A recipe

Recipe for the success of a relationship:

1. empathize
2. share
3. Be there
4. understand, and even if you can't understand, accept
5. physical passion
6. Butterflies
7. can't wait to be with each other or talk to each other
8. trust
9. be great friends
10. Within a group of your best friends, you have eyes only for him/her
11. make em feel special
12. tell em why you like em...tell em what you don't like in em
13. spend time together
14. give it all - 100% or not at all
15. don't take em for granted
16. Patience
17. stop being afraid of making mistakes - both people will mistakes - both have to work through them
18. understand that both people will have expectations and these will be different
19. try to be as honest as possible - both with yourself and your partner - figure out what you think you want out of the relationship before you go into it
20. never ever ever get hung up on what other people outside of the relationship expect it to be like - one week I am angry with my partner - the next week I adore him - that happens and is normal
21. nobody is perfect not even you
22. if you like who you are, so will others - everyone has their insecurities including you but you cannot be with someone whose insecurities border on paranoia and end up hurting you or them or destroying the trust in the relationship - people should not stop trying to get over their insecurities just because they start a relationship
23. if you have a relationship based solely on how good your partner or you look, the lust will fade and it will crumble. have a relationship with someone who will argue, fight and fuss with you but support you, encourage, comfort and intellectually stimulate you.
24. you will fight and argue and fuss and fight - you can't get away from that - it's not bad, it's a coping method and nobody is perfect. A relationship where you don't argue is boring and not worth it - no bad bits means you cannot appreciate the good bits.
25. You need time to yourself too. You may want to be with them 24/7 but even you will get bored and tired of hanging out with them all the time. You need to accept that you need time out to be just you - to be yourself and you need to accept that this doesn't mean that you don't love them. It means that you are you and they are them and both of you need space so you can appreciate being together. Who you are isn't who you are dating - it's who you are when with yourself, family, friends, colleagues and your partner. You are all those facets of yourself and who you are when you are alone is just as important as who you are when you are with others. 24/7 only works for awhile at that lusty period at the beginning of the relationship - afterwards you will gradually settle into a pattern. This is natural. - passion, sexual desire, nonsexual desire all go up and down during a relationship and that is normal. You cannot be someone who is happy all the time, horny all the time, loving all the time or lovable all the time. Be yourself and work on your faults and stop putting pressure on yourself and your partner to be constant in your levels of desire and passion. You are human not superhuman.
26. What makes a short term relationship work? Very very simple: WILLPOWER
27. What makes a long-term relationship work? Not so simple:
    1. Shared Values. Eg.respect, fairness, honesty. (Because then it doesn't matter how diverse your interests and quirks are - you have a solid base)
    2. Shared Beliefs and Priorities. (They need to be EQUALLY important to each other - eg. both need to have each other as their 3rd priority)
    3. Similar Lifestyles. Empathy & Understanding comes from Knowledge - if their experiences and lifestyles are too different from yours they will never understand you, only accept you. How long can you be just accepted? (And you can't like anything you can't understand)
    4. Equal Attractiveness & Equal Attraction. Follow this one and nip insecurity - the number 1 relationship wrecker, in the bud. (Damn this has turned into a fucking article from an agony aunt.)

Thanks ppl (Aysh, K, Mari) for contributing to this. As and when more stuff comes in, i will surely put them up. this has been good therapy for me as well. sorry you buggers have to put up with this. I promise i will stop focusing on myself in the near future.

Excitment is in the horizon. Its tingling the ends of my nerves. i am getting butterflies...tho of a different sort. soon, soon...the wait is killing