This Is the Fairy Tale I Believe In

Love that deepens through dragons, devotion, and a nine-month-old baby.

When I first fell in love with Kiki, it felt like stepping into a fairy tale.

We had only been dating for a month and a half when we flew to Fiji for my birthday. I was giddy, glowing, wide open. I couldn’t stop beaming to people about her, about us, about the magic we were creating. It didn’t feel like something I had to protect or hold close. It felt like something I wanted the world to feel.

People told me: “Enjoy the honeymoon phase while it lasts.” They said it like a warning, like passion was supposed to fade.

I didn’t believe them then. And I still don’t believe them now.

Because what I’ve come to see is this: Back then, I thought fairy tales were just about that part—the glow, the newness, the effortless passion.

But I was wrong.

Fairy tales don’t end when things get hard. Fairy tales begin when the dragons appear.

They’re made of thresholds, of dark forests, of moments when everything seems lost, and we continue on the quest for love anyway. That’s what makes them epic—not the absence of hardship, but the devotion to beauty through it.

And that’s what we’ve built.

The other morning, we had a rupture. We were both exhausted. Our nine-month-old daughter Ember is still learning to sleep through the night. I was feeling irritated, tired of feeling tired. I wanted us to both feel energized again.

And instead of getting stuck in the frustration at each other, Kiki invited me downstairs for our dyad practice. We sat across from each other on the mat in our practice room.

I moved the anger. I let the heartbreak come through. And in her meeting me, I could finally touch the deeper ache—the part of me that missed her, that missed us feeling well-rested and lit up. I softened. I apologized. I bowed. She received me.

We’ve become masterful at repairing. At not just moving on, but meeting the rupture so fully that it becomes a doorway to a deeper level of love. And a couple hours later, we went on a beautiful date.

Even this home we live in—this sanctuary of love that we both feel deep appreciation for every day, only became possible because we were willing to meet the dragons.

A little over a year ago, I had just returned from a 4-day conscious kink retreat, where I worked through my relationship with money and power. There was one moment where I saw with total clarity: “I get to set boundaries around how my money is spent in our family.” Not from control, but from energetic integrity. From honoring the part of me that had diluted my power to stay safe.

I also touched a deeper part of myself—the part that loves to provide, that wants to be well-used in devotion, and that finds pleasure, power, and turn-on in being a conscious provider. I came back ready to own the archetype I had long been afraid to claim: the sacred sugar daddy in me. The one who wants to be generous and who feels sexier, freer, and more alive when his power isn’t bound up in guilt or people-pleasing, but flowing through clean, clear giving.

Bringing that clarity and turn-on back into the relationship—that’s where it got terrifying. It stirred everything. It forced us to confront ways we'd collapsed money with power and love. It touched her fear of being left and homeless. It touched my fear that claiming what was mine would make me lose love.

There were ruptures, projections, old wounds brought to the surface, moments when the foundation of our relationship shook.

But we stayed. We stayed through the fire. We kept choosing. We cleaned up the distortions wrapped up around money. We came into integrity. And I was able to buy our family a home as a clean expression of devotion and love.

After that, money became a place where life force energy could flow freely between us—a way for the masculine to provide and the feminine to surrender. My generosity could move as devotion without obligation. Her receiving could come as appreciation without guilt. And the flow itself began to feel hot, alive, and sexy, like love moving through the current between us.

For a long time, I kept the sacredness of our love inside a small bubble, not letting myself fully beam about how wonderful it was. Some part of me believed I had to resolve everything I perceived as a problem first, before I could share more. That until it was all worked out, I couldn’t fully claim how good it really was. As if the fairytale didn’t count until it was spotless. As if I had to earn the right to beam.

But the truth is—this love isn’t here to be hidden. It’s here to be shared.

Because part of receiving the beauty is letting it ripple. This love is not a secret to protect. It’s a transmission. And I know it’s part of my dharma to speak it.

I’m a romantic at heart. I still love dating my wife—especially now, five and a half years in, in the sacred chaos of parenting, in the quiet moments after the fire. Just that other day, we dressed up for a date—Kiki in a stunning turquoise dress, me in a handwoven boho shirt. It was the one day we had a nanny, and we chose to spend it nuzzling on the couch of a Japanese restaurant in downtown Boulder.

And what still surprises me sometimes—is that I feel more attraction to her now than ever before. More turn-on. More devotion. Even more love for the woman who is the mother of my child.

Because passion and love don’t die with time, as long as we continue to meet what’s true. It deepens. It ripens.

So I’m letting myself beam again. Not with naïve innocence, but with a radiance that’s been forged through fire. And this time, I’m unapologetic about it. Because beaming—letting the beauty of this love be seen—isn’t just something that happens to me. It’s a sacred practice: a way of honoring the life we’ve created, the love we’ve devoted ourselves to, and the world I believe is possible.

This is the fairy tale I believe in.

And it keeps getting better.