest, most swinging nude hot spring on the West Coast for blatant attempts to hit on women repeatedly. Not a good sign.

How did another decade of life experience lead to so many poor choices?

I think that can be summed up in one word: "Insecurity."

As I got older, I started believing the societal programming that says "you're too old" and started demanding less, and getting more...desperate. Desperate choices lead to a life as a Desperate Housewife. Or an aging hottie on the prowl in Cougar Town.

Or so it's Seen on TV.

Ah hah! Unless we get realistic about the men we choose and actually start to date in our own age range, and perhaps lower our societal programming standards while raising our standards for the real qualities that matter -- like heart.

This is the list of intentions I wrote a few months ago. Shortly after that, they started to materialize in my life. One thing that helped is just making this very clear to me, and stating my intention out loud, to the current men I was dating. (It made them run like hell. That's what you want the America's Most Wanted types to do.)

I released the "society tells me I shoulds" -- and have started following my heart. I also listen, carefully, to the impressions of friends and family, and I watch how other people in community react and respond to a man I am dating when he is introduced. If they recoil in horror, I no longer take that as a bias, and I actually pay attention.

Here is my list of New Year's Relationship Resolutions for 2010 and beyond. It's a new decade.

I want to make love every morning and every night, to be touched and held.

I want to eat healthy, clean, vibrant food.

I do not want to be pressured into drinking hard booze, doing hard drugs, breathing smoke, or eating meat just because my partner has a junk diet. I am not going to slip back into addictions just so I can be "loved."

I want to be with a man who is radiant and who respects his body like a temple.

I want to be surrounded by aesthetic beauty, gardens, nature, clean air.

I want community, live music, art, shared meals and extended tribal family around. Maybe children and pets too.

I want to have a healthy body and to feel beautiful.

I want to finish writing my books some day -- have a relationship/partnership that grounds me with someone supportive of that, who is not threatened by the fact that I have some ambition to make a difference in the world...and who sees how that ambition can benefit US as an interdependent team/partnership.

I want financial abundance -- there is nothing wrong with having money to buy nice things, travel and eat well. Or the abundance that is created from the land and community around you.

I want fulfilling work that does not require commuting to work in traffic and smog and sitting in a cubicle in a sealed room under florescent lights.

If I work for a corporation, they have values I believe in and products that are making the world a better place, and I own a share of it.

Dream business - create multiple internet revenue streams (with a partner). Work all summer traveling the world on festival circuit, then spend winters in a nice funky small town on land, build simple, eco-type green home, off grid.

I am looking for someone to team up with, who is a "together we are greater than the sum of our parts" kind of guy.