I Thought I had to have it all figured out and it cost me everything…
I spent most of my life struggling on the inside with anxiety, fear, doubt, and shame while desperately trying to present an image of a self-made man who was successful and had it all figured out. I was lying to myself, and I was lying to everyone else. I lost my business, marriage, and home when all the lies and cheating finally caught up to me.
The man who ran away from his past
I had grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My mom and dad divorced within a year of my birth and I spent the next 13 years seeing my mom every other holidays and for six weeks in the summer, while the spending the rest of the time without my dad. Early on I learned codependent survival skills, carefully observing and manipulating people so that I didn’t get grounded or beat. Sometimes it worked. A lot of the time it didn’t.
At age 10 was raped by a family member and shortly after that happened I became the target of my step-mom’s anger, because my half-sister, her daughter, was also raped. I became the male version of Cinderella, people pleasing and seeking approval from someone who would never give it to me.
I learned to perform, abandoning myself to fit what I thought other people wanted me to be, or rebelling against what other people wanted from me, but in a way that still made me feel powerless because I didn’t know who I was, or who I could be.
I hated on myself every day, mentally beating myself up for not being good enough. I resented working, or any form of discipline because it brought me back to living in a home where I was neglected until I did something wrong.
After high school, I drifted around for a while, with no clear mission or purpose. I fell into the nice guy trap, hoping to get approval and validation from the women in my life, while abandoning myself in the process. I felt empty on the inside and nothing I did and no one I fucked could fill the void within myself.
I went from working at convenience stores to technical writing to business coaching and even becoming a published author. Outwardly it look like I was living a successful life, but on the inside I felt miserable and alone and my personal life was a hot mess.
I didn’t even hit rock bottom after I got divorced. It took getting into a rebound relationship for reality to hit me in the face and cause me to hit bottom. After being broken up with in the harshest way possible and living in a town where I didn’t know anyone and worked by day at a call center and by night door dashing, I hit rock bottom because my life was absolutely meaningless.
I couldn’t run from my life anymore or from the pain I had caused other people. What I was doing wasn’t working and I kept coming back to how meaningless my life was. Finally my roommate sat me down and told me that if I didn’t figure out a reason to continue forward, she was worried I was going to kill myself. I realized I had to take ownership of my life and I couldn’t do that as long as I kept running away.
The Moment of Truth
I realized I had two choices. I could keep trying to numb myself by being a workaholic and hiding from my inner turmoil (for all the good it would do me) or I could descend into my shadow and engage in discovering who I really wanted to be, instead of continuing to play out the dysfunctional trauma patterns that were ruining my life.
I made the choice to descend into my shadow and learned one of the most profound truths:
It is only through facing my shame, fear and anxiety that I can unlock my sovereign power and become the best possible man I can be.
My choice to face my shadow also led me to other men who were also struggling with the same problems I was facing. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel alone. I finally felt seen, heard, and witnessed and that gave me the courage to get up in front of a room full of other men and openly acknowledge my deepest shame, guilt and regrets. Through that process I was finally able to let go of the burdens I had been carrying inside of me for so much of my life and begin walking the path to sovereignty, and empowerment through presence and awareness.
The more I shared my stories with other men, the more those men also opened up to me. The more we shared collectively, the less weighed down we felt by the shame, guilt, anxiety and fear all of us had been carrying for so long in our lives. The more we spoke about our struggles and challenges and desires around career and relationship, sexuality and confidence, masculinity and presence, the more we discovered that we could live our lives unbowed by shame, back straight with pride in being a man and celebrating healthy, mature, embodied and enpresenced masculinity.
These experiences with other men helped me question everything I had learned about being a man and challenge the immature narrative that insisted that men had to provide, perform, dominate and control other people around them. It allowed me to break free from the lone wolf, white knuckling narrative that said I had to have everything figured out, while going it alone.
This lead me even deeper into men’s work, seeking out mentors who could help me on my mission. I ended up finding multiple mentors skilled in shadow work facilitation, somatic embodiment practices, Jungian Psychology, as well as incorporating my own skills and experiences from martial arts and inner alchemy, which has provided me a unique tool set that I use to help men to get out of their heads and into their bodies so they can do the deep work of facing their shadows and transmuting the secret shame and guilt that they carry into the alchemical gold of virtues that can bring those men fully into their sovereign being.
I started the Men’s Mysteries in 2023 and in 2024 I wrote my men’s work book: The Quest for Mature Masculinity.
My journey didn’t end there though. I had gotten into another relationship, but it a miserable sexless relationship where my partner decided to dominate me because she realized I didn’t have what it took to dominate her. While I had enjoyed BDSM I had never been in a 24/7 D/S dynamic and while some part of me craved submission, it also felt unhealthy. I felt like I was just people pleasing and abandoning myself in another form. And in a way I was.
I took a class How to Become a Dominant Man in order to turn the tables in the relationship I was in. I figured if I made myself become a dominant man that would change everything. And in a way it did.
Taking that class taught me valuable skills and helped me break out of my nice guy patterns to the point that I could breakup with the person I was with and walk away, confident in myself and my power. But being a dominant man didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to lead in a relationship. I spent the next year going to various trainings and initiatory experiences. All of these experiences helped me chisel away at the nice guy within, heal the wounds I had around the feminine, and led me to the conclusion that I didn’t want to be the leader or dominant in a relationship. I also didn’t want a vanilla relationship.
During that year I met mistress, a woman unlike any other person I had ever been with. She gradually lead me into full hearted acceptance of my deepest desire to submit but showed me that I could experience it as a form of devotion and service to the feminine while also being an expression of healthy masculinity.
And I knew I wasn’t being a nice guy. I wasn’t keeping my desires to myself but instead fully voicing them and acting on them, but I did it in a way that allowed me to honor my deepest truth.
A defining moment around men’s work
Men’s work continued to be important to me, but what I saw in the field of men’s work was a narrative that men needed to lead and be dominant. They needed to be the providers and create the container. None of that appealed to me or felt right and yet I also didn’t feel like I was in my feminine when I submitted. I was firmly rooted in my masculine but it came from a place of service and devotion.
I realized that I needed to raise my voice and speak out to the submissive men like me that desperately need to know that submission can be an expression of healthy, embodied, and realized masculinity. There are females dommes sharing their perspectives on submissive masculinity, but I didn’t see any submissive men sharing their desire to submit or having a space where they could be supported by other men so I decided to create one and changed my men’s coaching business to focus on working with submissive men who long and yearn for support from other men and acknowledgement that submission can be a form of healthy masculinity.
I’ve got you and your back when you most need it
The Submissive Men’s Mysteries is a service that exists to help men dive into their deepest mysteries and come out the other side embodied, enpresenced and empowered to be the best possible men they can be.
I focus on submissive sovereignty through the mastery of the mind, the body and the soul. I help men communicate clearly, cleanly, and relationally so they achieve the deep, intimate contact they’ve been longing for with themselves and with the women in their lives that long to serve and submit to.
I will support you on your journey to become the best possible man you can be by helping you transform your inner pain and suffering into the fuel that propels you toward the growth and evolution that you need to live your fullest life, but this work isn’t easy and you need to bring 110% of yourself to the mat in order to achieve the results you’re looking for.
At the submissive men’s mysteries we don’t treat the symptoms…we focus on the causes.
The result? Lasting transformation, deeper relationships and the confidence and trust in yourself that you’ve been looking for all of your life. The kind of trust and confidence that allows you to let go of the steering wheel and give up the need to be in control because you can hand it with devotion and service to the woman you love.
The Twelve Principles of a Submissive Man
The core work of the Submissive Men’s Mysteries is built around the following principles, which are used to help a man become the best possible version of himself.
Responsibility - I am responsible for my choices, my responses and the regulation of my emotions, thoughts and decisions. I choose to respond instead of react.
Respect - Respect starts from within. I respect myself, I care for myself and I trust myself, knowing that I am responsible for providing my own validation.
Embodiment - I am embodied, in touch with the wisdom and intuition that my body provides me.
Presence - I bring my full presence, awareness and attention to my interactions with others, so they feel heard and seen and our interactions are intentional.
Honesty - I am honest with myself and the people around me. I create safety for myself and others by being authentic and honest.
Integrity - I live in integrity with my values. I don’t abandon myself to please others. I cleanly and clearly express who I am and what I stand for.
Creative - I am in touch with my imagination and creativity and apply them to how I live my life. I create the opportunities in my life by being open to my inner potential.
Receptive - I am receptive to the environment around me, and use what I learn to help me make informed choices.
Feeling - I am connected to my sensitive heart and honor the full range of emotions without pushing them down or letting them control me. I express them clearly and cleanly to the people in my life.
Purpose - I am in touch with my purpose and live it in my live, relationships and work.
Breath - I am connected to the rhythm of my breath and use it lead me into the depths of my being and my connection with the world around me.
Honor - I honor all aspects of myself, and I honor the people in my life with the same respect I offer myself.