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
“When someone comes to you with their pain, they’re not asking you to decide if their experience is valid.” ~ Silvy Khoucasian ♦◊♦ Through all my adventures in intimacy, I spent way too much time evaluating the validity of my partners’ upsets and frustrations – often deciding they are NOT valid, especially when directed at … Read more
For years I couldn’t feel my feelings, and my intimate relationships suffered awfully as a result.
♦◊♦ In 2010, I spent 12 months in a purple SUV Dodge Durango crisscrossing North America on the most wondrous adventure with five other men, five brilliant musical shamans forever my brothers. That purple Durango – which anyone not color blind (like me) would always insist was blue – held us safe as we made … Read more
For nearly 3 decades, choosing me as your boyfriend was like strapping yourself into a faulty emotional roller coaster whose wheels would scream and spark before jumping the tracks, offing us both towards an awful demise.
Throughout my 20s and 30s, I often stayed in relationships I was deeply divided about staying in. My mouth would make promises my bones knew I couldn’t keep. Which made life awful for any woman who ever tried to love me.
Is watching porn creating beneficial experiences for your body, mind, relationship(s)? … Or impairing them?
When a man (or woman) says “I don’t want drama,” he is essentially saying, “I am terrified of feeling out of control, and I cannot be with anyone who feels feelings or acts in ways that are beyond my current capacity to feel or simply outside my tiny stress-free comfort zone.”