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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

Trying to meet someone today has become an exhausting, confusing, and often downright dehumanizing experience. It should be easier than ever to meet someone. Dating apps can show us hundreds of people without leaving the couch. Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms connect us with people we never would have encountered otherwise. Yet finding someone genuine somehow feels harder. We sort through fake profiles, shallow conversations, mixed signals, and people wh

A relationship is supposed to give us more than another person in the room. It should give us someone to talk to, laugh with, depend on, and share our lives with. It should make us feel known, wanted, and connected. But I see so many people staying in relationships that give them none of those things because they are afraid of being alone. They may sleep in the same bed, eat dinner together, and sit beside each other every night. From the outside, they look like a couple. Ins

Maybe some of the best parts of sex aren't actually sex. They're everything that happens before it. The look across a room that lasts a second longer than it should. The conversation where you suddenly become aware of how close you're standing. The first time you realize someone isn't just being friendly. The private joke that nobody else understands. The text that makes you smile because you know exactly what they meant. The anticipation of knowing you're going to see someon

“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

My father died last year. My mother is still alive, but dementia has taken much of the person I once knew. Today is my first Father's Day without him. As I thought about that, I realized something I had never considered before. For most of my life, there was always a generation above me. No matter how old I became, there was still someone I could call for advice. Someone who remembered more history. Someone who had already lived through the stage of life I was entering. Someo

I post the song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" at least once a year on social media because I believe its message that strongly. If you've never heard it, take four minutes and listen before reading further. Not because relationships are supposed to remain exactly the same forever. Not because butterflies are meant to last for decades. But because I believe some things should remain. The feeling that your partner still adores you. The feeling that they still light up w

If you have never heard Janis Ian’s 1975 song At Seventeen, take a moment to listen before reading. If you already know it, listen again. Its emotional truth is part of what this reflection explores. Few songs capture the feeling of not belonging as honestly as this one. If you have never heard Janis Ian’s 1975 song At Seventeen, it is one of the most painfully truthful songs ever written about what it feels like to believe you are not accepted. What makes the song so beautif

There are some people we meet who make us stop for a moment and quietly wonder: What if life had unfolded differently? What if I were younger? What if they were older? Not because we are unhappy. Not because we are searching. And not because every meaningful connection is meant to become something more. But because every once in a while, another human being appears and reminds us that some part of us is still capable of being startled fully awake. As we get older, people ofte

I rewatched Miracle tonight. The movie about how the US hockey team defied ALL odds to defeat the Soviets in the 1980 Winter Olympics, which was one of the greatest upsets in sports history. And it hit me in a way I wasn’t exp ecting. I remember watching that entire Olympic run as a kid —sitting there with my dad and my best friend. On the edge of our f*cking seats. We weren’t analyzing politics. We weren’t debating anything. We were just… proud. Proud of our country. Proud

There’s something I’ve noticed over the years that I don’t think I’ve ever said out loud. I feel more comfortable around the mental health clients I work with than I do around “normal” people. And I don’t mean that as a knock on anyone. It’s just… different. The people I work with don’t pretend. They’re eccentric. A little neurotic. They’ll tell you exactly what they’ve been through — sometimes within the first five minutes of meeting you lol. There’s no performance, no small

There’s a kind of silence no one really prepares you for. Not the kind where the room is quiet.Not the kind you can fill with music, or TV, or noise. Something deeper than that. A silence that sits underneath everything. Recently I lost my dad who was my best friend. Now my mom is fading in a way that feels harder to explain than death itself. She’s still here.But not really. Dementia sucks. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I’ve started to feel something I didn’t e

No one really warns you. Not in a way that sticks. You hear it, of course - “Time goes fast. ”“Enjoy it while you can.” “They won’t be here forever.” But it never feels real. Because your parents are just… there. They’ve always been there. They always will be. You don’t think about a world where they aren’t. At some point, without realizing it, you start to assume something quietly: That they’ll always be available. That you’ll always have time. That whatever you didn’t say o

For decades, I’ve lived inside the mental health system. Not just as a professional. Not just as an observer. But as someone who has had to navigate it from the inside - where the policies, labels, and decisions become personal. Over the past nine years, I worked toward a Doctor of Education in Health Services Administration. On paper, that’s the milestone. But what it really represents is something else: Time spent studying the system from both sides - living it, working in

I knew, in some abstract way, that one day my father would die. Everyone knows that. But nothing prepares you for what it’s like when the day actually comes — when the phone rings, when the room goes quiet, when the world builds a new shape around the absence of the person who was your anchor. I’m 60 years old. And I just lost my father — the man who wasn’t just my dad, but my best friend . People think losing a parent at this age should somehow hurt less. They say things lik

We know how it ends. Every love, every friendship, every season of our lives — all of it eventually slips through our fingers. People leave. People die. People change. You wake up one day, and the thing you thought you couldn’t live without is gone. And yet, we do it again. We fall. We risk. We open ourselves like fools, knowing full well we might be broken again. Why? Because something in us is stubbornly, wildly alive. Because love — even when it ends — is worth more than a