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 … 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.
For this potent drug, a man is his own dealer, and his needle the phone in his pocket.
“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
♦◊♦ More and more I’m convinced the success of intimate relationship strongly depends on … timing. I don’t mean perfect accidental timing, like where you just happen to be at the post office on the exact day, at the precise hour, minute, second that The One needs stamps. I don’t mean bad circumstantial timing, like … Read more
♦◊♦ A few years ago, I was shocked to discover I’d spent a lifetime (unknowingly) allowing one especially critical boundary to be violated by the women I loved, over and over. Naturally, I routinely violated this same boundary for them, too. Had I been aware (and able to stand for this boundary) I’m convinced! I … 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.
In a coaching session with a couple, I told a confused man whose wife was on the brink of leaving: “She will follow you anywhere … if you just stop trying to solve the ‘problems of her’ and instead practice connecting with her.”
Not long ago, I just knew my relationship with my fiancé was over.