Tell Better Stories, Have a Better Relationship (Part 3)
Part 3: Beyond Right and Wrong .. and Betrayal. “Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there’s a field. I’ll meet you there.” ~ Rumi Many years ago, I discovered a powerful practice that helps couples tell better stories in their relationships. Whether of past painful breakdowns, or happy memories they remember differently, this simple […]
Tell Better Stories, Have a Better Relationship (Part 2)
Part 2: Relationship Isn’t a Real Thing. If you’ve experienced someone close to you – a sibling, parent, old friend, or intimate lover – hold (tell) some story about you in a way that felt harsh, one-sided, dismissive of your actual experience, or perhaps ignorant and devoid of curiosity, or simply lacked generosity in how […]
Tell Better Stories, Have a Better Relationship (Part 1)
Part 1: My Story Isn’t The Same As Our Story The story of how I met my wife, Silvy, ten years ago is straight up magic. And for the first few months after we met, whenever she and I were with friends, I delighted in telling it to anyone who asked. But after patiently enduring […]
Old Wounds Don’t Heal In Isolation
I’ve an old wound sourced in childhood that still whispers from the shadowy corners of my brain: “No one cares about what you’re doing.” That painful story took root in the first few decades of my life when my father was largely absent and the rest of my family didn’t know how to show much […]
Why A Man Struggles With Excitement
♦◊♦ “Excitement.” Like many men, that’s an emotion I’ve long struggled with. It would usually take a biiiiiig experience to feel for even brief moments the visceral joy that excitement radiates throughout the body like warm sunlight pouring into a darkened room. Take for example, in just 24 hours I’m off to Ireland where 16 […]
If You’re Starving in a Relationship ???? 5 Signs They May Be “Relationally Unavailable”
As a child I learned to not need much – or at least pretend I didn’t. Like many kids I had great parents who loved me, kept me safe and provided for. Also like many kids, I experienced a consistent absence of empathetic emotional attunement from the adults around me. So when my sensitive little […]
The Myth of Masculine Leadership
There’s a dangerous idea floating around our world like poisonous spore that masculine leadership means simply: “man leads, woman follows.” This ideal obviously runs deep in many patriarchal religions, but you’ll also run into it in the world of “conscious polarity” where often charismatic teachers insist relationships work best when a ”man is in his […]
3 (Useless) Questions Men Ask Themselves When Their Women Is Upset
“Hearing a woman’s pain and carrying it are two different things.” ~ Robert Bly We men tend to ask ourselves 3 (useless) questions when faced with a woman’s upset (frustration, anger, sadness, etc): What does her upset say about me? How can I fix her upset? What does me being unable to fix her upset […]
The Practice of Courageous Surrender (for Challenging Times)
As I drove out of fire-ravaged Los Angeles this morning, I felt unusually heavy, sad. Normally, I love hitting the road for a long road trip (especially when leaving LA). This time was different. My wife & I have been in a prolonged season of loss, grief, upheaval, and looking for home. I’m driving 20 […]
The (Unfathomable) Los Angeles Fires of 2025
What’s unfolding in Los Angeles is just impossibly tragic. Beyond the human capacity to mentally process. My wife and I moved back to Los Angeles in early 2024. I’m originally from the American North East. I’m no stranger to intense weather: thunderstorms, blizzards, wind, and the occasional power outage lasting a few days or a […]