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Today marks one year since my father died. Yesterday, the Buffalo Bills started another season. For most of the last twenty years, I rarely missed a Bills game with my dad. That might sound like a small thing compared with everything a father and son share over a lifetime. But I am beginning to think the small things are exactly where death becomes the most real. You expect the big days to hurt. Birthdays. Holidays. Anniversaries. You don't necessarily expect a football game

Sometimes people aren’t single because they cannot find anyone. Sometimes life has required so much of them that tenderness had to wait. For the last few years, I was finishing my doctorate, struggling financially, and helping care for my parents. I watched my father decline and then lost him while dementia slowly took my mother's mind away. There were houses to sell, yards and bills to manage, and constant dealings with Medicaid and nursing homes. I simply kept handling what

“I need you.” We hear those words in love songs, movies, and wedding vows as if they represent the deepest form of love. Sometimes they do. But sometimes they mean something very different. I need you to make me feel okay. I need you to reassure me that I'm worthy. I need you to keep me from being alone. I need you to give my life meaning. And that's an enormous responsibility to hand another human being. There's nothing wrong with needing people. We're social creatures. We n

We talk a lot about wanting to be loved. We don't talk nearly as much about wanting to be desired. And maybe that's because admitting it can sound shallow. We're supposed to become more mature as we get older. Wiser. Less concerned with appearance. More interested in companionship, character, and emotional connection. And hopefully we do. But that doesn't necessarily mean we stop wanting someone to look at us and think: I want you. There is something deeply human about that f

I keep hearing the same thing from women. Not from surveys or social media debates, but from female friends and colleagues I've known over the last several years—women of different ages, backgrounds, and personalities. The details vary, but the frustration is remarkably similar. "The guys I meet are narcissistic." "Nobody puts in any effort." "Everything turns sexual immediately." "Chivalry is dead." Obviously, not all men are narcissists. And I'm not convinced men have sudde

There’s a particular kind of pain in falling in love with someone you can’t have. You never lost them. They were never yours to lose. And maybe that’s what makes it so difficult. They can still be right there. You can talk to them, laugh with them, look forward to seeing them, and feel better simply because they walked into the room. And sometimes it’s the smallest things that hurt the most. The smell of their hair when they’re standing close to you. Hearing their laugh from

When we're young, we don't have to work very hard to find other people. School surrounds us with friends. College gives us roommates. Workplaces become social circles. Marriage creates built-in companionship. Children fill the house with noise. Even running errands means constantly bumping into familiar faces. Life keeps putting people in front of us. Then, almost without noticing, it changes. The kids move away. Parents become elderly—or they're gone. Friends relocate, becom