I appeared on Melanie Curtin's podcast "Dear Men" back in 2018, and we got into some real territory around dating, nice guy patterns, and what it actually takes to show up with women. This conversation covers a lot of ground I don't always talk about publicly.
We explored my journey from total dating inexperience through college and into my twenties. The super crush pattern, where I'd fixate on women I barely knew as a protection mechanism. Nice guy strategies that never worked. That pivotal moment when a woman shoved me away and I completely collapsed into a younger version of myself.
What makes this conversation valuable is how we trace the path from that collapse into actual transformation. The somatic work with my future wife's gestalt therapist, learning to receive touch and ask for what I wanted. Getting serious about the gym and feeling vitality return to my body. Then discovering pickup artist material, which I'll be honest, was my gateway into men's work, even though the techniques themselves didn't work for me.
The real shift came when I got into alignment with my values and started living from integrity rather than strategy. That's when I met my wife, and we didn't have to play games because we were both showing up as ourselves in communities that mattered to us.
If you're struggling with dating or feel stuck in nice guy patterns, this episode walks through what that journey actually looks like. Not the highlight reel, the real territory. Check it out if you want the full story of how I went from anxious virgin to married to an incredible woman who genuinely sees and desires me.
