The Yellow Brick Road Gets Shorter as We Age: Love, Regret, and Real Connection
A reflective, sharp, and quietly hopeful series on love, aging, regret, and emotional growth. Told through the voice of The Cynical Romantic, this 11-part journey explores relationships, fear, comfort, and what it means to keep choosing love as time becomes more finite.
WELCOME TO LOVE, LIES & SCANDALS
Home of The Cynical Romantic and his very old wingman, Scott
Somewhere along the way, most of us were handed a map.
Go to school. Get a job. Fall in love. Figure everything out.
Simple, right?
Then life laughed, spilled coffee on the map, and sent us wandering down a completely different road.
Here at Love, Lies & Scandals, we write about love, relationships, ADHD, OCD, personal growth, aging, regret, second chances, and the strange realization that nobody seems to know what they're doing—not even the people giving advice.
The Cynical Romantic spends a lot of time looking for wisdom in the wreckage.
Scott spends a lot of time trying to remember why he walked into the room.
Together, we explore the messy, funny, frustrating business of being human.
Some posts follow the winding Yellow Brick Road of life, where we spend decades searching for brains, heart, courage, and answers that may have been with us all along.
Others explore the ADHD Love Paradox, where you can forget your anniversary, remember a conversation from 1987, fall deeply in love, get distracted by a squirrel, and somehow still be a good partner.
If you prefer honesty over clichés, curiosity over certainty, and laughter over perfection, you're among friends.
Pull up a chair.
Take a look around.
And if something you read sounds familiar, leave us a comment below the post.
Blogging can be a lonely business. We'd love to know we're not the only ones trying to navigate the wonderfully exasperating world of love, relationships, and being gloriously imperfect humans.
Latest from the Blog
👉 stories, and questionable life decisions — newly published.
And one important note:
I’m not a therapist, doctor, or mental health professional — just a writer diagnosed with ADHD later in life who started trying to understand why life, focus, and relationships sometimes felt like a puzzle missing a few pieces.
If you’ve ever felt the same way, you’re in the right place.
START HERE
The Cynical Romantic
Cynical about love… but still secretly hoping for a happy ending?
Welcome to The Cynical Romantic — where real stories, questionable decisions, and hard-earned relationship wisdom collide.
This section explores the strange, hilarious, and sometimes painful reality of modern romance. Expect reflections on dating disasters, lessons learned the hard way, and the stubborn human habit of believing love might still work out — even when history suggests caution.
Reality, as it turns out, writes a much messier story.
👉 Explore the journey — it starts here.
The Yellow Brick Road gets shorter as we age. That’s not a metaphor you fully understand when you’re young—it’s something you grow into, step by step, relationship by relationship, mistake by mistake.
This series follows that road through the lens of love, regret, emotional habits, and the quiet realizations that tend to arrive later than we’d prefer. Told through the voice of The Cynical Romantic, it doesn’t offer fairy tales or formulas. It offers something more useful: perspective.
Across eleven reflections, this journey moves from inherited emotional patterns and youthful illusions to the harder truths about maintenance, fear, and the passage of time. It explores why we stay too long, leave too late, overthink too much, and sometimes settle for comfort when we should be choosing growth.
But this isn’t a story about giving up on love.
It’s about seeing it clearly.
Because while the road may be getting shorter, it also becomes sharper. More intentional. Less forgiving of distractions and half-measures.
And maybe that’s the trade.
Less time—but better awareness of how to spend it.
Pick a Journey That Sparks Your Curiosity ⃣
ADhd in Love
Formerly: Do Better Be Better Blog Page
One important note before you dive in:
I’m not a therapist, doctor, or mental health professional.
I’m simply a writer who was diagnosed with ADHD later in life and started trying to understand why certain parts of life — especially relationships and focus — always seemed a little more complicated than advertised.
So what you’ll find here isn’t expert advice.
It’s stories, observations, research, and experiments from someone learning as he goes — sometimes successfully, sometimes hilariously not.
👉 Explore the ADHD in Love page and see what resonates.
CURRENT POSTS
ADHD in Love
The ADHD Stories We Tell Ourselves
If you've ever forgotten why you walked into a room, fallen in love with someone's potential, started seventeen projects before finishing one, or spent three days replaying a conversation that lasted thirty seconds, welcome. You're among friends.
This four-part ADHD in Love series explores the stories we tell ourselves about love, identity, success, and who we're supposed to be.
Through humor, self-reflection, and more than a few questionable life choices, The Cynical Romantic examines what happens when ADHD and OCD become uninvited co-authors in our relationships. From impulsive romance and obsessive overthinking to hero complexes, unfinished dreams, and the strange ways we sabotage our own progress, these articles explore the reality of living inside a brain that rarely travels in a straight line.
This isn't a collection of clinical advice or textbook explanations.
It's a collection of conversations.
The kind you have with a friend over coffee after admitting something you've never quite said out loud.
If you've ever wondered why your heart, brain, and good intentions sometimes seem to be working from completely different instruction manuals, this series may feel uncomfortably familiar.
And hopefully, a little comforting too.
Read the 1st post of this 4-post series on ADHD and messy relationships on Thursday June 11.
The Yellow Brick Road Gets Shorter as We Age: Love, Regret, and Real Connection
A reflective, sharp, and quietly hopeful series on love, aging, regret, and emotional growth. Told through the voice of The Cynical Romantic, this 11-part journey explores relationships, fear, comfort, and what it means to keep choosing love as time becomes more finite.
Part 1: The Tornado Was Birth, But Nobody Warned Us About Kansas
Kansas and Emotional Inheritance
We like to think we choose how we love. In reality, most of us start by repeating what we’ve already seen.
Long before we understand relationships, we absorb them—how conflict works, how affection is given, how distance is handled. These patterns settle in quietly and follow us into adulthood, shaping how we respond without asking for permission.
The problem isn’t that we inherit them. The problem is that we rarely question them.
This piece explores how emotional inheritance influences attraction, communication, and conflict—and why recognizing those patterns may be the only way to change them.
Because the road doesn’t just stretch forward. It loops back.
And if you’re not paying attention, you end up walking the same ground in different shoes.
current bonus series
Binge-worthy Reads into love, chaos, and everything in between.
Soulmates, Spring Fever, and the Trouble With “The One”
Every spring, two things happen.
The trees explode with pollen… and someone I know announces they’ve finally met their soulmate.
Not “a great person.”
Not “someone interesting.”
No — this is The One. The cosmic match. The missing puzzle piece.
As a cynical romantic — someone who believes deeply in love but has also watched a few “forever” relationships quietly exit the building — I find myself wondering:
Where did this soulmate idea actually come from?
And why does it still have so much power over us?
So starting March 18, I’m launching a 7-part series on soulmates — where the idea began, how it evolved, and why it still runs our love lives like a charming but slightly reckless stage manager.
We’ll travel through history, psychology, culture, and modern dating to unpack the myth of “The One.”
Here’s what’s coming.
Part 1 – From Plato to Spring Fever
Where the soulmate idea really started: ancient myths, divine destiny, and the timeless human urge to believe someone out there can fix our loneliness.
Part 2 – Who Invented “Soulmates” (And Why We Fell for It)
How a poetic word from the 1800s slowly turned into a global relationship expectation.
Part 3 – Soulmates or Cognitive Bias?
What psychology says about destiny beliefs, attachment styles, and why intense chemistry can feel suspiciously like fate.
Part 4 – Hollywood’s Favorite Lie
A loving roast of rom-coms and love stories that sell perfect endings without the messy work relationships actually require.
Part 5 – Soulmate vs Twin Flame vs Trauma Bond
A practical guide to telling the difference between spiritual connection… and romanticized dysfunction.
Part 6 – Swipe Right on Destiny
How dating apps quietly amplify soulmate fantasies while also making it easier than ever to walk away.
Part 7 – Soulmates, Cellmates, and Everyone In Between
The final question: can we still believe in deep, life-changing love without the pressure of finding the only person it can happen with?
WHO IS THE CYNICAL ROMANTIC?
Cynical about love… but still secretly hoping for a happy ending?
Welcome to The Cynical Romantic — where real stories, questionable decisions, and hard-earned relationship wisdom collide.
This section explores the strange, hilarious, and sometimes painful reality of modern romance. Expect reflections on dating disasters, lessons learned the hard way, and the stubborn human habit of believing love might still work out — even when history suggests caution.
Reality, as it turns out, writes a much messier story.
👉 Explore the journey — it starts here.
From awkward teenage optimism to adult-level confusion, this section follows the long and occasionally embarrassing evolution of a man who still believes love might work… even if the evidence keeps arguing otherwise.
👉 If you’ve ever rooted for love while quietly preparing for disappointment, you’re in the right place.
👉 Quick Reset That Actually Works
I tried this when my energy crashed — surprisingly effective
The 2-Minute Protein Fix That Saves Your Brain
When my energy tanks, my first instinct is usually sugar… which works beautifully for about 11 minutes.
Then comes the crash. And the attitude.
What actually works better? A quick protein hit — something simple like a handful of nuts, yogurt, or even peanut butter on toast.
ADHD brains don’t just burn mental energy — they burn fuel. Fast.
Protein helps stabilize blood sugar, which means fewer mood swings, better focus, and slightly less desire to throw your laptop out a window.
This isn’t a full meal. It’s a “keep the engine from stalling” move.
You don’t feel amazing… just steady again.
And steady wins a lot more days than motivated ever will.
Cupid’s Last Stand
Because love may be unpredictable, but comfortable clothing shouldn’t be.
A collection of thoughtful, funny, and occasionally suspiciously relatable items inspired by relationships, resilience, and the human condition.
Elevate your outfit with the men’s premium heavyweight tee. The tee has a structured, classy fit and is both durable and soft thanks to its ring-spun cotton material. Layer the t-shirt or wear it on its own and enjoy great looks with little effort!
• 100% combed ring-spun cotton
• Charcoal Heather and Carbon Grey is 60% cotton and 40% polyester
• Fabric weight: 6.5 oz/yd² (220 g/m²)
• 20 singles
• Regular fit
• Side-seamed construction
• 1 × 1 rib at collar
• Single-needle edge stitch 7/8″