that time, particularly here in the conservative Midwest, and I wanted to change that. After coming out to myself, I worked for a time with a wonderful gay therapist who helped me navigate my initial stumblings into the gay community, but I really felt like I was paving my own way and fumbling through the dark figuring out how to function as a gay man. As a helping professional in my community, I wanted to start offering services and resources where none existed to help gay men navigate their coming out journeys and learn how to date and have healthy relationships. That’s where my “Gay Love Coach” business came in, becoming one of the early pioneers of love coaching specifically for gay men when the life coaching field burst onto the scene in the early 2000’s. I have a passion for helping not only gay men, but all people to cultivate healthy relationships and sexuality. I have a heavier emphasis later on in my career with sex education and therapy because I want to help eradicate the sex-negative and repressive culture that we live in to promote more sexual health and well-being. There wouldn’t need to be a coming-out process for the LGBT community if there was greater acceptance of diversity and flexibility in our socialization practices, and sexual “dysfunctions” wouldn’t need to be as prevalent if we could be more affirming of our sexual selves, have a consensual pleasure-orientation as opposed to a performance mindset, and have permission to embrace our sexuality without shame and repression. My mission is to assist in helping to remove these barriers. I also love the college student population