Dear Coquette,

I’m preparing for my wedding this fall. I’m not inviting someone in my group of friends because he is a severe alcoholic and I don’t want to deal with that at my bachelor party or reception. He’s been a part of my group of friends for the past 5 years or so, and everyone in the group has been spending less and less time around him because of his drinking problem. We’ve all approached him about it with concern, but we haven’t been able to make any progress because he’s a trust fund kid that sees no problem with his drinking (he’s 45 if that matters). The other members of the group say that I should invite him to both the bachelor party and the wedding and that they’ll “take care of him.” Do you think I’m OK not inviting him?

It’s your party. You can invite (or not invite) whomever you want.

If there is already a conspiracy afoot to “take care of him” because of his inevitable drunkenness, then that’s a pretty good indication this guy doesn’t need to be there. Your friends shouldn’t have to babysit him, and you shouldn’t have to worry about his behavior.

Remember, he brought this on himself. Drinking problems have consequences, and not being invited to your wedding is one of them. If he suffers enough consequences, he might eventually recognize he’s got a problem.

Fair warning, though. This will all but end your friendship. If he’s in denial about his alcoholism, he will only see this as an insult. He will not take it well, and he will blame everyone but himself. Try not to take his reaction personally.

A quick question on wedding shower gifts. What’s a good gift for a girlfriend and her guy that says, I love you, glad we’re friends, thanks for inviting me, but no, I didn’t have the money to buy you something major nor did I want to just buy you the one set of BBQ tongs from the registry because it was the cheapest thing. She keeps telling me not to worry about buying them anything but I feel silly showing up without SOMEthing. She’s a good friend but we’re not super close. I want to show I’m really grateful to have been invited to the wedding and thrilled for her and her guy without breaking the bank (hellooo, I have to buy a dress for the wedding too!). Gift ideas? Something I can make?

This is pretty much the reason why Etsy was invented. Take what you know about this couple and go find something reasonably priced and one-of-a-kind from a crafty little artist with an Etsy shop. You can use your friend’s gift registry as a jumping-off point, or just wing it.

While you’re at it, get a really nice letterpress card and spend more than five minutes writing in it. Include all that good stuff about how thrilled you are and how much you love them.

A friend with expensive taste has asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding, and I know I won’t be able to afford the dress, or the trip to Vegas for the bachelorette party, or the wedding in Cancun. How do I politely decline?

Just tell her you can’t afford it. Do it privately and in person. Be straightforward about your financial limitations, and don’t let her guilt you into spending money you don’t have.

A destination wedding like hers will cost you well over $2,000 before it’s all said and done, and you’re under no obligation to go into debt just because she’s getting married.

Dear Coquette,

I just got out of a crappy four-year relationship. I dated around and it was fun, but I recently found someone I want to settle down with for a little bit.

He has female friends he hangs out with regularly, which I shouldn’t care about, but for some stupid reason, I get insanely jealous. I want to tell my feelings to shut the hell up because really, my trust issues should not affect his life, but I can’t help feeling the stupid way I feel.

Should I break up with him for his own benefit?

For his own benefit? Shut up. Ending the relationship isn’t solving the problem. It’s avoiding the problem. You may be experiencing jealousy, but your trust issues are just a manifestation of some good old fashioned insecurity. Get over your insecurity, and you’ll be fine.

Here, let me shine a light on your problem: You hate the fact that his female friends are closer to him on many levels. You may be the one sleeping with him, but they’ve known him a lot longer than you have. They were there before you, and they’ll be there long after you’re out of the picture. Deep down, that’s the part that drives you crazy. That’s the root of your insecurity, and it’s incredibly unhealthy.

It also doesn’t help that you’re dragging along some inevitable baggage from your crappy four-year relationship. You didn’t give any details, but you mentioned it for a reason, so it’s definitely having a negative effect on your new relationship.

You have to get out from under the shadow of your old relationship. Let that mess go. Also, accept the fact that for a while in the beginning, his female friends are going to be a little bit closer to him than you are. Let that be okay, because it is.

Nothing is really wrong here that can’t be fixed the instant you decide to let some stuff go. It’s okay that he has female friends, and of course they know him better at first. It’s okay that relationships end, and that one way or another, this one will too.

It’s even okay that you’re insecure and jealous. Those are perfectly understandable emotions, and being okay with feeling them is the first step towards forgiving yourself, which is what you ultimately need to do in order to stop feeling jealous and insecure.

Don’t break up with him. That’s just giving in to your weakness. Take the time to build your inner strength and work through your insecurities instead.

Dear Coquette,

You seem like someone who knows something about healthy anger. I just tapped into some serious rage over childhood sexual abuse in a therapy session. My therapist is wonderful and is proving to be a great guide through this, but I’d also love some advice from my favorite ass-kicker. How do you stay angry? I’ve realized that I never let myself be angry, and I don’t want to lose it now.

Healthy anger? There’s no such thing. Your goal should not be to stay angry. Your goal should be to let go of your anger.

Right now it’s still fresh. You’re expressing anger that’s been suppressed for a long time. It feels good because you’ve experienced a breakthrough. That’s the healthy part of this process, and that’s the part you don’t want to lose.

Processing anger is a wonderful thing, but only if it allows you to move on, because anger is poison. Knocking it loose isn’t enough. You have to flush it out of your system.

Allow yourself to feel all of the emotions you need to feel, but don’t try to hold on to them afterwards. Anger leads to acceptance and ultimately to forgiveness. That’s where you want to end up: Forgiveness, and not for your abuser’s sake. For yours.

He’s got a lot of women swooning. He can have any one of them, and he chooses a few. He’s open about this. I’m one of them and so is she. He’s good to me. Great, in fact. It’s magical. But she’s also a stunning woman, a beautiful person, and very hard to hate. He doesn’t hide anything and tells me everything I want to know, but the jealousy still makes me insane. Do I have to give up this relationship because I’m too much of a pansy to handle it?

By your description of this other woman, it sounds like you’re more than just jealous. You’re also envious. Those are two separate but easily confused emotions that you need to deal with differently.

You should combat jealousy with trust, and you should combat envy with contentment. Remember, jealousy focuses on something you’re afraid to lose. Envy focuses on something you want to gain.

Your jealousy is your fear of losing him, but your envy is also your desire to have what she has. When you say she’s “very hard to hate,” that’s your envy talking. Get rid of the envy, and you’ll suddenly find her “very easy to love” instead.

Most likely your single biggest problem is that you feel like every hour he spends with her is an hour he doesn’t spend with you, but you simply can’t allow yourself to think like that. An open relationship is not a zero-sum game. If you’re gonna share, you can’t do it begrudgingly.

You have to trust that he’s being completely open and honest with you, and you have to be content with the time you spend together. If you can’t, that’s OK. Don’t stay in the relationship if it’s making you miserable.

Dear Coquette,

Why won’t guys look at me? I’m 30, pretty, smart, well-educated and have a good career. I like to think I’m a strong woman (or at least appear to be strong, since I’m whining here). Yet when I go out with friends, all of whom are in relationships, guys hit on my friends, never on me. It’s like I don’t exist. True, I’m not very good at hitting on guys, but my friends get hit on without doing anything. Damn, sending this question feels weird.

Either you’re wrong about being pretty, or you’re wrong that guys never hit on you. Take your pick. It’s one or the other.

If you’re willing to jump right in and call yourself pretty, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, which means that unless you’re an insufferable bore or a big pile of awkward, you’re probably just clueless when it comes to being hit on.

Odds are, you have a selective memory. You remember all the guys who hit on your friends, and you remember all the guys who didn’t hit on you when you wanted them to, but you don’t remember any of the poor bastards who tried hitting on you when you weren’t interested.

Of course, pointing this out doesn’t solve the real problem, which is that you secretly think all your friends are much more attractive than you. It doesn’t matter whether this is objectively true. What matters is that you believe it to be true.

Yes, that’s really the problem. I didn’t need to know that all your friends are in relationships, but you thought it was important enough to tell me. It bugs you. That’s the tip of your iceberg of resentment.

This entire question is a head-fake towards male attention when at your core you have issues with female competition among your friends. You start out with, “Why won’t guys look at me?” when what you’re really asking is, “Why are guys looking at them?”

That kind of indignation is poisonous to female friendship, especially when you don’t recognize that it’s there. You need to acknowledge some of your underlying feelings about your friends, and deal them with before your negativity starts to fester.