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
For this potent drug, a man is his own dealer, and his needle the phone in his pocket.
♦◊♦ I’ve seen it countless times: A man can leave a relationship and return, over and over, where a woman can only leave once. Not only have I seen it as a relationship coach for 8 years, I’ve been that man. In my 30s, throughout the 5 years of an inflamed relationship that profoundly challenged … 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
♦◊♦ 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.