My name is Joshua Coffy. I am an artist living in San Francisco. At the beginning of this year I was severely obese, depressed, stressed out, suicidal, and searching for answers. After reflecting on my experiences at Burning Man and reading a few great books I have come up with the Gift Prolific Project. This is the blog of the project....please check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks. Take care.

You know, I sincerely hope it wasn't like that for you.

Laugh, relate, dance, share - whatever it takes to strip
away the stress.

Men and women are both from earth and they both need and want the same things in long term relationships. Men and women have far more in common than they do differences. However, those selling products and services and their customers dwell on the differences, and what we fail to recognize is that when we buy into stereotyping we are buying into dehumanizing each other.

There are no characteristics that are innately female so men ought to stop making assumptions about individual women based on what they think is their knowledge of “how women think” or “what women want”. Likewise there are any characteristics that are innately male, and women ought to stop making assumptions about individual men based on cliche’s, stereotyping and generalizations.

In a healthy relationship the other person sees you, treats you, and feels about you, as you would like to be seen, treated, and felt about. In a healthy relationship the other person wants you to achieve your goals, hopes and dreams as much as you want to achieve them.

Relationships that may last a lifetime are:
between two mature people who are keenly aware that happiness comes from within;
founded on respect, trust, equality, shared ethics and morals;
free of dependence;
based on complementarity rather than on need;
evidenced by open communication, compromise and teamwork;
evidenced by mutual affection and commitment;
evidenced by support and understanding;
evidenced by healthy conflict resolution.

I put some tips up about how to reduce relationship stress, if any of you out there that are in a successful relationship have some tips to add to my blog or to add on here, that would be great! I'd love to see all the things that work for you and your significant other!