Ken 
In more than three decades as a psychotherapist and coach specializing in gay men, I’ve worked with many men who are successful by almost any conventional measure. They lead organizations, practice medicine or law, build businesses, manage teams, and earn the financial security their younger selves hoped for. Yet a man can be highly accomplished … Read more
Every September, we remember the nearly 3,000 people murdered on September 11, 2001. We also confront a question that is difficult to ask without seeming to excuse the crime: How did the men who planned it come to believe that killing strangers, and dying themselves, was justified? As a psychotherapist, I have thought about that … Read more
Gay men have developed an extensive vocabulary for talking about sex and relationships. We can be tops, bottoms, versatile, vers-tops, or vers-bottoms. Sometimes we become so accustomed to those categories that we overlook the assumption beneath them: that anal intercourse will necessarily be part of sex. But what if it is not? Gay men … Read more
“When did my husband become my roommate?” It is a question I sometimes hear from gay men in therapy or coaching who are in long-term relationships. They may still love each other. They have dinner together, binge Netflix together, and know one another’s skin-care routines, family-of-origin stories, medical histories, irritating habits, favorite foods, and exactly … Read more
A client of mine, successful, disciplined, the kind of man who built a real career from nothing, recently told me he had started reading about retirement planning and felt a strange kind of panic he could not name. It was not about money. His finances were, by any reasonable measure, fine. It was something else. … Read more
Every so often, a client asks me a question that sounds straightforward but turns out to be about something else entirely. He does not begin by asking whether he and his partner should have an open relationship, or some form of consensual non-monogamy. Instead, he tells me they have not had sex in more than … Read more
Success Can Build an Extraordinary Life. It Doesn’t Always Heal an Earlier One. If you judged only from outward appearances, you might reasonably conclude that many successful gay men have figured life out. They have built impressive careers, achieved financial security, cultivated meaningful friendships, and created lives that many people would envy. They are physicians, … Read more
Have you ever opened Instagram and suddenly realized everyone else seems to have been invited? Maybe it’s a quiet Saturday evening. You’re finally relaxing after a long week, scrolling without much purpose. Then you see it: six people you know are having brunch in Palm Springs, a group from your gym is celebrating someone’s birthday … Read more
Gay Men and Self-Abandonment: The Quiet Ways We Leave Ourselves Behind For more than three decades as a psychotherapist working primarily with gay men, I’ve watched many clients arrive in therapy believing their core problem was anxiety, loneliness, dating frustration, relationship conflict, burnout, low self-esteem, or depression. Often, those struggles are real. However, underneath them, … Read more
Why Emotional Certainty Often Beats Intellectual Complexity This article comes from my work as a psychotherapist and coach specializing in gay men for more than three decades. Although my clinical practice focuses on the psychology of gay men, the emotional processes discussed here apply far beyond any single community. I have watched political movements, cultural … Read more
