My parents fell in love at first sight, got married within a year of meeting, have never argued and after thirty years of marriage are still hot for each other.

I don’t believe that everyone finds the sort of love my parents have, and I have seen evidence of the many different types of love and life-long partnerships that can work just as well.

My father believes in making your own luck and calls bullshit on religion, and yet after discovering how cynical I am at only 23, he has unbelievably begun to lecture me incessantly about how I need to open myself up to the universe in order to find my ‘soulmate’.

I am obviously not asking your opinion about soulmates, but rather about the concept of ‘settling’.

A man has recently proposed to me, and with that proposal comes the expectation we will have children before his 40th birthday, which is much sooner than I ever anticipated. However, I now have an opportunity to travel to places I never could have without him. I’ll have a house in Sydney (no small feat), no university debt and the opportunity to work in the industry I want without having to worry about money.

I will be ‘settling’ for someone I didn’t love straight away, but I feel saying no to something solid on the off-chance the universe could, maybe, deliver something better is a ridiculous concept.

Should I listen to my father or go along for the ride?

Your father is the guy who thinks he can give financial advice because he won the lottery. He just wants you to be happy, which is sweet, but that doesn’t mean his expectations for you are tethered to any kind of reality. If he has a specific problem with your relationship, let him voice it, but feel free to dismiss anything he has to say about finding your soulmate. Sure, it’s a charming sentiment coming from your dad, but it’s utterly useless as practical advice and potentially harmful if incorporated into your world view.

Now, as for your suitor. If you want to marry him, go right ahead, but don’t do it for the passport stamps, and don’t let him treat you like a broodmare. (He doesn’t get to decide when you get pregnant.) Do it because you love him and you want to build a life with him as an equal partner. If there’s confusion about whether you love each other, whether you’re equal partners, or whether you have similar visions for the kind of life you want to build together, please take all the time you need to figure it out, but don’t make this decision about whether the universe might deliver something better. (That’s not how the universe works.)

You aren’t settling if you actively choose to marry him. You aren’t settling if you actively choose not to. The only way you would be settling is if you sit back and passively “go along for the ride.” You are the one who makes this decision for yourself — not your dad, not your boyfriend, and not fate. You.

I love Bernie Sanders, but there’s no way he’s going to win the general election (or even the primary). How do I tell people this gracefully? Or should I just keep quiet until Hillary has the nomination? Bernie is good at being an agitator, but do you think he would be a good president?

People said the exact same kind of shit about Obama eight years ago. They said Hillary had the nomination locked down and that no one in their right mind was ever gonna vote for a black freshman senator with a funny sounding name.

No one seems to remember how outlandish Obama’s campaign seemed at the time, and Bernie Sanders has considerably more momentum than Obama did a full eighteen months before the general election.

Bernie isn’t the dark horse at this point. He and Hillary are the only two Democratic candidates anyone is even talking about, regardless of whether Biden decides to run.

You sound ridiculous saying Bernie doesn’t stand a chance. Of course he does. He could easily beat Hillary if Biden steps in and siphons off the moderates, and if Bernie went up against anyone other than Jeb Bush, he would almost certainly win the presidency.

Yes, the safe bet for 2016 is still a Clinton vs Bush corporate snoozefest, but you never know. All it would really take for Bernie Sanders to be the next president is for everyone like you to simply tell people that you’re voting for him instead of telling people that he doesn’t have a chance.

And yes, I think he would be a great president.

I’m in my early 30s and my boyfriend of 6 months is in his late 30s. I was married forever and neither bf or I had a real great time with monogamy, so we decided to have an open relationship wherein we can bang freely with a few minor rules, like safety first, and try not to fall in love.  To achieve the latter, we try to stick to people in other couples or that might have children at home and those who are not interested in relationships.  Seems like it might work.  Life is long and I’m realistic – I had no luck nailing the same guy for the rest of my life once, and I wouldn’t expect to again.

Here’s where I feel like a shallow shit.  My boyfriend, for his few dalliances since we’ve been together, has had sex with the skeeziest women.  I feel awful for feeling this way (shitty/superior or secretly skeezy too?!), but I shower regularly, own a home and car, and I’m not on acid all the time.  I feel a major disparity in the level here and it grosses me right out to the point that I don’t want to hear about it and I’ve been kind of shitty to him about it.  Should we just implement a DADT policy?  Or am I just being an asshole?

It’s not that you’re being an asshole. (Although you might be, I dunno.) It’s that you’re not acknowledging the reality of the situation.

If your boyfriend could regularly fuck other women on your level, you wouldn’t be his girlfriend. He’d be in a relationship with someone above your level, and he’d dip down and fuck women on your level to satisfy his open relationship sport-fucking needs.

That’s one of the differences (and double standards) that exist between men and women in open relationships. Men tend to fuck below their partner’s level, and women tend to fuck on or above their partner’s level. (If you’re asking yourself “why?” in both instances, the answer is “because they can.” It’s merely the path of least resistance for all parties involved.)

Please keep in mind, I’m not saying it’s good, and I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just telling you how it is. Maybe your boyfriend is just doing the best he can, or maybe he has a thing for sport-fucking dirt squirrels. Either way, being shitty to him creates more problems than it solves, so at the very least, you should start addressing the issue in a civil and forthright manner.

If you can’t bear the thought of your boyfriend getting his kicks in skanktown, then it’s on you to modify the terms of the open relationship. Fair warning, though: a don’t ask don’t tell policy is almost never the solution. That inevitably leads to mistrust and an eventual loss of mutual respect.

In his book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” Yuval Noah Harari states that social ideologies, such as Communism, Capitalism, and Nazism, are all religions because they are “a system of human norms and values that is founded on the belief in a superhuman order.” Unlike Christianity or Islam that views superhuman order as Gods, social ideologies view “the law of nature” as superhuman order.

In a well-written essay, develop your position on whether you agree with Professor Harari. Use appropriate evidence from your reading, experience, or observations to support your argument.

Do your own homework.

(Although when you do, perhaps consider the difference between a “superhuman order” as it relates to social ideology and a “supernatural order” as it relates to religion. The superhuman is not the same thing as the supernatural, but Harari would lump the two concepts together in order to label social ideologies a subset of religion. He’s basically asking you to disregard the distinction between philosophy and dogma so that he can broaden the traditional definition of religion. That’s fine. He can do that if he wants. Agree or disagree with Harari, it doesn’t really matter, because it’s all just taxonomy — a mere semantic argument.)

A friend of mine and I are having a discussion about his decision to get dreadlocks (he is white, yes). I told them despite the fact of them looking severely unflattering on his shorter hair, it’s cultural appropriation. We got deeper into it and at one point he said it was problematic to him that he can’t get a hairstyle because he’ll seem racist. So two questions: one, why does this bother me so much, and two, why does it make me not want to be around him anymore?

1. This bothers you because you weren’t able to convince your friend that he was wrong, which is doubly disappointing because it makes you feel like an ineffectual advocate while also making you feel like shit that your friend is such a punk. These feelings were further amplified when he came back at you with terms like “problematic” without the slightest understanding of either their meaning or the ironic implications of his own willful ignorance.

2. The dreadlocks aren’t the reason you don’t want to be around him anymore. You don’t want to be around him because he’s a selfish, disrespectful little douchebag, and this argument is merely the thing that made you realize it. Maybe he’ll grow out of it one day. Maybe he won’t. Either way, it’s not your job to hang out and try to fix him in the meantime.

My friend had been in internet-love with an internet famous guy for awhile. They texted all the time and talked on the phone but IMO it was more fangirl crush than true Catfish love, but she was really head over hills. Plot twist is, he passed away unexpectedly. Then about a year later she moved to his hometown in California, and is now in a serious relationship with his step-brother (whom is also Internet famous). She, again, is head over hills and now lives with him. On what reality show level of fucked up is this? And more importantly, how do I explain that I can’t support her super creepy relationship without ending our friendship?

What’s the super creepy part that you can’t support? People meet via the internet all the time. People also bond over tragedy. Is it the “internet famous” thing that bugs you? Don’t let it. That shit ain’t real. The step-brother is just a regular dude in a regular relationship with your regular friend.

Seriously, is there more to this story, or are you just being super-judgy about your friend’s life choices? If she’s happy, healthy, and safe, then maybe you should just fuck off a little bit and chill.

I’ve been with this guy for 4 1/2 years. Lately his heavy drinking has turned into a drinking problem, mostly to self medicate anxiety attacks.  So now I have a man who’s put on 30lbs, a drunken ass, decreased sex drive and won’t let us talk about any of it. For the first time in our relationship there’s shit that’s  taboo to talk about, I have to walk on eggshells and can’t find a good way to tell him get a therapist where he doesn’t see it as an attack.  I’m not an ultimatum type of person, but this might be my breaking point and when I boil it down it keeps coming back to “fix it or I’m out”. Help me Coke, what is the right way to have this conversation?

Yeah, it’s intervention time. You can decide whether or not to involve his family (probably not if this is primarily a relationship issue), but it’s up to you to find a relationship therapist or an addiction specialist who can guide you through an intervention process that will address your boyfriend’s drinking problem and underlying PTSD symptoms.

This may come down to a “fix it or I’m out” ultimatum, but if you give it as part of an intervention, it’s much more likely to yield positive results, and if you do end up leaving him, at least you’ll have the comfort of knowing you did everything you could to save the relationship.

A guy nutted in me and afterwards refused to pay for plan B. I said something along the lines of, “alright, I’ll send you pictures of the first sonogram.” He freaked the fuck out, told me I was being manipulative and that he doesn’t want me to contact him again. I’m not actually going to incubate his fetus, and I know this is all just a smokescreen for the terror and embarrassment he feels about potentially knocking up a girl he’s known since the third grade. My problem is the accusation of manipulation. I mean, that was bullshit, right?

What a punk. You should definitely send him that picture of a sonogram. (If but for no other reason than to show him there’s a difference between being manipulative and fucking with someone who clearly deserves to be fucked with.)

Did the post about the breakup and the lending of money go away because it was getting appallingly messy in the comments?

Yep. I don’t mind messy comments, but I could see the slippery slanderous slope they were starting to slide down, and quite frankly, I’m the only one who gets to start shit on my own website.

A note for those seeking my advice: I provide commentary on your drama. That doesn’t mean I wish to become a player in your drama. If everyone in your circle is also a reader of Dear Coquette, either modify your identifying details or solicit my advice privately.

My comments section isn’t a forum for those involved to post potentially libelous statements about one another.

My friend-with-benefits is having ex sex with a mutual friend who does not know about our friend-with-benefits relationship. Is this dishonest?
 

If either of you are hiding the sexual nature of your relationship, it’s deceptive. If either of you are lying about it, it’s dishonest. This situation is tricky, because the mutual friend isn’t necessarily entitled to know you two are fucking, but at the same time, it’s pretty shitty of you to fuck your friend’s ex.

This is one of those circumstances where you should focus less on honesty and more on integrity. Do you want to be the kind of person who fucks over your friends by fucking their exes? Try applying the golden rule here, and imagine what it would feel like to find out that one of your friends was fucking your ex behind your back.

It would suck. You know it would suck, which is why your conscience is bugging you.