So grateful you’re able to do this right now – it’s comforting to so many people and we are not incognizant of how many other priorities you must have. I have an inkling this is a milestone year for you. I don’t know why… maybe I’m off by a year one way or the other but it just feels that way. Maybe because you moved five years ago and it felt like a tectonic shift at the time. It hardly matters. But I’d love to know whether you still hold by your advice for the ages for those of us moving into our next half decade.

This is a milestone year for everyone. We are experiencing a once-in-a-century pandemic while actively engaged in waves of civil and political unrest amplified by the single most important election in the history of the American experiment.

November is an inflection point, and regardless of how the tension is released, things are going to get worse before they get better. 2025 will be as foreign to us as 2015 feels now, and getting there will be brutal. It’s going to hurt, and as per usual, the people who deserve to feel pain will mostly go unscathed. Justice is rare, and peace is more expensive than war. That won’t change no matter how much we refine the system, because the human condition is inherently flawed.

Each of us comes with the original sin of an amygdala that is too large and a prefrontal cortex that is too small. We come pre-wired for brutality and irrational belief. We do our best, but we are painfully and permanently limited, and we are each and collectively destined to fail. Entropy is the only law, decay is the only certainty, and death is the only inevitability.

Still, we wake up every morning and fight our battles. Some days we might even win, but we should never let that be our purpose. Winning and losing — that is to say, any endeavor with a scorecard or an account balance — can be an occupation, perhaps even an obligation, but you will never know contentment if you allow winning to be your purpose.

Wherever you are in your stage of life, whatever battles you are fighting, I wish for you to find the gift of acceptance and the ability to let go. The point is to keep fighting as hard as you can while simultaneously embracing the concept of surrender. To be clear, I do not mean surrender to authority. Never surrender to authority, as that is where you will find war. What I mean is surrender to inevitability. That is where you will find peace.

The next five years are coming. Not all of us will make it, and that’s okay. Monsters will thrive and horrible shit will happen to good people, and still, it’s all okay. It’s not right, but that’s not the point, and besides, that’s just you keeping score. 

Just do your part. Find acceptance. Fight as hard as you can for as long as you can and then let go. I promise, it will be enough.

Six months ago, I moved to a new city after graduating. Five months ago, I met my best friend here, and he kissed me the first night we met but then told me he has a long distance girlfriend. Since then, we’ve spent a lot of time together, traveled together, and done a fair amount of drugs together. Additionally, we have been each other’s support for our respective anxiety/depression. Sometimes it feels like we’re friends, and sometimes he asks me to spend the night when we’re coming down and I do it because I want him and he’ll just ask me all the “what if” questions while we lay there spooning in our underwear. He’s the first person I’ve ever loved, and a few weeks ago I finally saw how unfair it is to me and to the girlfriend that he treats me like a girlfriend even though he has her. I realize I am not exempt from blame here because I should not have let myself fall for him and I should have drawn a line and held my ground when he would cross lines (to be clear other than the one kiss, no sexual line has been crossed, but lines have been crossed). Additionally, something that has been helping me to fall out of love with him is realizing how he doesn’t deal with his mental health problems in a healthy way- he tends to lash out at people, myself included, and then apologizes profusely and does it again a week later. But it’s hard to fall out of love with someone. What do I do now that I’ve realized all this? He is still my best friend here and I still want him in my life. There has been far more good than bad, and when he’s not being weird. which to be fair 90% of the time things are normal, he is an amazing friend.

This is really sweet.

You should know, this new friendship isn’t the first chapter of your adulthood. It’s barely the first page. You’ve got so much more headed your way, and if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll be fine.

Keep drawing those firm lines. Cultivate your moral center. Listen to you conscience, and don’t for one second let him or anyone else violate your boundaries. Savor the process of falling out of love more than you did the falling in part. There are so many deeper truths to learn on your way out of relationships than on your way into them.

Keep exploring. Learn. Grow. Enjoy the drugs, but don’t ever let them become the reason you show up to the party. Also, whatever you do, don’t let the anxiety and depression become a part of your identity. That’s your best friend’s problem. He defines himself by his mental disorders. You’ll see it eventually, and it will likely be the thing that finally extinguishes your romantic feelings. That’s okay, though. You’ll finally be able to turn your first page.

Of course, not to predict the future, but as soon as you’re done falling out of love, his long distance relationship will come to an ugly end and he’ll show up at your door making every overture you wished he would’ve made in the beginning.

If you’re smart, you’ll keep the page turned.

Hi Coke, as I edge closer to 30 and more of my friends are starting to settle down, I’m starting to notice a weird pattern among some. There’s been quite a few instances where friends who have been in serious relationships with their partners for 5+ years, many for a decade, seem to part ways shortly after getting hitched. They are happy, in love, dedicated, super enthusiastic about their wedding and then they get married and suddenly something seems to crack and they split up very shortly thereafter. In most cases it’s happened in much less than a year after the wedding. It’s so weird. They’ve all lived together for multiple years, had pets together for years, and all that grown up shit but somehow signing a piece of paper changes things? I don’t understand. What’s different? Thanks in advance for your insight!

You’re looking at it all wrong. It’s not the piece of paper that changes things. The piece of paper and the marriage that it represents are merely symptoms of the larger problem, which is that by and large, human beings are terrible at making rational decisions where emotions are involved, and people rarely have the self-discipline to cut their losses and walk away.

The phenomenon that you’ve observed is a prime example of something called the “sunk-cost fallacy” applied to relationships. The sunk-cost fallacy is faulty reasoning that further investment (i.e. marriage) is warranted on the fact that the resources already invested (i.e. time, energy, and a sizable chunk of their youth) will be lost otherwise, not taking into consideration the overall losses involved in further investment (i.e. the emotional and financial misery of the inevitable divorce.)

People in their late twenties who’ve spent years in long-term relationships are faced with increasing pressure from social systems to conform to the proper stage of life transitions. Everyone and everything (often times even their own biology) are constantly nagging them to settle down, get married, start breeding, etc., and so they fall prey to this faulty reasoning and decide to plow through to the next stage of life regardless of whether their relationship is healthy.

You’ve got a shit-ton of aging Millennials limping along in stale relationships who don’t know any better because they’ve spent the last half-decade having the same arguments in the same restaurants and then going home and having the same sex with the same person, and rather than disappoint their parents by going through the temporary pain of a much needed break-up, they throw a Hail Mary pass with the mother of all major life decisions and decide to get married. Fuck it. Why not? What’s the worst that could happen? So they forge ahead with big smiles.

Of course they’re super enthusiastic about getting married — they have to be. They’re on a year long roller-coaster ride of planning a wedding. Sure, they’re secretly terrified of their relationship’s mediocrity, but all that existential angst gets hurled to the edges as they start doing loops. With a little denial and a decent bachelorette party, they can almost convince themselves that everything is going to be all right. For a good long while they get to soak up all that positive reinforcement from friends and family. They get to be the center of attention, and they get to feel all grown-up. Eventually the big day comes. They say a few magic words, they cut a cake, and then suddenly all the fun stuff stops.

I don’t have to tell you what happens next. You’ve seen it. Within a few months the reality of “til death do us part” comes along and slaps them in the face like a big wet dick. They realize they’re actually pretty miserable, and then it finally dawns on them that they don’t actually have to be together.

Basically, the marriage itself is just an extended director’s cut of their break-up. It’s gross, I know, but we’re flawed creatures in a flawed system. This is just one of those things that happens.

Dear Coquette,

Eight months ago today, my husband killed himself. Last weekend, I finally held his memorial. I’d been planning it since the day he died. It was a big party, with food and drink and fireworks and friends and so many memories. Lots of family, too–including my in-laws, whom I met for the first time (he’d been estranged from his family). It was both very good and very painful, which I expected. I didn’t expect the emotional aftermath. I’m spacey, exhausted, irritable, fragile, unstable. Can’t eat. Can’t sleep. Can’t read. Can’t listen to music. I feel like I did in the first weeks and months after he died. Before the party, I was feeling ok. Not great, but better than I had in a long while. Now, the grief is raw and fresh again. I’ve learned that grieving isn’t a tidy, linear process, but I’m desperate to make some sense of it. If I could parse it, I think I wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed, but I can’t. It just seems chaotic and terrifying.

Can you explain grief?

Thanks for everything you do, always.

It’s never going to make any sense. That’s not part of the deal. We don’t get answers to those kinds of questions. Never have. Never will. There’s no point in trying to parse it. You’ll spin yourself dizzy and just wind up confused (or worse, religious.)

Instead, sit down next to it and just be. Feel all of that shit. Let it wash over you and through you. Do it again and again, as many times as necessary. Don’t be afraid of it.

In a few days, you’ll be back to relative normal, but four months from now on the anniversary, be prepared for this to happen again. It won’t be quite as intense, but it will still be significant. Let that be okay. (And when the day comes that you finally move on, let that be okay too.)

Your grief is real, and nothing real is tidy or linear. You’re doing it right, though. You’re supposed to be exhausted, irritable, fragile, and unstable — but you’re also resilient. One day food will bring flavor again. Sleep will bring rest. Books and music will bring joy.

That’s how this works. It’s not the same thing as any of it making sense, but it’s all we’ve ever had, and on most days, it’s enough.

I’m 28. I tested positive for HIV today. I have all the education to know precisely how grave this is (and is not) as well as a network of friends and family that are stunning me with their fortitude right now.

But Coke, I am so lost. I imagined this moment a hundred times, but I have no idea what to actually do now that it’s happened. How do I move forward from here and allow this experience and permanent life change to enrich my experience? I am filled with terror right now, but the deepest one is that my life will just continue status quo, only with an added layer of crippling regret and internal stigma that will diminish me. How do I handle this?

Many years ago, I had a day like you’re having today. I didn’t test positive for HIV, but you’ll have to trust me when I tell you that the news I got was equally life-changing and equally devastating.

I know exactly what you mean about the existential terror of the status quo — that dreadful feeling of sameness that comes from the world not even noticing how suddenly awake you are. You’ll walk around like that for days, maybe weeks, a completely different shade from everyone else. Some days brighter. Some days dimmer, but never quite matching the intensity of your surroundings.

I also get that you’re lost, but I can’t tell you where to go from here. Nobody can. You have to figure that out for yourself. Don’t worry. You will. Unfortunately, you can’t skip ahead to the part where your life is enriched from the experience. You gotta go through some shit first, and it’s gonna be fucked up for a while.

In the meantime, the best advice I can give you in this moment is to go out tonight and have a really good meal. Go to your favorite restaurant. Order your favorite dish.

I know that seems trite, but it’s not meant to be. I’m quite serious. When I was having a day like you’re having today, that was the single best piece of advice that anyone gave me — go treat yourself to a special meal. Take advantage of how awake you are.

Have an extravagant dinner and notice everything about it. Get dessert. Indulge. Use all your senses and be present in your terror and let your perspective shift just a little bit — that’s all, just the tiniest little shift — and let that be the place where you start, and then just go from there.

Why wasn’t I good enough for him?

Life will be miserable if you think like this.

In one simple sentence, you’ve managed to cram together an invalidation (why wasn’t I) , a value judgment (good enough), and a personalization (for him.) Let me help you see it another way.

First, you can’t take this personally. It’s not even about you. I know this is difficult to accept, but you have nothing to do with what he wants or doesn’t want. His personal preferences do not speak to your quality in any way whatsoever.

While you’re at it, stop judging yourself. This has absolutely nothing to do with you being “good enough.” Your value as a human being is not connected to his romantic whims.

Finally, don’t invalidate yourself. This isn’t a failure on your part. There is no reason to frame this negatively. I know it hurts. Believe me, I know how much unrequited feelings suck, but don’t let the pain trick you into believing you deserve it.

Strip away the invalidation, the value judgment, and the personalization, and “why wasn’t I good enough for him” becomes simply, “he prefers something else.”

That’s it, really. He prefers something else, and it’s not a reflection upon you, nor is it under your control.

Accept that. Learn to think this way. You’ll still feel the pain, but it won’t be agony. It will be bittersweet instead.

Can you explain in simple terms why you would choose to send the wealthiest .001% to the guillotine? What if they’re giving more than they’re getting?

I know it seems a bit Hunger Games-ish, but it’s actually a fairly well thought-out edict.

The premise of the question is that 1% of the world’s population has to be eliminated, and it’s up to me to do it. Okay, fine. I can work with that, but at the same time, I want to make the best of a bad situation.

Now, the premise didn’t stipulate a timeframe, so I’ll take a gracious millennium to do it. (There are several reasons for this.) First off, eliminating 1 out of 100 people all at once would be quite messy and traumatize the collective consciousness. However, eliminating 1 out of 100,000 people every year for a thousand years would barely go noticed.

More importantly, though, spreading it out over a millennium ensures that the desired effect is permanent. Now, what is the desired effect? To eliminate grotesque wealth inequality, of course.

The first year would be rather shocking. A lot of well known billionaires would end up with their heads in a basket. Obviously, a handful of them would be deeply missed, but by and large, the world would instantly become a much better place without the world’s wealthiest .001%.

Now, as the second culling approaches, do you think the remaining super-rich are gonna hold on to their wealth? Fuck no. They’re gonna redistribute whatever’s necessary to keep from losing their heads. Everyone will.

Entirely new global financial industries would spring up to automatically and inherently correct the world’s wealth inequality problem, and after a period of painful adjustment, we’d have a thousand years of relative equality where the richest person on earth would only have about 10,000 times more wealth than the poorest person on earth, or risk being sacrificed each year. (A 10,000 to 1 ratio may still seem like a lot of inequality, but on a global scale, it really isn’t.)

Obviously, there would be plenty amongst the rich and powerful who’d try to game the system through complicated trusts and schemes, but as empress of this little scenario, I would reserve the right to call shenanigans and send those folks to the guillotine.

Actually, the most interesting thing about this edict would be all the bizarre rituals, institutions, and unforeseen consequences that would spring up as a side effect of such a new world order.

It’d make for a fascinating utopian/dystopian novel.

I was given the name of this blog by a personal role-model, a mental health counselor from the Eating Disorder’s Inpatient unit that I’m currently on, fighting for my life back from Anorexia Nervosa and related disorders. She struggled with depression and anxiety when she was younger, and her story inspires me so much. I want to thank you so much for impacting her life so much that she was able to impact mine, with the same wisdom that you shared with her and that she read on your blog a long time ago. I have so much love for the both of you for that.

I had some questions that I really need advice on regarding life in general, and I don’t know if you can answer them, but I hope that you can.

How does someone decide that they want to live? How do they decide that the little things that are good in life outweigh all of the horrible things in their lives? I have teetered on the edge of wanting to live and wanting to die. I cling to very small things and hope that they are enough to motivate me, but sometimes it feels hopeless. Especially when I am in my eating disorder, without recovery, life seems dreary and monotonous and nothing I want to involve myself in. I don’t think you know the answer on how to stop restricting, over-exercising, and purging, but any advice that you have about eating disorders would be much appreciated as well. I guess it boils down to, what little things make life worth it? And what big things make life worth it? And how do you decide that you want to live rather than dig your grave “with your own fork and knife”? I want to live, but I want to die. I am a mess of contradictions, a mess of a girl. I don’t want to be a mess anymore, but I’m lost as to what to do with all of the hopelessness, worthlessness, loneliness, and feeling undeserving of life and food that I’m dealing with even as I type this.

I like the way you speak of being “in your disorder,” and how you’re fighting for your life “back from Anorexia Nervosa.” I like the way that you’ve separated yourself from your disease. You recognize it as something apart from who you are. Yes, it’s something that wants to kill you. Yes, it’s something that you have to fight every goddamn day. Yes, that’s fucking exhausting, so much so that I understand what you mean when you say you’re teetering on the edge of wanting to live and wanting to die. I understand how it would be so fucking easy just to give up and let it win.

That’s the thing, though. By simply not giving up, you’ve already decided that you want to live. Actually, that’s not even quite right. You do want to live. All you’re really deciding is why. You want there to be a good enough reason, something so profound and so obvious that you don’t have to keep burning all your energy scavenging around for a bunch of little things to keep you going. You want the magical secret answer to the question why that will finally and permanently beat down all that horrible shit that keeps trying to kill you.

The answer does exist. I discovered it. Your counselor discovered it. It really is profound and it really is obvious and it really will save you. You have no idea how much we wish we could just whisper it in your ear, but that’s not how this answer works. It has to come from inside of you. The most fucked up thing is that the answer is already there. It’s been inside of you all along, and once you discover it, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

In the meantime, embrace your mess. Allow your contradictions to exist in the present moment. Practice radical acceptance of all the hopelessness, worthlessness, and loneliness. That’s all you have to do. Just let that shit be okay, because it is.

There is peace in the dreary monotony. It’s not the same thing as happiness. It’s not the same thing as health. It’s simply peace. That’s where you will find your answer. Come to a place of acceptance, unconditionally and with no expectations, and you will discover that there is no difference between the big things and the little things in life. It’s all one size and it’s all one thing, and yes, it’s all a mess, but it’s a beautiful mess. So are you.

There’s an asshole who doesn’t give a shit about me except for when we’re fucking, who I’m a little bit in love with. And then there’s the super nice guy who cares for me a lot, who I don’t feel anything for. Help me break out of this, Coquette.

I can’t do shit for you if these are the choices you bring me. Have some fucking self respect and get rid of them both. Go be something other than a fucked-out cliché from the first act of every teen romantic comedy.

I mean, how hard is this? Once you’ve established that a guy is an asshole, stop fucking him and move on. Once you’ve established that you’re never gonna have feelings for a guy who’s romantically into you, set firm boundaries and don’t lead him on.

It’s bad enough to get either one of those things wrong, but to fuck up both at the same time and then bring it to me like it’s some kind of dichotomy? Honestly, get your shit together.

Don’t act like you’re trapped between anything here. You created this triangle, and you maintain it for a reason. You can walk away from it any time you want, but you get something out of it, so don’t come whining to me like it’s beyond your control.

This is some silly girl shit. Start acting like a woman and handle your fucking business.