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.
The Yellow Brick Road Gets Shorter as We Age
Romantic Fantasy
Before reality, there’s always a story.
For most of us, love begins as an idea shaped by movies, books, and just enough experience to make it feel believable. We expect chemistry to carry everything, timing to work itself out, and connection to solve what effort should.
Then life happens.
This post looks at how those early fantasies set us up—not just for disappointment, but for misunderstanding what real love actually requires.
Because the hardest shift isn’t finding love.
It’s letting go of the version of it that never existed.
ADHD, OCD and Soulmates
Playing “soulmate” nearly burned me out. This companion essay dives into the part I skipped in the main series: the exhaustion, heroic delusions, and financial tap‑dancing it took to keep a broken love story alive. From commuting fantasies to shopping as emotional CPR, I’m pulling back the curtain on what it really cost to be the hero in a relationship that was slowly draining me. If you’ve ever felt tired down to your bones from love, this one’s for you.
ADHD, OCD and Soulmates part 1
I never bought into the soulmate myth—I trusted hard work, common sense, and not embarrassing myself. Then a woman called me her soulmate, and all those rules vanished.
This series is my deep dive into that moment and everything that unraveled after.
I’m the Cynical (Yes Still Hopeful) Romantic: late-diagnosed ADHD, a sprinkle of OCD, and a relationship history that makes more sense in hindsight. For years, I chased the role of “someone’s person”—even when my gut said otherwise.
Here, I revisit my first marriage and beyond, sharing what I wish I’d known: how ADHD hyperfocus distorts love, how the hero complex turns romance into overwork, and why certainty makes the soulmate myth so seductive.
This isn’t a lecture—it’s memoir with side notes, a chance to learn from my mistakes so you don’t touch the stove yourself. If you’ve ever ignored a red flag for a good story, you’re in the right place.
Pull up a chair. Let’s unravel the soulmate story—and see what’s worth keeping.