DO Better. Be Better. Content
Do Better. Be Better: ADHD, OCD & Climbing Mountains One Step at a Time
Let me tell you a secret: being impulsive looks really romantic in the first year of dating. Surprise trips, late-night flowers, big gestures—women love that stuff. But after a while? That same impulsiveness starts looking less like a Nicholas Sparks novel and more like a financial crime scene.
Perhaps it is cliché, but you have to love yourself with all of your heart, to want to do better so you become better.
Hi, I’m The Cynical Romantic. I’m a man in my early 40s still trying to figure out if love is fact, fiction, or just a clever scam designed by Hallmark. I don’t always get it right (in fact, I rarely do), but I try to laugh about it while taking a closer look at what makes relationships thrive—or crash and burn spectacularly.
And here’s where my friend Scott comes in.
Meet Scott: The Everest Climber
Scott’s a 60-year-old guy I met during CBT training. ADHD and OCD had been running his life for decades, and he didn’t even get diagnosed until late in life. Imagine carrying a backpack full of bricks up Mount Everest, every single day, without realizing why you were so exhausted. That’s Scott.
His impulsiveness looked romantic at first—lavish gestures, wild adventures—but it came with a price tag. Budgets collapsed, relationships crumbled, and opportunities slipped away while he sat at the bar waiting for a woman to make the first move. OCD wasn’t much help either, turning simple choices into endless loops of doubt.
When I asked him how CBT felt, he said:
“Honestly? Like trying to climb Everest in flip-flops. Every tiny step forward felt impossible. But it worked.”
Why This Blog Exists
That stuck with me. Scott taught me that self-improvement isn’t about giant leaps; it’s about tiny steps that look ridiculous until they change your life. His eight months of CBT training weren’t glamorous, but the tools he picked up—journaling impulses instead of acting on them, setting timers to stay on track, using mindfulness to break obsessive loops—turned the mountain into a hill he could climb.
So here’s the deal: Do Better. Be Better isn’t just another relationship blog. It’s where I share the lessons that Scott and I have learned and where we both try to understand how ADHD and OCD twist, challenge, and sometimes even enhance the way we love.
What You’ll Find Here
The History: Posts on how ADHD and OCD went from being dismissed as quirks to recognized as real conditions—and why that matters for love.
The Impact: Honest stories about the chaos these disorders bring to relationships, from impulsive proposals to anxiety-driven breakups.
The Tools: Books, apps, and habits that made a difference. (Scott swears by Atomic Habits by James Clear, Gabor Maté’s Scattered Minds, and a journal that never judges him.)
The Habits: CBT-inspired daily steps that actually stick—budgeting before buying, replacing midnight spirals with grounding routines, and learning that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is just show up.
Importance of overall physical and mental health: Taking care of your physical and mental health is critical to not only your ADHD or OCD journey, but necessary for finding, developing and maintaining healthy and loving relationships. You’ll find tips from professionals, as well as what I works for me. If you do better, you’ll be better.
Humor as Survival
Of course, I’m still me—The Cynical Romantic. I laugh at my disasters, I roast my own impulsiveness, and I’ll never pass up a good one-liner about how love is basically just speed dating with extra paperwork. Humor is how I survive the heavy stuff. Scott? He laughs, too—mostly because if you don’t, ADHD and OCD will eat you alive.
The Bigger Picture
Love isn’t only about finding the right person—it’s about becoming the right person. That’s the whole point of Do Better. Be Better. It’s a place where health and humor collide, where self-care isn’t optional, and where every messy story has something to teach us.
So whether you’re climbing Everest in flip-flops like Scott, or just trying to survive another awkward Tinder date like me, this section is for you. We’ll stumble, laugh, and maybe—just maybe—get a little better at love along the way.