Rumours, Noise and Real Growth: Learning to Keep My Eyes on the Road
Matthew is a closeted gay.” “Matthew jumps from woman to woman.” “He’s money-minded.” “I’ve heard he sees women for free if they ‘offer favours’.” . “I’ve heard he’s manipulative.” “He chose sex therapy because he must be a pervert.” “All talk, no sex.” “Matthew abuses his psychology assistants—slave-driver, really.” “He’s definitely a narcissist on TV all the time.”. This is simply an account of the rumours spread about me over the years. Some is unintentionally funny, most is hurtful, and none is true. But for a long period, I responded to every whisper as an emergency. I wrote clarifications
True Leadership: The Courage to Be Disliked for the Right Reasons
Leadership, actually, requires the courage to be disliked for the right reasons. It doesn’t strive for popularity, applause, or compliments. Instead, it’s responsible for your team, the mission, and the future that you want the world to see. Discomfort, disapproval, and misunderstanding often ensue, but leaders take them directly. The rulers of history remembered those who made unpopular decisions so they served the greater good. Winston Churchill stood up to criticism for being too blunt and led the free world through a war. Nelson Mandela spent decades in prison, branded a terrorist, though never surrendered his dream of a
How Becoming Malta’s First Sex Therapist Changed Me as a Man
When I started this journey, I decided to bring in something Malta desperately needed: honest, open, and professional discussion about sex, relationships, and intimacy. I never knew how much this work would shape me as a man, change my relationships, and challenge my conception of love, even myself. It wasn’t enough to be Malta’s first sex therapist: One would simply have to challenge cultural taboos. It made me doubt my beliefs, to sort of build my emotional boundaries and, at times, to kind of get by in some very unexpected ways in my life. It Changed the Way I
Lessons Learned from Being Malta’s First Sex Therapist
When I first entered the world of sex therapy, I wasn’t merely starting a clinic, I was coming into the midst of issues around sex in Malta. I was starting a conversation that others simply didn’t want to have, confronting silence with honesty and discomfort with truth. So I knew that it wouldn’t be easy. Resistance was expected. What I didn’t expect was the level of pushback, not just from the public but also from institutions, educators and my professional circles. Some experience has been beautiful, some painful, and others priceless, but not all lessons are easy. Not a
Learning the Hard Way: Failures in my own personal sexuality and relationships
As my life and the lives of the people I work with have shown me, resilience is not an appropriate concept to fit the conditions of the world. The traditional notion of resilience — a return to a former condition following a setback — must facilitate people’s navigation of the complexities and ambiguities of modernity. Now, individuals need to deliberately cultivate the capacity to evolve through adversity, rather than simply rebound from it. Rather than clinging to a previous state of stability, they must embrace adaptability and transformation as indispensable survival mechanisms. Rather, we should work to be antifragile,
