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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
A lot of men find it challenging to feel fully alive when in a long-term committed intimate relationship. Some men, who perhaps enjoyed being single, who felt lively & dynamic without the responsibilities a relationship brings, may struggle to maintain that vitality while settling into long-term relationship. Being in a two-person system (relationship) requires different … Read more
Earlier this week, my wife showed me three photos of young children, two girls and a little boy each maybe 3 or 4 years old, that she’d made using an app that combined her image with mine. This is what our children might have looked like, children we learned not long ago we are biologically … Read more
As I sit in the serene quietness of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, the memories of these past five days flood my mind. Our annual ELEVATE Men’s Retreat has ended and everyone is returning to their lives, yet the electric energy of countless profound moments linger in the warm summer mountain air. This retreat was … Read more
This week, I’m off to the ancient Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina for my annual ELEVATE Men’s Retreat. It is an unspoken epidemic – with unfathomable repercussions – that so many men do not trust other men. For when a man cannot trust other men, it may reflect in the struggle to fully trust … Read more
“We are so connected the word ‘connected’ doesn’t even make sense.” ~ Rumi ♦◊♦ For over thirty years I’ve been tenaciously throwing myself into the transformational fires of intimate relationship over and over again. For I began a romantic, believing in the popular songs and fairytale movies of my 1980s youth that all promised a … Read more