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At the heart of all our endeavors are relationships. Whether with co-founders or funders, with lovers, with bosses, with colleagues, with children, with parents, with friends, with teammates, with clients, or even with ourselves, relationships are at the crux of our successes and our blunders, of our greatest joys as well our deepest regrets and despairs. It is the quality of relationships that determines our happiness and success from the bedroom to the boardroom. Yet with all that we are taught during our formal education, we are rarely offered scholarly or practical insight into the art of relationship. We are living in the most anxious of times and modern love stirs more consternation than ever. With more time in front of screens and less direct and unconstrained time with our fellow human beings, we become increasingly less competent at the vexingly complex activity of human intercourse. We often miss that what stymies us in our most intimate lives is also what stymies us in our professional lives. Join me in my explorations on Sex, Love, and Leadership.
Fighting the one you love.
Fighting the one you love — Don’t. Really. I know. Even the therapists and relationship experts I most admire, tell us how important it is to fight (rather than suppress) — but to learn to do it in a healthy way. I agree about the not suppressing part, but I don’t agree about the fighting. Words matter. They shape the way we think about things. They give us our framework for choices and perception. Here are some of the primary definitions for the word fight: 1. take part in a violent struggle involving the exchange of physical blows or the …
I Love You
In regard to a man she’d been seeing intimately for months, a friend recently asked, “When is it OK to say I love you?” Say I love you, I suggested, when that is what you are feeling, and you feel like saying it. Love is a gift and sharing it with someone is beautiful. Be generous. But what if he doesn’t say it back? Gifts come without strings. Do not give a gift with an expectation that you’ll get one back. If what the other person is feeling, too, in that moment, happens to be, “I love you,” and they …
If love is grace, then pray
I wrote this draft more than three years ago, in the fall of 2016. I didn’t have the courage to post it. I’m publishing it now, exactly as I wrote it because it has a happy — a very happy — ending. And because I love you. Bighearted I was poking around in Facebook and found the draft post below. My first impulse was to delete it, but then I was struck by how different my life is now. Let me begin at the end. On September 14, 2017, I met my beloved, Michele Taipale. It was a MeetMindful date. …
Do you dance or play games?
The precarious process of coupling. When we meet someone we are interested in, when the chemistry of attraction kicks in, we can either start a dance or a game. The dance is a back and forth of curiosity, of excitement, and revelations. I reveal who I am one step at a time, you reveal who you are one step at a time. “Dance is the hidden language of the soul,” said Martha Graham. Do we move well together, does it feel good? Great! Together, we create something interesting and beautiful, fun, maybe sensual. We decide, one dance at a time, …
