Daddy issues.Only women have daddy issues … is what I was led to believe by countless other boys and men I know now were themselves just teeming with unexamined daddy issues.(like nipples, men have ‘em, too.)My father has been overwhelmingly absent throughout my life. I used to think, “How could he have messed me up? … 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
The great crises of our time for countless men: a persistent incapacity to fully feel our aliveness, and no elder guidance to show us another way.
“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
For this potent drug, a man is his own dealer, and his needle the phone in his pocket.
“The more fragile a man feels internally, the more likely he is to try building an outer shell to hide this fragility.” ~ Guy Corneau (Absent Fathers Lost Sons) ♦◊♦ Throughout my life I have been plagued by the enduring fear that I’m never quite successful enough, whatever my actual successes. Which has been at … Read more
I never understood why the women I loved were so often angry at me. Until one day, in the painful midst of another lover-spat going nowhere, I finally got it …
For years I couldn’t feel my feelings, and my intimate relationships suffered awfully as a result.
We men are Angry. Furious. Enraged. Which has nothing to do with Republicans, or Democrats, or the unfair accusations our intimate makes in her (his) moments of upset. No. We’re angry because our fathers left us alone to find our own way.
“Find someone who loves you as you are” is a wise ideal to lean towards, but make no mistake: You don’t get to stay the same person when you decide to build a life with another human being.