Bryan W. Reeves - Choose Her Every Day (Or Leave Her): A Guide For Your Journey Through The Transformational Fires Of Love & Intimacy

Experience Bryans Life Co aching and
Relationship Coaching P rograms at

www.BryanReeves.com

Copyright 2020 by Br yan Reeves
All Rights Reserved.
First edi tion, 2020
ISBN 978-1-7 359855-0-3

Cover Art by Akira Chan akirachan.com
Cover Design by Pa ul Preston
Layout and Typesetting by Mic hel Khalil

Introduction

We are so connected the word connected doesnt even ma ke sense.
Rumi

For over thirty years Ive been tenaciously throwing myself into the transformational fires of intimate relationship over and over again. For I began a romantic, believing in the popular songs and fairytale movies of my 1980s youth that all promised a beautiful princess was waiting for me just beyond some horizon. Whitney Houston swore she was saving all her love for me, and John Cusack (in Say Anything) assured me Id win over a womans heart by just being ni ce to her.

When my romantic escapades with women began in my early teens, I was certain love would be easy. Besides, I got along great with my three sisters and two moms (mom, step-mom), so I figured that if anyone should excel at loving a woman that someone sho uld be me.

What I actually experienced over the next twenty ye ars proved dramatically otherwise.

In my early 20s I became an Air Force Officer tasked with managing billion-dollar avionics programs and launching GPS satellites into space. The military also afforded me the opportunity to earn a Masters Degree in Human Relations. Yet none of that responsibility or education taught me anything about how to relate well to a woman in intimacy.

After my service ended at age 26, I became a personal growth workshop junkie. I threw myself into all kinds of so-called transformational exercises, from questioning my stressful thoughts to loudly howling out my painful past to eye-gazing deep into the eye-ball souls of countless willing women (and men, too). Yet still I could never understand why women always seemed to want more from me when I believed I was already giving he r so much.

I was also a long-time practitioner of spiritual disciplines and mindfulness meditation. Various teachers and practices had taught me an abundance of big, liberating ideas about life, about myself, but none offered any useful insight into why I kept choosing women so easily angered by me. Nor did any spiritual practice ever help stop me from (recklessly) fighting a womans anger with mine.

Indeed, despite all my best intentions and efforts, I just couldnt succeed at a relationship wit h a woman.

By the time I was 36, all I saw around and behind me was the twisted and hideous wreckage of dozens of relationships that had come crashing spectacularly down from their high-heaven hopes. Rather than see my part in things and really learn from my mistakes, I mostly just blamed my sweet-smelling co-pilots for foolishly flipping whatever knobs and hysterically yanking at the steering wheel such that she made our fiery demise inevitable. It never occurred to me that I might be the one who needed flyin g lessons.

It was then, at 36, amidst the blazing wreckage of yet another catastrophic heartbreak, that I resolved to stop sucking at love. I refused to believe I was destined to screw up relationships for the rest of my life. I decided there must be secrets to love and intimacy that someone could teach me that someone should have taught me 20 year s earlier.

It is true that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Because I was truly ready to do love well, whatever that required of me, and so my teachers of exquisite relationship began to appear.

Soon after this declaration a friend put a book into my hands: The Way Of The Superior Man (David Deida). I drank it down like a sun-burnt man whos been wandering lost in the desert drinks down his first cup of cold water. All of a sudden I felt like Neo in The Matrix awakening to see the world anew! Where I once saw people, movies, trees, cities, music, art, sports, and sunsets, as relatively firm objects or things or interesting experiences to be had or figured out, I now saw undulating expressions of Masculine and Feminine energies dancing together in the moment-by-moment unfolding of Lif e, itself.

My learning and growth accelerated f rom there.

Living in Los Angeles after migrating across the country from Miami with a spiritual music band Id managed for five years I had access to world class teachers. I began to attend intimacy and attraction workshops in Santa Monica with Michaela Boehm (now famously known as the intimacy coach to the stars). Michaela taught me many things, including how to be a still, rooted, openhearted expression of Masculine presence in service to the dynamic, ever-changing dance of Feminine flow. I got to go head-to-head on stage with Dr. Pat Allen, the feisty 80-yrs-aged author of Getting To I Do , during her weekly relationship talks (she called them shows) at a tiny Odyssey Theater in west LA. She would invite people on stage to talk with her about their relationship challenges, and I took advantage of the opportunity. Our conversations were sometimes adversarial, often hilarious, and always ed ucational.

Surrounded as I was by the sexually adventurous culture of southern California, I also gingerly dipped my genitals into the realms of sexual tantra. I learned breathing practices to help my body feel more orgasmic while holding off eja culation.

I experienced all this and more, starving as I was for teachers and adventures that might unlock the secrets of love and intimacy.

I also dated and dated and dated, intentionally practicing what I was learning on dates, and with female friends, too. For example, an ex-girlfriend once complained that I wouldnt walk on the street-side of the sidewalk with her. At the time I saw her complaint as arbitrary and absurd. But as I learned what it meant to offer masculine presence to a woman, and what impact it had on her, I started experimenting with it. I immediately noticed two things profound: One, I felt viscerally stronger in my body, as if my spine was suddenly plugged into an electric socket. Two, I noticed that in the moment I moved my body to be street-side of her, every womans body showed subtle signs of relaxing whether a sudden deep sigh or a hint of delight escaping her face.

Id never been tuned into such subtleties in the body before or understood any differences between masculine and feminine communication. I was giddy to be finally learning what I should have been taught years ago.

My journey of spiritual awakening began when I was ten. But it wasnt until I was 36, and had suffered immensely, that my journey of relational awakening began. Im now 46 and five years into the extraordinary relationship I ached a lifetime for. I didnt get here by accident. I got here by finally accepting I didnt know what I was doing, and by being willing to learn.

This book is the collection of essays I wrote throughout this 7 years journey to discover the secrets of intimacy, relationship, love. It contains many of the insights, wisdoms, and practices that I now teach my coaching clients, both individuals and couples, and certainly continue to use in my own relationship. This is by no means complete as my awakening journey remains ever-unfolding. I also do not insist everything here is absolute truth (or that any of it is), or that my insights and discoveries are applicable to everyone. I always reserve the right to be wrong.

Do know this: If youre doing it well, the journey into intimacy with another is a courageous journey into intimacy with your own true self.

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

There is no wrong or right way to read this book. You can start at the beginning, or with whichever chapter speaks to your heart and jump around from there. These chapters are not necessarily in chronological order, and each one stands alone a fully contained story or insight. Some have actual practices you can try; some will simply serve to inspire your own thoughts and awareness.