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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