A Virgin, Again

From silent shame to sacred sex—and the life I never thought I could have. (Sex, Systems, and Sacred Union: Part 1)

The first time I had sex, I was 35.

I had just come out of a monogamous 17-year relationship—eight of those years married. For reasons I won’t share here, out of respect for my former partner’s privacy, that relationship remained sexless.

What I will share is this: For a decade and a half, it was a secret source of shame I carried alone. I didn’t tell my friends. I didn’t tell my family. I didn’t tell a therapist. And then even when I tried to talk about it, I didn’t feel safe to stay with the conversation—not with her, not with others, not even fully with myself.

The shame and grief felt too big to feel. And so I buried the ache. I buried the confusion. I told myself it didn’t matter, that maybe I was just someone who didn’t need sex. That it wasn’t important. That love could look different. That what we had was enough. I even buried the fear too—the fear that I might die a virgin.

But underneath that story I told myself was a deep heartbreak. Entire parts of me—my desire, my longing, my aliveness—had withered quietly in the silence. I felt like something essential to being human had passed me by.

By the time I finally loved myself enough to end the relationship, I was left staring at the decades I’d spent untouched, unfelt, and unknown.

Welcome to “Sex, Systems, and Sacred Union”—a series weaving story, framework, and intimate truth to explore sex as a sacred path for transformation. Not just for pleasure, but for healing, awakening, and building the kind of love that holds everything.

If this touches something in you, subscribe to follow the unfolding.

Two months later, I met a woman at ecstatic dance. By then, I had become deeply attuned to my body through movement. I had spent years letting dance become a language of intimacy, of presence, of connection. On the dance floor, I could drop in. I could feel my heart, my breath, the subtle energy between bodies. We danced together for the better part of an hour—fluid, connected, alive. I kissed her afterward. And in a moment that surprised even me, I invited her the next day on an overnight road trip. She said yes.

We drove, talking, listening to music, settling into something tender and adventurous. When we arrived, we danced into the night—just the two of us in a cabin by the sea—sensually, intimately. I wanted the confidence I felt in dance to carry into sex. In truth, I felt what I imagine a teenager might feel the first time—awkward, excited, unsure. I came on penetration. I felt embarrassed. But she looked at me with such warmth, such genuine appreciation. Later, she told me how moved she was that I let her feel my desire. She was a single mom who’d been struggling to love her body again, and being desired had touched something in her.

It wasn’t the sex I had imagined. But it was real. And I no longer needed to carry the label of virginity I had worn like a secret badge of shame for my entire adult life. In that spontaneous, intimate connection, I crossed a threshold that would change everything—it would soon evolve into a devoted pilgrimage into the depths of my own sexuality.

What I couldn’t have known then is that sex would become one of my deepest paths of awakening. That it would become a spiritual teacher, a mirror, a transmission, and a calling.

From Shame to Devotion

Over the past six years, I’ve gone deep into the world of sexuality—driven not by the pursuit of mastery, but by a desire to heal the shame that had numbed out my desire for so long.

I flew around the world to festivals and retreats. I trained with tantra teachers, participated in shamanic rituals for sexual healing and sex magic, and explored conscious kink and BDSM as a portal for reclamation. I worked with my sexuality in medicine ceremonies, where plant teachers helped me face the parts of myself I had hidden, rejected, or feared. I practiced esoteric energy lineages, did daily circular sexual energy practices for a couple years, and met parts of myself I didn’t even know existed.

I’ve collapsed in grief during sex—decades of unexpressed sorrow flooding through my body, my chest heaving with sobs as my partner held me with unwavering presence. I’ve screamed anger. Dissolved into god. Disappeared into mystery.

I don’t consider myself a master of any of it. But I do know this terrain intimately. I’ve walked it. I’ve fallen in it. I’ve gotten lost and found myself again. And it’s from that place—not arrival, but devotion—that I write.

Even now—after all of that—there are still moments where I hesitate to initiate sex with my wife. Where I worry I’m too much. Where I catch myself holding back a desire, limiting my pleasure, softening my power.

But I see those moments now not as flaws, but as mirrors. I don’t make myself wrong.

Because what I’ve come to know in my body is that sex—more than any other arena—reveals everything. How I relate to desire is how I relate to life. How I withhold pleasure is how I withhold joy and deservedness. How I brace in vulnerability is how I brace in love, in creativity, in being seen.

There is no separation. And when I heal it in sex, I heal it in life—and vice versa.

Nowhere has this been more clear than in my relationship with my wife, Kiki. Sex has been one of the most alive and transformational aspects of our partnership. We’ve used it to rupture and repair, to explore power and surrender, to move through shame and projections and disconnection.

We’ve done this intentionally. We did a 30-day sex container where we committed to sexual intimacy every day—to fully meet whatever was real for us each day. Some days we started sex while collapsed or frozen; other days, sad or angry. And instead of needing to be in a perfect state, we used those very places as portals. We learned that we don’t need to be any particular way to be intimate—we just need to be true and be willing to lean in. Through that container, we’ve been able to move through deeply ingrained patterns of anxiousness and avoidance, of honoring our yes’s and our no’s, of scarcity and abundance.

We recently completed a 7-day version with a newborn in the house. Not because it was convenient, but because it mattered. Because we know that the way we show up in sex is the way we show up in our relationship and in life.

And yet—for years—I resisted intimately talking about it, let alone writing about it.

I could share about plant medicine. I could talk about the depths of an iboga ceremony, or the wild surrender of bufo, even in casual conversations with friends. But sex? Sex lived in a different category. It felt too intense. Too private. Too “out there.” Some of the experiences I’ve had are well outside the cultural norm, and I carried the story that people wouldn’t understand. That it was safer to write about purpose. Or partnership. Or fatherhood. Or spirituality.

But it no longer feels true to leave this out.

Sex as Sacred Mirror

The truth is, sex—when held as a sacred and conscious container for healing—is one of the most powerful forces of growth and awakening. It has taught me how to feel deeply. How to lead with vulnerability. How to soften my heart. How to meet the parts of me that were terrified to be seen. It has expanded my capacity for love, for power, for tenderness. It has changed the way I hold others, the way I hold myself, and the way I hold life. The love I feel with my partner—a love my sister once called “bombastic,” and that my wife has said feels like a fairy tale to me—would not exist without this work.

Here’s an illustration of why it’s so powerful—an example that feels so alive even in this moment.

Just a few weeks ago, in the middle of enjoying a beautiful moment with my wife and daughter during our morning tea ceremony, I connected a few dots in my experience. And a powerful knowing dropped into my awareness: my orgasm is beauty. In that moment, I saw my true, naked essence as beauty.

I’d been judging my own experience of sex for years—especially my tendency to ejaculate quickly. I’d absorbed the cultural script that “lasting longer” was the goal, and so I tried all the strategies—subtle tension, energy circulation, somatic tricks. But in that moment of revelation, I finally saw through the illusion that there was anything at all to fix. My orgasm wasn’t premature. It was on time. It was beauty.

Ironically, it’s so obvious in hindsight: acceptance of what is—not endless strategies to manage my non-acceptance—is the real starting point and doorway to longer, more connected sex. And it’s no longer just a theory. From this place of gentleness and trust, I can actually feel how much more is possible. My partner reflected this too. There’s an embodied knowing now that when I stop beating myself up, my body can open—and with it, my capacity for sensation, intimacy, and presence expands.

The next time I had sex, something was fundamentally different. I stayed present with myself. I didn’t monitor her pleasure. I didn’t check in with the part of me that wanted to make sure she was satisfied. I let my pleasure matter. I let it move through me without interruption. And in that moment, I could feel my orgasm not as something to manage, but as something to be with. As a sacred pulse of beauty and truth moving through my body.

And that one shift—that single knowing—has rippled through everything. It changed how I respond when I’m triggered—I can see my own reaction as beautiful and okay. It changed how I approach rupture and conflicts—I can hold my experience and theirs as beautiful, without needing either to change. It changed how I write and cook and create—I trust now that my naked truth and the creative impulses that moved through me were fundamentally beautiful.

Because once I could feel that my essential essence is beauty, something began to soften. I glimpsed that I didn’t have to earn love or reshape myself to be worthy. That I could let truth move through me without managing it. And while I’m still learning to trust that—still unwinding old habits of performance and proving—I can feel a new level of fundamental okayness taking root in my body. And it all began with that one moment of sexual awakening in tea.

It’s not just that sex has transformed me. It’s that something wants to come through me: a transmission—a way of seeing and speaking about sex that I have never heard anywhere else, despite all the trainings and teachers I’ve worked with. It’s a truth that lives in my body that I know is not just mine—it’s meant to be shared.

And from that place, something new has begun to emerge.

There’s a way that this work wants to live in the world now. Not just as something I practice privately, but as something I speak, share, and offer. Not because I’ve mastered it—but because I’ve lived it. Because I know what it’s like to carry silent shame for decades, and what it’s like to feel it melt in the arms of love. Because I’ve tasted what becomes possible when we let sex be sacred, when we let it teach us, and when we let it shape who we are.

Even writing this is part of the unfolding—a tender, trembling yes to what’s ready to be revealed.

And when I speak about sex, I don’t just mean intercourse or physical acts. I’m talking about the entire relational, emotional, and energetic landscape of our sexuality:

How we voice desire—or silence it.
How we initiate—or freeze.
How we allow pleasure—or hold it back.
How we let ourselves be seen—or hide.
How we relate to our bodies.
How we respond to triggers or collapse, frozenness or fear.
How we navigate sovereignty, power, longing, and boundaries.

Sex is the arena where we negotiate power, vulnerability, love, shame, and presence. It’s not just an act—it’s a mirror for how we meet life itself.

Because in sex, we’re not just making love with a partner. We’re making love to life—through their body. Through our body. Through the mystery that lives between us.

And the way we show up there—the stories we carry, the habits we cling to, the openings we allow—those are the same stories we live in every other part of life. That’s why this work matters. And why the healing that happens in sex doesn’t stay in the bedroom. It ripples outward—into relationship, into creation, into how we touch the world.

Virgin Again, On Purpose

In all honesty, I still feel like a virgin when it comes to writing intimately and publicly about sex. Not in experience—but in exposure, in being fully seen here. For years, I’ve let this part of my life remain behind closed doors, held only in private containers, or spoken in safe circles. And now, I’m choosing to let it be known. I am making love to life through my truth, and letting it move through me, unguarded.

This moment—this sharing—has the same tender charge as that first sexual experience. The same breathless edge. The same sense of stepping into something for the first time. Except this time, there’s no shame in the virginity, no story of not being ready or not being enough. Just truth—and the willingness to be touched by it and to stay in the curiosity and discovery of what my heart and soul want to say.

And maybe this is also why I feel called to share.

I’ve spent years thinking in systems—drawn to what’s elegant, scalable, and foundational. And there’s something about sex—especially when held as a conscious, sacred container—that reveals itself as one of the most powerful transformation tools I’ve ever encountered.

Sex doesn’t just reveal patterns—it amplifies them. It bypasses abstraction. It surfaces our deepest beliefs about worth, safety, beauty, and power. And because of the intensity of sensation, emotion, and attachment in the sexual realm, it creates conditions where change can happen fast, deep, and at the root.

I’ve experienced how other modalities—parts work, nervous system regulation, attachment repair—can all be practiced within sex and dramatically accelerated. It’s like sex makes the whole system more responsive to truth. There’s nowhere to hide. And when we bring devotion and presence to that space, it becomes a kind of spiritual dojo—an embodied training ground for everything we want to live.

And when it’s practiced in conscious partnership, something else happens: it becomes a source of connection, beauty, and intimacy deeper than anything I ever imagined. It becomes a ground for secure attachment. A place where love becomes not just a feeling, but a reality we live inside of. Something that rewires us both—together.

And that’s where this work roots into home, into family, and into the future.

Because when we integrate this powerful energy into our relationship—not just as a tool, but as a recurring embodied practice—we create partnerships where all parts of us can be held. Where nothing has to be hidden. Where love isn’t conditional on being palatable or pleasant. Where we don’t need to perform to be loved. And that kind of partnership becomes a foundation strong enough to raise children who are securely attached. Who feel seen. Who feel safe being all of themselves.

And as a new father, I feel this in the cells of my being.

The more I can meet every part of myself—in sex, in partnership, in love, in truth—the more I can meet every part of my daughter. And that, to me, is the deepest offering: a world where our children grow up feeling loved not in spite of who they are, but because of who they are.

That’s what this work is about.
Yes, sex can be ecstatic.
Yes, partnership can be sacred.
But the real gift is when we bring it all home.

If there’s someone in your life who needs to know they’re not alone in their silence, shame, or longing—feel free to share this with them.

That’s a transmission I haven’t seen anywhere else.
And it’s one I’m here to share.

Even now, I can feel it—the same energy I’ve felt in sex when everything opens—when there’s no distance between me and life. I feel it in this act of writing. In letting the words move through. In trusting the afterglow. Not checking. Not bracing. Just resting in what’s been revealed.

So this isn’t just a story about sex.

It’s a story about emergence. About stepping into the unknown with my eyes open. About letting the thing I’ve held closest to my chest finally take its place in the center of my work.

It’s about being a virgin again—but this time, on purpose.

And this time, with love.

If this stirred something in you—an ache, a memory, a truth you’ve been carrying—I’d love to hear. You can leave a comment or send me a message. I read each one.

Continue to read Part 2 of Sex, Systems, and Sacred Union:

Sex: The Most Potent System for Transformation I Know