Depending on where someone finds me, I might appear to be a massage therapist, an intimacy coach, a cuddle therapist, a sacred intimacy practitioner, a retreat facilitator, a writer, or a man on Substack having emotionally revealing thoughts while sipping tea and pretending not to be dramatic.

There comes a point in many relationships when you realize the problem is not that you do not love each other.

That would almost be easier, wouldn’t it?

No, the more confusing truth is that you may love each other very much and still feel lonely inside the relationship. You may share a home, a bed, a calendar, a Costco membership, and enough streaming subscriptions to qualify as a small media company, but somehow still feel like you are living parallel lives.

Many men arrive at sacred intimacy after trying, very hard, to understand themselves.

They have read the books. They have listened to the podcasts. They have journaled, analyzed, overthought, downloaded the meditation app, deleted it, downloaded it again, and occasionally stared into the middle distance wondering why life still feels like something happening slightly outside of them.

Let me tell you something I never learned in school: intimacy is not one-size-fits-all.

Growing up, I was handed a script. Maybe you were too. It came with invisible footnotes and cultural assumptions:

Love looks like this.

Men act like that.

Intimacy happens in private, between two people, probably after marriage, probably behind closed doors, probably with the lights off.

It was tidy. Predictable. Heteronormative. And honestly? A little beige.

I remember the first time I heard the words “sex is sinful.” I was twelve, sitting in a cramped pew, squirming under the weight of stained-glass guilt. The preacher’s booming voice left no room for interpretation: pleasure was for saints only, and mere mortals were better off keeping their hands — and minds — elsewhere.

I want to talk about something most of us carry… but almost no one talks about.
Something that lives quietly in the corners of our lives, shaping how we love, how we touch, how we feel about ourselves.

Erotic shame.

Even just reading those two words might stir something in you—a pang of recognition, a tightness in your chest, maybe even the urge to stop reading altogether.

I get it. I’ve been there.

When people ask me what I do, there’s usually a long pause after I say, “I’m a sacred intimate.”
Cue the polite nod. The curious glance. Sometimes even a nervous laugh.

I get it. The words sacred and intimacy don’t often show up in the same sentence in our world, let alone in a job title. And when they do, people either think I’m some kind of new-age sex guru or that I give people hugs for a living. (Both are... not quite right.)

So let’s talk about it. Let’s demystify this powerful, nuanced, and deeply human work I do.

Most of us have absorbed messages that were never ours to begin with—passed down through culture, media, shame, or painful experiences. These beliefs often live quietly in the background, shaping how we show up in bed, in relationships, and even with ourselves. But what if we could choose to believe something new? Something kinder? Something truer?

I talk to a lot of men in my work—men from all walks of life, different ages, different backgrounds. And you know what I’ve realized? A lot of them are lonely. Not just a little lonely, but deeply, aching-in-your-bones lonely.

The tricky part? Most of them don’t even realize it.

I’ll never forget the moment I walked into my first men’s tantra workshop. I was nervous, excited, and maybe a little self-conscious. After all, this wasn’t your average yoga class. There’d be nudity, vulnerability, and an exploration of intimacy that most of us aren’t exactly used to. I’d spent days hyping myself up, reminding myself that everyone there would be in the same boat.