“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
♦◊♦ 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
On a recent Saturday, my lady and her mom spent the morning baking chocolate banana bread in our kitchen. They went to the store together, bought all the ingredients together, came home and …
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.”
I recently led a 2-day private coaching intensive for a well-intentioned couple who had ignorantly, innocently, conspired together for years to create a tragic mess of love.
♦◊♦ Throughout my adult life, no woman ever broke up with me that I didn’t want or even subtly encourage to leave. Nope. I was the one who ended intimate relationships. I see now I was also the one who never fully showed up for those relationships. But I only finally realized this after a woman
♦◊♦ (note: this happens in all relationships, straight or otherwise. It’s actually a masculine-feminine dynamic, not a man-woman dynamic.) I’ve discovered a tragic cycle in intimacy: WOMAN routinely lets man know he’s “not enough” (doesn’t feel enough; not emotional enough; not expressive enough; often combined with he can’t get it/do it right). Having no idea how to please her,
♦◊♦ Jealousy. That scourge of intimacy that, at its worst, can rob even the most sane person of his or her mental stability as it drags them disoriented and damned into a fiery living nightmare where they’re likely to be tortured by their own fantastical fictions. When jealousy settles into a relationship the consequences can
♦◊♦ Twice in my life, I have made a lot of money only to adventure it all away. At 26, I had built up substantial savings as a young US Air Force Officer. I had a sweet pad by the Atlantic Ocean, a Sebring convertible and the means to properly entertain my Canadian girlfriend whenever
“We have to take responsibility for what we are not responsible for.” ~ Robert Moore ~ ♦◊♦ In 2013, I attended a large workshop with 2000-ish people, about half men and women. One day, the facilitator asked this question of the men: “Men, raise your hand if you have felt unsafe at any point during the last week.”