There’s a lot of bullshit kicking around online about boundaries. It’s a buzzword now, like other forms of therapy-speak, and most people are getting it wrong. Boundaries don’t attempt to control other people; they clarify your standards in relationship. They’re an inside job, and they arise in many different ways. How we want to be treated is shaped by experience—a unique mix of childhood conditioning, relational history, and sociocultural influence.

For a long time, my boundaries formed with “fuck you” energy. They protected me, and they often arose from anger, hurt, disappointment, or loss. It was an all-or-nothing proposition. Navigating how others treated me felt easier when I categorized people as safe or unsafe. Fuck-you boundaries are useful here; they generate the energy required to cut people out.

I stayed in that all-or-nothing place for years because threat still lived in my body. I think of it as noise or static—a constant low-grade hum that makes it hard to hear safety. Trauma residue turns even uncertainty into the “predator in the bushes.” Any brush against someone’s blind spot felt dangerous, like a personal affront. The fastest way to feel safe was to sort people into: keep or cut.

I was on the phone with my dad when he drifted into a subject I had decided was off-limits: triangulation around my brother’s no-contact boundary.

Triangulation is when someone pulls a third person into their unresolved tension with someone else—venting, complaining, or asking them to mediate instead of dealing with the conflict directly.

I took a deep breath and paused for about three seconds. Then I ran a simple internal check:

What did I hear?
How do I feel?
What am I going to do?

I heard him swerve into a topic that was off-limits. I felt calm and grounded. I decided I would find an opening and redirect the conversation. Boundary entered.

My dad course-corrected for about three sentences, then tried again. Same process.

What did I hear?
How do I feel?
What am I going to do?

I heard him cross the boundary a second time. I was still grounded, but now slightly annoyed. I decided I would redirect again. This time with more tone, and then follow through. I did. He dropped it. There was an awkward silence. I held firm.

This shift in how I navigate relationships happened when my nervous system began to trust that I could handle discomfort without collapsing or lashing out. Safety moved from “no threat allowed” to “I can regulate through this and still choose what serves me.”

I love my dad, but he has blind spots. In many ways, he was relating to a role I used to play: the son who regulates the room. The problem is, I’m no longer available for that role. My dad is unlikely to update his mental model of me, so I have to decide what shape our relationship will take.

I want to catch up with him. I want to hear about his life. I understand the limitations, and I now have the relational and nervous-system skills to navigate that complexity. This is where boundaries come from love.

I no longer need boundaries to sever. My boundaries help me navigate, and when necessary, define consequences. I want to stay in relationship with my dad, but without clearly articulated standards, it would be unnecessarily painful. Boundaries define what is possible. Once that shape is clear, I can put my energy into loving within it.

I’m still willing to walk away from what doesn’t serve me. But now it’s a choice, not a reaction.

The more I trust myself, the fewer hard edges my boundaries need. And to be clear: the scrappy, fuck-you kind helped shape who I am. I’m grateful for them. These days, though, my boundaries are quieter. They’re standards I live by in relationship; shaped by a curiosity that asks, How can I love here? without shrinking, contorting, abandoning myself, or grasping.

And tempered by the wisdom of fuck you.

It’s a new year, and I am feeling a new, subtle texture. A quiet settling that is unfamiliar to me. I have been trying to locate the feeling. Is this sadness or loneliness? Maybe grief. No, none of those.

The absence of noise feels a bit unsettling, so my mind rushes in to fill the space. Ah, there it is. It’s spaciousness. In that slightly disorienting silence, there is space; there is room to expand and hold more. More sensation, more feeling, more desire.

Most of my life, desire has been wired to longing, pursuit, and proving. It registered as a low-key hum of electricity—sometimes mistaken for passion, other times more obviously revealed as dysregulation.

That dysregulation came with a constellation of behaviours I didn’t fully understand, at least not at the level of the nervous system. Longing felt like chemistry. Intensity felt like connection. And pursuit masqueraded as desire, even when it was really my body searching for equilibrium.

These days, I feel different. Desire is at home in my body. It’s welcome and embraced, and that has radically changed the texture of Eros. I was recently asked about sexual preferences, and I was a bit embarrassed I didn’t have much to say. Sure, attraction has its quirks, and I do recognize my own idiosyncrasies. But in my exploration of the erotic, however, I have landed on something unexpected: trust.

Trust, when freely given, is an offering of vulnerability by choice. And when desire moves through that space, it softens into something resembling surrender. It’s an invitation to see without scrutiny. To hold without management. To desire without consumption. When a lover trusts my pacing, trusts my touch, trusts that she won’t be rushed or used, she’s offering true orientation, and that’s erotic in a way that is deeply nourishing.

It’s nourishing because it quietly confirms mutuality, it allows my desire to stay slow and intentional, and it invites my care and reverence without demand. My desire, my Eros stays expressive, rather than strategic and striving. Eros stops being about outcomes, and becomes about inhabiting the moment together in a way that is relational.

And so I remain here—unrushed, attentive, and willing. Not chasing desire, not managing it. Just listening. Letting Eros move at the speed of trust.

It’s been an interesting year.

I spent much of it in a season of looping — circling the same questions, revisiting familiar patterns, trying to resolve contradictions through effort and hindsight. There was movement, but not always direction. Awareness without integration.

Now that winter is here, something has shifted.

I’ve entered a season of landing.

The year began with more questions than answers — about intimacy, desire, consent, and my own tendency to stay oriented toward things that never quite chose me back. It’s ending with embodied truths instead. My boundaries have clarified through discernment. What began as protecting myself from others has shifted into boundaries that simply reflect my values.

I didn’t arrive here through force.

I oriented toward my inner knowing — toward what actually lands as true for me.

The Moment It Became Clear

I saw that I was being chosen for stability and regulation — not freely.

I was oriented toward when there was crisis, uncertainty, or need, but not when there was clarity or choice. And it wasn’t the first time I had found myself in this position.

This is a vestige of an old pattern of mine. One that confuses usefulness for closeness, and proximity for intimacy. But usefulness is neither of those things.

Need is not want.

And consent offered under pressure is not consent at all — it’s compliance. I can’t think of anything less attractive than that.

Why I Refuse to Participate in Ambiguity

Ambiguity is not neutral territory. It often masquerades as openness or flexibility, but in practice it creates confusion, pressure, and unspoken expectation. Ambiguity leaves one person guessing while the other remains unaccountable.

In relational and erotic contexts, ambiguity can function as a soft yes — not because consent has been given, but because refusal hasn’t been named. That space is not mutual.

That is a fundamental boundary for me.

Consent that is not expressly given is easily misinterpreted. Ambiguity blurs responsibility rather than locating it. I am not willing to wonder about implications after the fact.

If desire isn’t clear, it isn’t desire.
If consent isn’t explicit, it isn’t consent.
And if a no cannot be spoken freely, a yes cannot exist in full.

Clarity is not force. It is respect.

I was a child once, and I could not give consent. That truth left a permanent imprint on my body and my values. What it has crystallized into is simple: if it is not a full-bodied fuck yes, it is a no.

Containment Was the Missing Piece

Containment is not emotional restraint or politeness. It is the seat of personal responsibility.

It is the capacity to own desire fully — to name it clearly or to hold it internally without leaking it sideways. When containment is present, desire does not fawn, freeze, or masquerade as agreement. A “sure” is not offered in place of a yes.

Where containment is absent, ambiguity takes over. Desire is felt but not owned. Boundaries are implied but not spoken. Responsibility quietly shifts to the other person.

I no longer participate in that structure.

My body knows the difference.
And I know what it costs me to ignore that knowledge.

Just over a year ago, I took the VIA Character Strengths assessment and learned that one of my lowest traits was self-regulation. Three months into men’s work, I didn’t know it yet, but my capacity to contain my own experience was about to be pushed to its edge.

Containment is the capacity to hold your own experience; all the fire, ache, and thought — without repressing it, leaking it, or collapsing into it. It’s the strength I didn’t know I lacked until life began testing my ability to stay with myself rather than reach outward.

This is the beginning of a multi-part exploration. One I am choosing to write from the inside out.

The call came on June 2nd. The tone in Michael’s voice gave it away before the words did—strained, carrying something heavy.

Daniel… it’s my dad, Leon. He’s not doing well. We don’t know how much time he has left. Can you shuck oysters on Wednesday?

Grief moved to the edges of my heart instantly. I swallowed, steadied myself, and said, “Yeah. Of course.”

I’d shucked oysters for Michael and Suzanne for five years, and Leon was always there—first to approach my table, last to leave. He’d stand at the corner in quiet anticipation of his favourite shell: Malpeque from PEI. By the time most guests arrived, Leon was already four or five oysters deep, a small testament to the man’s love of fine food.

And now I was preparing to shuck oysters for his last meal. The final thing he would taste before choosing medical assistance in dying

I arrived at the Canterbury Foundation, a mix of steadiness and something else, an ache behind my ribs. I was escorted outside to a courtyard where the leaves rustled overhead and a small fountain whispered nearby. After surveying the setup, I carried in my gear: shucking knives, hotel pans, towels, and coolers packed with oysters and ice.

I set up slowly, making sure every movement was deliberate. I folded each towel with care, letting the rhythm of preparation become its own quiet offering. Devotion to set and setting felt like the highest form of respect I could give a man and his family on a day like this.

Suzanne and Michael greeted me warmly, and soon they brought Leon down to enjoy oysters before the guests arrived—first at my table, just like he always was. He sat quietly in his chair, a softer presence than the man who had delivered one of the most endearing speeches I’d ever heard on his ninetieth. He was a true gourmand, and his love of food was matched only by the courage in his spirit and the warmth he carried into every room.

The food table was adorned with his favourite things: cheeses, wines, lobster rolls, and of course, oysters. Suzanne curated a playlist of his favourite songs and played Neil Diamond, Leonard Cohen, and others. Soon the guests began to arrive—familiar faces, each one welcomed into the moment.

After briefly catching up with guests, I offered Leon a tin of Beluga Sturgeon caviar—my offering to a man with impeccable taste. Michael and Suzanne were pleasantly surprised, and though Leon didn’t say much, his eyes widened at the first taste. A warmth radiated through my belly at the sight.

Leon sipped and slurped before he leaned back and gave a quiet signal that he was finished. Michael and Suzanne moved to his sides without a word, lifting his wheelchair and guiding him inside. It was clear what came next. The room shifted. Everything softened. A few moments later, some of the guests were invited upstairs to be with him. Conversations dropped to a hush. People moved with a kind of reverence, as if every step needed to match the weight of the moment.

Suzanne came back out and gave me a small nod—an unspoken cue to serve the last oysters and begin packing up. I finished the tray quietly, placed the final shells on ice, and wiped down the table in slowness. When everything was clean and put away, I let them know I was heading out. There was no need for words. I walked through the courtyard, past the fountain and the rustling leaves, carrying the stillness of the afternoon in my chest.

The next day, Suzanne and Michael stopped by the shop. I’ll never forget the look in their eyes. There was a transcendent form of understanding. We didn’t talk about the details. We didn’t need to. I stepped around the counter, opened my arms, and offered them a warm hug, one human gesture to hold the weight of everything that had passed.

When I think back on that afternoon, what stays with me isn’t the food itself, but the meaning inside the gesture. I didn’t know how to soften the edges of a family’s last meal. All I could do was offer what I knew—steady hands, a quiet presence, and a taste of something he loved. It felt like a small, honest way of honouring a man whose life had been lived with appetite, courage, and heart.

I can’t remember exactly when I first read King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette—only that it was years before I read it again inside my men’s group.

What I do remember is the fascination.

The idea that a man could embody the mature masculine psyche through archetypes felt mythic and powerful:

The King — steadiness, vision, blessing
The Warrior — discipline, clarity, consequence
The Magician — insight, intuition, pattern-seeing
The Lover — aliveness, eros, connection

On my first read, I consumed these archetypes with my mind. It was invigorating, but mostly theoretical. Exciting, but not integrated. Inspiring, but disembodied.

Because you don’t understand archetypes. You inhabit them. And inhabiting them requires right relationship with the body, with the breath, with the nervous system, with the shadow, and with all the places where your life is still out of alignment.

My second read came years later, inside the container of my men’s group.

By then I had lived enough, fucked up enough, grieved enough, and grown enough that the archetypes no longer felt like ideas.

They feel alive.

I can feel it when I step into a food event as the Devotional Chef—a Lover-archetype offshoot that has become part of my personal mythos.

Moore and Gillette’s book is built on Carl Jung’s original twelve archetypes. They distilled them into four primary expressions of the mature masculine. And while the language of the book is dated, the wisdom underneath it is timeless.

Archetypes are not characters. They are patterns of energy. Blueprints. Primordial postures the psyche recognizes immediately, in the same way the body recognizes heat or gravity.

I lean on my archetypes for guidance, and though I’ve taken creative liberties that suit my psyche, the essence remains unchanged.

Archetypes are useful models with distinct energetic signatures, each with its own posture, its own gifts, its own shadows. And when we intentionally embody them—through breath, through movement, through ritual, through somatic practice, we tap into a version of ourselves that is moving toward fullness.

Not perfection. Not performance. Fullness. The point isn’t to impersonate an archetype. It’s to let it animate you.

To let the King straighten your spine and widen your perspective.
To let the Warrior clarify your boundaries and sharpen your integrity.
To let the Magician steady your breath and reveal the unseen patterns.
To let the Lover soften your chest, awaken your senses, and remind you why any of this matters.

Archetypes became most useful to me when I stopped looking at them as fixed identities and started treating them as a council. Each with distinct energies I can call on depending on what the moment requires. Not fantasies. Not personas. Just functional, reliable patterns that sharpen how I move through the world.

This is the frame that eventually became what I now call my Inner Council.

I turned 40 in September, and instead of it passing quietly like so many other years, this one demanded answers to questions I could no longer avoid. When did I outsource my agency to circumstance—or to the indecision and inaction of others? I had thought myself fluent in Jocko Willink’s brand of radical ownership, having read his book twice. And yet, here I was, mired in complacency, looking outward instead of inward.

It was the beginning of my reckoning—not collapse, but brutal self-confrontation. The kind that asks: What the fuck have I been doing? How long have I mistaken endurance for loyalty, or self-sacrifice for duty?

It was tempting to blame others, and for a while I did. But that didn’t help. Having spent years blaming and shaming myself, I knew I needed to try something different. I needed to stand in the mirror long enough to see where I had gone missing, and muster the courage to hold those parts of myself.

What I saw wasn’t weakness. It was a man brandishing his core wounds like weapons—mistaking heaviness for purpose. But weapons are useless when the war isn’t yours to fight. So I put them down: the proving, the performing, the addiction to responsibility disguised as control.

What came next was stillness, a quiet rebellion devoted to surrender. The kind of silence that echoes until all that’s left is a reflection you can’t unsee. And then came the inflection point—the choice to embrace the uncertainty of my becoming, or to worship the wound and repeat the patterns that keep me tethered to a comfortably numb version of myself.

I choose uncertainty. Because anything less than aliveness is just another form of death. And while I have never feared death, I do fear moving through this life not truly living.

Subscribe now

I was asked an interesting question over the weekend:

”I have been playing with this question for some time. But it is a question that’s really up for me to explore right now, not only in myself, but also in others. I suppose it’s probably unique to everyone.

What drives your desire or arousal for another? What is it that creates that feeling of wanting to know someone more? How is it different from one person to another and why?

I’m not expecting you to answer them all. I am just sitting with this and deeply curious.”

I sat with it for awhile. And what surfaced was curiosity itself. That’s what turns me on. For love and for life.

Curiosity is the currency of Eros. It’s an openness to surprise and wonder. It invites us to explore the unknown, to see what reveals itself when we stop trying to control the outcome. Most of us approach connection with ideas, expectations, stories, projections—but curiosity is what cuts through that. It’s what makes discovery possible.

As Esther Perel writes, “Curiosity is a key erotic element, as it keeps us interested in ourselves and in our partner.”

Notice: she says ourselves first.

Curiosity turned inward is how the spark of Eros animates our own aliveness. When we bring that same curiosity outward — toward another; it’s an invitation to connection.

I led with curiosity, and she opened into it. Then she met me with her own.
That’s magnetism.

There are endless ways to explore ‘I want to know you.’ That kind of creativity cultivates a deep well of intimacy.

Subscribe now

Pop culture has claimed the word boundaries. Podcasts, books, and social media are full of takes on them — and that’s a good thing.

We need more conversations about boundaries. They are essential. But also, often misunderstood.

1. Boundaries as Control vs. Boundaries as Clarity

“You can’t talk to me like that.” → misunderstood

“If you speak to me that way, I’ll end the conversation.” → clear

Boundaries are standards for yourself. They govern your participation in relationship. They’re not demands — they’re decisions. And they’re only real if they’re actionable.

2. Boundaries as Distance vs. Boundaries as Intimacy

Boundaries don’t always mean cutting people off, withdrawing, or becoming unavailable. → misunderstood

Boundaries create the safety required for deeper connection, if that connection is possible.

Yes — cut someone off if they are consistently hurting you. But in many cases, it’s worth asking:

“Can I stay open without abandoning myself?”

That’s contained intimacy. That’s what real connection looks like when self-respect leads.

3. Boundaries as Punishment vs. Boundaries as Care

“I’m protecting my peace.” gets tossed around like moral high ground. But that kind of shielding and armouring is avoidance dressed as empowerment.

A true boundary sounds more like:

“I want this connection to work, and this is what I need to feel safe.”

That’s not punishment — that’s care with structure. A willingness to participate and serve love without losing self.

I didn’t grow up with boundaries. I had a sense of impropriety, sure — but like most kids, it was weighed against belonging, fitting in, and appeasing my parents. I had many instances where my boundaries were flat-out violated — before I even knew the word existed.

So yes, I’m still working on it. It’s still hard to know how you want to be treated. Harder still to speak it aloud to the people you love. Because the old scripts whisper:

“What if they leave? What if they reject me?”

We all have to reckon with those childhood blueprints — the ones that shaped how we love, protect, and stay in connection.

I love my father, but I’ve learned to keep distance in certain ways. That’s not coldness — that’s discernment. And that’s what I am sharpening now: the vision that sees what kind of care and connection can truly hold me and my wildness.

Subscribe now

On the eve of turning 40, I shared a cozy space with a dear friend—inside a tent, under a cloudy sky.

As we both slipped in and out of our journey with plant medicine, she whispered something about children and war. Then she sat straight up, cupped her face in her hands, and began to weep.

These tears were different. She was grieving—raw, ancestral grief.

The kind that pours from the marrow. Less personal, more collective.
The kind that belongs to women who remember the weight of silence.

And I was there. As a witness. Holding space.

Like so many times between us, I dropped into deep presence to honour the moment.
It wasn’t a conscious act. I was pulled forward—spine lengthened, breath slowed.
Everything inside went quiet.
And I just stayed. Still. Rooted by her side.

The trees rustled as if to bless the fullness of her expression.
Something holy passed between us in that moment.
Not romantic. Not sexual.
But steeped in a different kind of Eros.

I’ve always been drawn to the primal within her—her little bent of chaos nudging my internal sense of order, stirring my inner masculine.

But that night, I didn’t gasp or posture.
The sacred masculine is not loud.
It holds, without possessing. It honours, without fantasizing.

And in witnessing her—truly seeing her—I remembered who I am.

I remembered what it means to show up without needing the moment to be different.
To anchor my root in still presence—not as a plea, but as an offering as steady as the earth beneath our bodies.

This moment will live in me.
Because like so many moments with her,
I became more myself.
I belong to myself.

Eros is life force. It’s the animating pulse behind everything we touch, create, and crave. That might sound woo, but desire in all its forms moves the world. And at its core, we’re all here because of sex.

For most of my life, that connection leaked in impulsive, disorganized ways. Early sexualization warped my relationship to Eros. No longer a vibrant current, it was held hostage by shame, confusion, secrecy. You can probably imagine what that looked like.

But I was hungry for sovereignty in my own body. So I got curious. Not just about sex, but about the energy underneath it. What is this wild force that grips me, moves me, scatters me?

Eventually, I learned how the brain works. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy helped me understand how impulsivity erodes the prefrontal cortex—how the space between urge and action is where power lives. I started rehearsing new scripts. I trained that pause.

And in that pause, I met Eros.

Strip sex from sex drive, and what you’re left with is drive itself. And that’s what Eros truly is: creative hunger.

Eros isn’t just about sex. It’s about aliveness. It’s not an idea, it’s a sensation. You feel it in your breath, your fingertips, the sharp inhale when truth lands in your body. It’s the heat that rises when inspiration hits. The tension you feel when something matters. The ache of longing that says, There’s more to give. More to feel. It’s the pulse in my hands when I shape dough, and the way I lean in when someone I care about speaks.

Most men are starving for Eros and don’t even know it. They think they need more discipline, more sex, more drive. But what they really need is to channel the erotic to work for them, instead of leaking it

That’s what this work is. Reclaiming Eros as our inner fire—and alchemizing it into full-bodied presence, purpose, and pleasure.

Share Holding My Wildness