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
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
About a year ago my wife and I lost an unborn baby. Three months later I fully lost my father. In less than a trimester any dreams of fatherhood I still had – of either being one or finally having the one I was born to – were annihilated by Life’s sometimes cruel whimsy.
“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
♦◊♦ 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.
Not long ago, I just knew my relationship with my fiancé was over.
“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.