For most of my 20’s, many people thought I was crazy. I was really into comfort zone challenges, from cold showers to salsa dancing and endurance races. From the outside, it looked like I was the typical millennial experience junkie. But in truth, everything I did had a greater purpose (yes, even surfing in Australia and facing bulls in Costa Rica). I was using my lifestyle to answer what I believe to be the 4 most important questions in a man’s life. And now that I’ve entered my 30’s, it’s paying off: I live in a beautiful Colorado mountain house with the woman of my dreams. I’m in the best shape of my life and recently won my first ever…

— “Don’t forget to take pictures, Ceej.” My wife, Lisa, says this to me every time I take one or more of our children to a Red Sox game, a concert or a bowling alley. She likes to have documentation of our family outings and she enjoys creating calendars and albums from these photos. Even though it seems absurd in this era of on-demand photography to remind someone to take pictures, she is right to do so. Because I never take pictures. Well, almost never. The camera on my phone contains an embarrassingly small number of photos compared to the average human being in 2017. I’ve never taken a picture…

Demand you make a major life change Making comments about the haircut they prefer on you or wishing you’d spend less on comic book memorabilia is one thing, but if your partner is asking you to change major things—your career, your religion, your studies, or other things you consider core parts of your personality—that’s a serious red flag, says Fran Walfish, PhD, Beverly Hills family and relationship psychotherapist, author of The Self-Aware Parent, and co-star of Sex Box on WE tv. “An important part of being in a successful relationship is to give up trying to control other people, especially your spouse or partner,” she says. Instead of trying to…

— How did we get here? It wasn’t supposed to end like this. We had plans. We had dreams. We still had so much to do. I thought we had so much time. Maybe one day we will meet again. So maybe I should be at peace with letting you go. I should just let the universe do its trick. But baby, I’m afraid we’ll get lost out there. I want to move on. I want to let you go. But I don’t want to stop missing you. I’m afraid to no longer miss you. It hurts to miss you. I want this pain to stop. But if I let…

In 1960, 84 percent of all 25- to 29-year-olds were married. By 2010, that number was just 42 percent. This 50-percent drop in marriage rates among young people over the past 50 years means a lot of things: women are postponing traditional life milestones like marriage and childbirth in favor of pursuing educations, careers, and financial independence. As a result, the multifaceted lives of women today look a lot different than the lives their mothers and grandmothers led at their age. Becky Paroubek is a Wisconsin mother of two. Her daughter Lilly, 27, is a Crossfit coach and business owner living in Colorado. Her daughter Cat, 30, is the owner…

I’ve never been someone who likes to commit to anything too far in advance. In high school I had a boyfriend who always wanted to make plans for the following weekend during the weekend we happened to be enjoying at the moment. I didn’t like feeling pinned down. What if something awesome came up that I just didn’t know about yet? What if I didn’t feel like it next week? What if I changed my mind? His attempts to schedule my time felt like attempts to control it. Needless to say, the relationship didn’t last. In college, I chose my major by selecting the option that came with the smallest…

This story originally appeared on: A Daughter’s Love My feelings were crushed the night my father died.  My entire world exploded when my father died. As I silently observed my father take his last breath, I felt my heart beat hard inside my chest, exactly six times before I burst into uncontrollable tears.  And then suddenly my sobbing stopped and so did my entire world. My father’s death was expected after a very long illness.  But that still did not prepare me for the gut wrenching, debilitating pain of grief.  The days leading up to his death were mentally exhausting. Two days before my father died I sat next to…