On Love

On true love and a greater purpose

Do you ever wonder why your here? And your purpose? Or if you’ll ever find true love? I think about these things every once in a while, and although its great being single and wild, these thoughts come and go. What about you?

As an existential nihilist, I have a problem with folks who indulge in grandiose wonderings about a greater purpose to life.

Anyone with the slightest sense of scale recognizes that nothing we do matters. In a universe so infinitely vast, our lives are entirely without meaning. The trick is being able to laugh at the abyss because you recognize the freedom it affords you.

Pondering your purpose is philosophical masturbation, and the only way you can make yourself cum is by surrendering rational thought to religious doctrine.

No thank you – I don’t need god. I already have a clit.

I’m perfectly cozy with the cold hard knowledge that I’ll die never understanding the nature of the universe. In the meantime, I’ve carved out my own little corner of paradise and filled it with all kinds of love, none of which I would insult by deeming any one more ‘true’ than the other.

That’s another thing – I can’t stand it when grown-ass women use the word ‘true’ as an adjective for something so important as love. There is no such thing as true love. Only love.

Going through life with the expectation of some fantastical form of uber-love is childish wish-thinking that would be silly if it weren’t so damaging to adult relationships.

Sure, I like The Princess Bride as much as the next gal, but fairy tales are lies we tell to children. Still, the myth of Prince Charming manages to sneak past Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny only to worm its way into our romantic expectations.

We don’t write letters to the North Pole anymore, but somehow we’re still waiting to be swept off our feet.

Again, no thank you – I don’t need a prince. I just need a guy who can find my clit.

On the point of relationships

What’s the point of relationships? If the initial high is temporary and then you stick together until you hate each other so much that you cheat or break up, then what’s the point? Is there ever a time when people find someone they really love?

The human condition is a fun ride, but don’t ever forget that we’re all just a bunch of talking meat wrapped around a sack of warm shit programmed to eat, sleep and fuck.

We’re social animals with a biological imperative to reproduce. That’s it. That’s all. Love is a neurochemical response with a shelf life long enough to perpetuate the species.

And hey, I don’t wanna hear you complaining about it either, because quite frankly, you’re one lucky motherfucker to have air in your lungs and the opportunity to be confused by it at all.

The last breath you just took is one more than a hundred billion human beings who came before you will ever get to take again, and one day, the last breath you just took will be the last breath you’ll ever take.

That day is the point of relationships, that day when you cease to fucking exist, because it’s guaranteed, my friend. This shit all ends, so cram as much love, joy and shout-it-from-the-rooftops happiness as you possibly can into whatever time you can make for yourself.

Meet as many interesting people as you can. Make as many friends as you can. Fall in love as many times as you can. Fuck it if it hurts sometimes. You’re one of the lucky ones who’s still breathing.

All we have in this world is relationships with other people. At this stage in our evolution, nothing else matters.

On all that matters

So wait, you just said both “We’re social animals with a biological imperative to reproduce. That’s it. That’s all. Love is a neurochemical response with a shelf life long enough to perpetuate the species.” and “All we have in this world is relationships with other people. At this stage in our evolution, nothing else matters.” I mean, yell at me all you want, but I’m confused. Is love not a relationship with another person? Does that mean it doesn’t matter or it’s all that matters? I don’t get it.

Both. It’s both, my friend. Love doesn’t matter, and yet it’s all that matters.

This doesn’t have to be confusing. You just have to be willing to accept the premise that nothing matters. We’re all dust. Not just our individual selves, but the entirety of the human experiment. It’s all going to be a pile of ashes one day.

Most people recoil at the thought of annihilation. It terrifies them. They invent silly gods and ridiculous myths of Armageddon or eternal life, all to stave off the creeping inevitability of the nothingness to which we will all return.

Don’t recoil from your own impermanence. Accept it. Embrace it. Gaze into the abyss, and let the abyss gaze back into you, because if you can let go of your fear while maintaining eye contact with nothingness, the singular importance of love will crystallize right in front of you. It will be an unavoidable revelation.

Love doesn’t matter, and yet it’s all that matters. The contradiction melts away once you come to terms with not just your but everything’s eventual annihilation. Sure, love is just a neurochemical response with a shelf life long enough to perpetuate the species, but so what? It’s all we’ve fucking got.

On saying those three words

Is it better to tell someone you love them when they say it or leave them hanging until you feel it?

Come on, people. This is Integrity 101. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. If you don’t love someone, don’t let them guilt you into saying ‘I love you’ out of some misguided sense of propriety.

You’re not leaving them hanging unless they’re expecting you to return the sentiment, and if that’s the case, then they’re not really saying ‘I love you’. What they’re really doing is committing little tiny acts of emotional extortion.

Don’t degrade ‘I love you’ by surrendering it against your will. Every time you say those three words you should feel it.

On reframing bisexuality

Oh, fuck. If I know I like men and women, how do I decide who to settle down with in the end?

I know this question is just an expression of your immaturity, but it annoys the shit out of me when people frame bisexuality as a false dilemma between genders. It’s not.

Go fall in love. Go get your heart broken, and then go do it again. Find out what it takes to be in a long-term relationship regardless of either of your genders. Learn about yourself. Figure out the kind of person you want to be and the kind of life you want to live.

Go do all that shit, and when you’ve finally grown up a bit, when you’ve wrapped your head around the wonderfully messy and messed-up complexity of interpersonal relationships, when you’ve come to terms with how little control you actually have over your romantic destiny in the first place, maybe then you’ll realize how ridiculous it is to reduce major life decisions about potential life partners to something as ultimately inconsequential as ‘penis vs vagina’.

What is the distinction between loving someone and being “in love” with them? Aren’t these just arbitrary constructs?

The classical distinction is between the concepts of Philia and Eros: of brotherly love versus romantic love. The modern distinction tends to be less sophisticated, and pretty much boils down to whether you still want to fuck somebody.

What do you do when you realize you love your significant other more than they love you?

Embrace your vulnerability.

How do I fall in love with my wife again?

Make sure you haven’t lost respect for her, and then simply be open to it.

I’ve accidentally fallen in love with a man who is the single parent of his 1-year-old son. This is not what I had planned out for myself. What do I do?

Get used to life not going according to plan.

I love him. I’ve loved him for a long time now. I know that he loves me too… why aren’t we saying it out loud?!?!

Because you’re so desperate for it.

What am I supposed to do when I’m in love with two different people?

That’s not a ‘supposed to do’ situation. What do you want to do? Try doing that. (If you’re honest with the people involved, and they don’t want what you want, then at that point, hopefully you’ll know more about what best to do.)

On letting go

I’m in love, but we’re going to college next year. She to Yale, I to Vanderbilt, so it’s most likely too far to keep a relationship in college. Do I just let it go or give a long-distance relationship a shot freshman year in college? It seems like it’d be near impossible, but I want to know what you think about it. Thanks, Coquette.

Let it go. Try to make it as mutual as possible. Your heart will break and you will miss her terribly that first semester at college. Still, if you say your goodbyes and split amicably, you’ll end the relationship on a high note.

If you try to stick it out, at best your relationship will die a slow death of long-distance starvation. At worst, incidents of infidelity will destroy your mutual respect. Either way, it ends badly.

It’s hard to see now, but the best outcome is that you remember each other fondly in the years to come. Life is long. It’s much better to have your first love as a friend ten years later.

On a crush junkie

There’s always been a guy in my life who I am completely obsessed with and/or devastated by. It’s the same formula each time: great sex, he’s aloof and emotionally reserved, I agonize over his text messages. I feel like shit during the entire thing, but I crave his attention/validation so much, contact with him is like a high. What is wrong with me and how do I fix it?

You just listed what’s wrong with you. Congratulations. You’ve correctly identified your dysfunctional pattern of behavior, and that’s the first step towards fixing it.

The second step is giving it a name. Some folks like to call what you’ve got a ‘love addiction’. I prefer the term ‘crush junkie’, because it’s not actual love, nor is it an actual addiction.

The third step is breaking the pattern. This is where things get difficult, because it’s entirely up to you to change your behavior. Stop obsessing over guys. Stop giving them the power to devastate you. Sure, that’s easier said than done, but it’s a lot easier to do when you start recognizing that your boy-crazy bullshit – all the attention-seeking behavior and desperate need for validation – it’s all just a substitute for having actual self-respect and self-worth.

Find your own internal source of validation, and let it be independent of any relationship. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s necessary for you to stay emotionally healthy, and it will help you to consciously choose not to let yourself get wrapped up in the experience of infatuation.

You can still enjoy the early romantic stages of a relationship, but when you can resist the urge to obsess over a guy because you know in your heart you don’t need his validation, you’ll also find that you won’t feel like shit any more.

On someone out there

do you actually believe that there is a stage in every relationship where you get bored of being with your partner? you don’t think that there is someone out there that could entertain your fancies, keep you laughing, and keep you orgasming year after year? i only ask because i have witnessed people with this relationship (namely my parents, i know… gross, but it’s true. and actually pretty endearing now), and i wonder if it’s absolutely naive of me to believe that i have any hope of achieving this with someone i’m with …or if it actually is a feasible possibility.

It never ceases to amaze me how some of you can turn this into an exercise in missing the motherfucking point. Is there someone out there that could entertain my fancies, keep me laughing, and keep me orgasming year after year? Fuck, what an infantile question.

Of course there is. Even if such a person were one in a million, there are literally thousands upon thousands of people out there who could do that shit standing on their heads. Don’t you get it?

There is no one magical person out there with the other half of my golden amulet. Instead, there’s a metric fuck-ton of beautiful and fascinating boys and girls to play with. Sometimes I even fall in love.

I surround myself with brilliant and witty people. I am responsible for my own orgasm. I am the empress of my own goddamn happiness whether I’m in a relationship with zero, one or several people at any given moment.

Your parents didn’t achieve relationship bliss because they found soulmate perfection in one another. They did it because they’re a damn good match and shit happened to work out for them. That’s commendable, but these days, it’s not the norm.

Also, don’t kid yourself. Boredom will eventually set in to every relationship. It doesn’t have to be a killer, though. Boredom doesn’t mean you stop laughing and fucking. Hell, most folks end up taking comfort in consistency. All I was saying is that fireworks always end.

Your naïveté doesn’t stem from your desire to be like your parents. That’s sweet, actually. Your naïveté stems from an underlying assumption that there is someone – a Prince Charming – who is somehow more perfect for you than all your other potential mates. That shit is ridiculous.

I’m not saying that you won’t eventually find someone who you think is perfect and settle down to a marriage very similar to the way your parents did it. Odds are, you will. After all, you were raised in a loving environment, and so the likelihood of scoring a similar situation is that much better.

That’s the point really. It’s all just a numbers game.

Good luck.

What’s left after the being in love phase is over?

Love. Or ennui. Or both. Depends on how you play it.

How do you keep a man in love?

Be cool.

When do I give up on an unrequited love?

As soon as possible.

What is the cure for unrequited love?

Time and distance.

On trying long distance

I’m trying a long-distance relationship for the first time. I really care about the girl, but I have always had a hard time keeping it in my pants. I’ve never really cheated – but in this instance I feel like it might eventually happen. Got any advice?

You’re asking a woman who is at this very moment doing her level fucking best to execute a dignified and graceful resolution to a loving and devoted long-distance relationship that has, at least for now, run its course.

Bad timing, shitbird. I’m about to fuck up your whole world.

A long-distance relationship isn’t something you casually try for the first time like Thai food or anal sex. A long-distance relationship is something you do because you absolutely motherfuckingly have to, and it’s bittersweet and painful and unbearable and you can’t live without it, which I suppose is still pretty much like Thai food or anal sex, but you get my point.

If all you can say is, ‘I really care about the girl’, that isn’t even close to enough. You’d better love that crazy bitch with every last ounce of douche you’ve got coursing through your veins. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

And what’s all this about eventually cheating? Quit planning to fuck up. Fidelity isn’t inversely proportional to distance, asshole. There are no teen sex comedy loopholes in real life.

Feel free to work out an open arrangement, but if you decide to go traditional, you’d better have the requisite integrity. Keep it in your motherfucking pants, or be honest about the fact that you can’t. It’s that simple.

I just spent a solid, passionate year loving someone across hundreds of miles of Pacific Coast Highway. It was the loneliest year of my life, punctuated by the most blissed-out orgiastic episodes of heroin-grade happiness I’ve ever known.

It’s an unnatural thing to maintain burning desire at a distance. You’ve gotta be an emotional athlete to handle the highs and lows. It requires a heart that’s pure and strong, and brother, I don’t think you’re in shape for it.

I’d wish you good luck, but it’d be wasted on your weak-ass shit. Long distance is for hardcore motherfuckers on fire.

You ain’t ready.

I’m in love with a married man. Please remind me how big of a piece of shit I am so I can move on from this toxic situation…

You can’t help who you fall in love with, and you’re not a piece of shit unless you have an actual affair with the guy. Quit punishing yourself. Forgive yourself instead.

True or false: If you truly love someone, being faithful is easy.

False. If you truly have integrity, being faithful is easy. Do not confuse love and integrity. Love is just an emotional state, and regardless of how deeply or intensely it may be felt, it’s still not a measure of the content of your character.

I’ve never been broken up with. I’ve ended the few serious relationships I’ve been in. This bothers me, but I’m not sure what to do about it.

That’s not what bothers you. What bothers you is that you don’t know whether you’ve ever really been in love.

On prince charming disease

I love my boyfriend in a very warm, comfortable and affectionate way. We are on almost the same page intellectually, and we never fight. Things are pretty much “no complaints” all around. On my end, though, it’s not really a passionate love and never has been. He’s the best guy I’ve ever dated, and I do love him, but there is a small part of me that still wants to hold out for at least a steamy love affair before settling down with the safe and comfortable guy (or just find a good guy who also presses my buttons). I’m happy and couldn’t bring myself to leave my guy, but I wonder if this desire for something more exciting will rear up one day and make a big pile of relationship-ruining drama. Should I interpret this feeling as a sign I should leave, even though I don’t want to right now? Or should I just roll with it and deal with it later, if it really becomes a bigger issue?

At moments like these, I want to drive up to Forest Lawn, find Walt Disney’s grave, dig up whatever part of him wasn’t cryogenically frozen, and bitch-slap him for infecting generations of American women with something I like to call ‘Prince Charming Disease’.

This is a terrible affliction that causes grown-ass women to ruin perfectly good relationships by pining away for a nebulous cartoon fiction: passionate, steamy, ‘happily ever after’ love.

‘Snow White’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Cinderella’ are delicious fun when you’re a little girl, but fairy tales are lies we tell to children. The myth of Prince Charming has no business sneaking past Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and worming its way into your romantic expectations. Do you still write letters to the North Pole? Didn’t think so – and yet you’re still waiting to be swept off your feet.

You are happy in a stable, healthy relationship built on mutual love and respect with a man whom you consider your intellectual and emotional equal. Girl, you and I should be high-fiving like drunken frat boys at a strip club. Instead, you’re writing me about the best guy you’ve ever dated like he’s the winter of your discontent.

You want to hold out for a steamy love affair? You actually used the word ‘steamy’? Are you kidding? Sure, you could find a guy who bends you over the furniture, but fresh sexual chemistry is a temporary high, and it isn’t gonna scratch your itch.

Your real problem is that you haven’t plowed through enough guys to realize that they’re all pretty much the same, and so every time the music swells at the end of a chick flick, you think you’re missing out on something magical.

Sorry, babe. Nobody is waiting around the corner on a white horse.

If you weren’t emotionally, intellectually or physically satisfied, that would be another story – just not this one. You’re happy, and nothing is broken except your childlike set of unrealistic romantic expectations, which would be quaint if they weren’t so damaging to adult relationships like yours.

On falling in love

Do you think one month is too soon to fall in love? Or 2 months? 3 months? Is there a point where it’s just too soon? Or should I just pay more attention to my feelings and less to my calendar?

One month is long enough to be love stoned, but in love? Not unless you’re a silly teenager. Three intense months might do it, but it’d still be a raw emotion without the kind of shared life experience that really gets you there.

Ignore the calendar, but take your time.

On learning to love yourself

How do you learn to love yourself? How do you “realize” that in your deepest of hearts you are worthy? I’ve been trying for years and after every new strategy or life-changing decision I always reach the same conclusion: I’m not. I could give you a list of reasons why I’m right to think that and I could give you a list of reasons why I’m stupid and wrong to think that. My reasoning tells me that the second list is me trying to lie to myself. How do you love the skin you’re in? How do you love your personality? How do you, coketalk, do it?

Stop all this ‘trying to learn to realize’ bullshit. You’re tripping all over yourself with lists and strategy and reasoning. This isn’t a process for your ego or your rational mind. You’re not going to think your way into loving yourself.

Sorry to get all Yoda up in this bitch, but love or love not. There is no try.

The simple truth is that you are worthy of love. That goes for every last motherfucker on the planet. Whether you realize it or not is purely a matter of getting out of your own way.

Seriously, don’t you get how amazing it is to be alive? One day you won’t be. In the meantime, the skin you’re in will wither and age, your personality will ebb and flow, and everything around you will be in a constant state of flux. Ultimately, none of it really matters, except for those moments of joy you carve out for yourself, and you can only experience joy when you forget all the bullshit and remember that you really do love yourself after all.

This isn’t about self-confidence. It’s not even about self-acceptance really. That’s the fucking irony here. Loving yourself isn’t about the ‘self’. It’s a difficult concept to communicate. I’ve hinted at it before, but once you’ve had the experience of truly letting go of your ego, you’ll understand what I mean. There’s a freedom that comes in accepting in its totality both the extraordinary nature and fleeting insignificance of the human condition. For some reason, afterward, it’s really fucking easy to love yourself.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna start singing Kumbaya or some shit. You wanted to know how I did it, and that’s pretty much it. I guess all I’m trying to say is, it’s not that you ever really learn to love yourself. In the end, if you’re lucky, you just forget not to.

On teenage love

Can you be in love with someone after only dating them for a short amount of time? Yes I’m a stupid teenage girl who believes in love, sue me.

Sue you for what? Bubble gum and a sense of entitlement?

Shit sweetie, I’m a bitch, but I’m not so nasty a shrew as to slap away the cartoon songbirds that are fluttering around your candy-filled head.

Enjoy the rush. Have a blast. Savor every minute of the experience. Really, I mean it. Young love is the greatest drug on the planet. Just remember, I’ll be here after the holidays when break-up season hits.