Love on the Air - Podcast of The Whole Parent

What a Single Dad *Wants* In the Next Relationship

Let's look into the challenges of dating as a single parent. To start, we've both got some history under our belt, kids, and some requirements for what's OK and what we simply won't ever do again.
As we navigate "dating" again, we quickly realize the rules are very different as single parents. Our experience gives us some distinct advantages in terms of recognizing what we don't want. And perhaps our unfinished healing might keep us from starting the dating process again.
 
Read this article on The Whole Parent: What a Single Dad Wants

How Are You Showing Up In *Your* Love Life?

I know we often want to believe that another person is going to make it all better. A lover would make us happier. A quest for love can become a casual sport or a spiritual journey. Let’s imagine that finding a lifetime partnership is our ultimate goal. Let’s look forward to years and years with our lover. Let’s plan on staying together.
Showing Up For Yourself
First, before you find your beloved, you’ve got to become the beloved of your own life. According to Eva Blake on my recent podcast, you’re relationship with yourself, even sexually, changes your relationship to the world. How are you with self-love? Do you know what you like? Do you give it to yourself from time to time, even when you’re in a relationship? What are the things that make you happy? Can you do them for yourself?
 
Read this article on The Whole Parent: Showing Up In *Your* Love Life

Own Your Pain, Leave the Rest Alone

It is probably not a far-fetched idea that we all have hidden pain inside our hearts and minds. Often, part of any relationship-building experience is learning that OUR emotional pain is ours alone. And the harder lesson: the emotional pain of our partners is most definitely NOT OURS.
 
“Stay in your lane” means learning to support your partner when they are in pain, but not to take that pain on as yours to solve. We cannot solve the emotional pain of our partners. What we can do is stand strong beside them, assure them that we are listening and empathetic, and then be quiet and let them tell us what they need. Often, what they need may not involve you or your input.
 
Read this article on The Whole Parent: Own Your Pain

I Can’t Live With or Without You: A Curious Reemergence

Relationships may come and go. The relationship you have with yourself and your spirit (higher power, god, holy mother) is the only partnership that will never fail you. You can break up with yourself (it’s some form of depression or suicidal ideation) but for the most part, we have an inner voice that encourages us to move forward, to reach for the stars, and to NEVER GIVE UP.
At this moment, this morning, this sacred space I’m holding in my life, I am alone. I am swimming alone in the early hours of the morning. I am swimming under a full moon. I am playing tennis with many different people. And I am cultivating my inner monolog, from one of desperation and lack to one of curious emergence.
“What’s coming? Where do I want to go? What am I dreaming of, seeking, longing for?”
 
Read the complete article here: Curious Reemergence

The Four Laws of Love: Finding & Building Lasting Relationships

If We Knew What Love Looked Like
Healthy love, for each of us, is a series of trials and errors. We weren’t shown what healthy love looks like so we give it a go and screw it up a number of times before we begin to pick up some clues. But even our clues can be misguided and point us in unhealthy directions. What do we know about healthy love today if we look for the information?
 
Read the article here: The Four Laws of Love

Hold the Center in Love: Looking for a Partnership to Last a Lifetime

Love is a mutual quest. If it’s a one-sided romantic campaign, there’s going to be a shipwreck ahead as the rocks and stormy seas bring couples to the moment of truth.
How Do We Cultivate Love?
To learn about love you’ve got to go out and get it. You cannot wait for love to find you. (It won’t.) You’ve got to define for yourself what love looks like, what it feels like, what it smells like, what it says when it wakes up in the morning. Love is an ongoing adventure between two people. If you think you’ve got the roadmap for what is ahead, think again.
 
Read this episode online at The Whole Parent: Hold the Center

In This Moment You Choose: Happiness or Something Else

There are a lot of aspects of our lives that are not under our control. One of the simple (not simple to practice) realities is this: you are your thoughts. As you dwell on anger or resentment, so is your experience of life. If you can turn your face towards the sun, the affirmations and gratitudes in your life also become your life as well. Happier. 
How To Stop the Flood of Thoughts
It's not easy to train the monkey mind to obey your wishes. Much of our lives we spend chasing the whimsical imaginings of the monkey mind. "I want this. I need this. This person sucks. My life is hard because of these things."
Here is the deal: Stop the crazy thinking and you stop the ruminations on bad, negative, and resentful feelings. And guess what? If you're not ruminating on the bad stuff, you open up your mind to the good stuff. That's one of the reasons affirmations are so powerful. You ruminate on the good stuff in your life. The things you are happy and hopeful about.
So, how do you learn to calm the monkey chatter in your mind?
 
Read the full post on The Whole Parent: In This Moment You Choose

Searching Online for the Last Date: Seeking the ONE

How is it that I am in such a rush to find the next and last girlfriend/lover? I say to them, “I’m in no hurry,” but I’m kind of lying. I’m not clear what the pressure is. Lust? Passion? Loneliness? But I am sure that rushing never helps.
So I’m driving headlong towards the finish line of this story, The Off Parent. While I won’t end being the *off* parent, something about this blog/book/story line has divorce and dating written all over it. If I really wasn’t dating, and rather I was building my next marriage, and thus not divorced… Well, let’s just say I’m both eager for the story to end, and a little saddened by the closing chapters, because it means there will be no more story.
 
Read this article on The Off Parent: Seeking the ONE

Sex Without Desire Is More Like Porn Than Lovemaking

In looking for that mix of love and sex it’s important to know what kinds of things turn us on and what kinds of things turn us off. Over time we learn these things about ourselves, and with a partner, we begin to learn them about the JOIN in our lovemaking. That’s where the LOVE is. It’s in having sex with the same person, knowing their ticklish spots, and their erotic zones so you can play their bodies like a nicely tuned guitar. That was my approach, anyway.
Read the full episode here: Sex Without Desire

This Very Moment… This Is It… Stop… Give Thanks!

Today, I’m feeling my inner joy in a way that I feel it from the bottom tip of my spine to the top of my head. In terms of chakras and energy, I’m fully empowered and alive. Let’s pull apart the elements of happiness and see what moments of self-awareness have brought me to this moment. And this moment. And this one here.
 
Read THE NOW on The Whole Parent.