Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Fear of Asking Too Much, a 64-year-old man who threw himself into volunteer work to survive heartbreak, wonders if he should ask out the new volunteer coordinator, whom he finds “exciting” but who is young enough to be his daughter (217). He also worries that his extreme need for love may put her off.

Sugar responds that “love is our essential nutrient” and that this man’s desire for it is entirely natural (219). She says that he should not let his fears get in the way of asking the volunteer coordinator out, although he should bear in mind that she might refuse him on age grounds or because he is a volunteer in her place of employment. He should be assertive about the fact that he likes her and ask whether she would like to go out sometime. Sugar maintains that his longing for love is only one part of him and that he needs to show other facets of his full personality. Sugar recalls going into graphic detail to Mr. Sugar about how a previous relationship with a man with a heroin addiction saddled her with an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion, and Mr. Sugar replied that she did not have to be broken for him.

C, a 29-year-old woman, took pains to distance herself from the elder brother who exhibited sadistic behavior toward her in childhood. However, her parents are still in thrall to this man, who has been in and out of jail and struggles to pay the bills to support his two children. His sins against his parents include stealing from them and emotionally abusing and threatening them. C is fed up with his behavior and wants to know whether she should avoid spending Christmas with her parents, as he will be there, and they have taken no steps to cut him off.

Sugar tells C that she must set firm boundaries and model these for her parents, who seem unable to do this with their son, whom “they’d have died for probably from the minute he was born” but who is now “killing them instead” (228). While she should continue to show love to her parents, she should cut her brother out of her life by refusing contact with him. She should also do what she can to prevent her niece and nephew from being in their unstable father’s care.

Drinker knows that they have an alcohol addiction but a functioning appearance. They drink alone, at regular intervals during the day, and socially. They have tried therapy, but it does not seem to work.

Sugar advocates that there is no “magic easy solution” (231), but that they need to find a way to stop using alcohol and enlist the help of a supportive community like Alcoholics Anonymous to meet likeminded people and feel the hope that they can change.

Two women, one in a civil union with another woman and the other in a heterosexual marriage, are beleaguered by the fact that their partners will not work. The first woman, Working for Two, is worried about issuing a “mentally fragile” partner with a history of disordered eating and abuse with ultimatums, even though she is in a dire financial situation. The second woman, Responsible One, also describes her spouse as “mentally fragile,” him being “bipolar and self-hating”; however, she attests to the fact that while they have trouble paying bills, he does the housework (235).

Sugar tells the women that their partners do not demonstrate the usual reasons for not being able to hold down paid work: namely, childcare or physical sickness. She attests that while both women are fed up, the “dark angst” that keeps their partners from being responsible for their lives has a greater hold than the women’s anger (236). As they cannot force their partners to get jobs, the women have two options. The first is to accept this and negotiate a system where the nonworking partner contributes greatly to the chores and administration involved in running a household in a way that eases the working partner’s load. Alternatively, if the women find their partners’ lack of motivation so unappealing, they might consider an ultimatum, telling their partners that they refuse to shoulder financial responsibility solo, expressing that this is hurting them as a couple.

Undecided, a 41-year-old man with a 40-year-old partner, feels genuinely torn about whether he should become a parent. On the one hand, he loves his independent, child-free existence and worries he will miss it if he has a baby. On the other hand, he adored the experience of nurturing prematurely born kittens and rearing them for their 17-year life.

Sugar quotes the poet Tomas Tranströmer’s idea that every life “has a sister ship” of unlived possibilities and affirms that either choice Undecided has about childrearing will contain some loss (243). Sugar says that while, like Undecided, she relished her child-free liberty, she gave birth to two children toward the end of her fertile years for fear that she might regret not doing so later, when it was too late. She says that taking the long view of what a good life means to him is Undecided’s best option for clarity.

Scared of the Future, a 29-year-old woman, has a full life but fears that she will soon be diagnosed with cancer owing to her family’s history with the disease. She worries about “the consequences of ‘no tomorrow’” on the people she loves and about how she would confront her boyfriend with the prospect of a cancer diagnosis (249).

Sugar tells Scared of the Future that if she continues on the path of listening to “the crazy lady living in [her] head” (250), she will severely limit her happiness and life chances. While the woman’s family history does mean that she needs to monitor her health, she does not need to consider cancer an inevitability. Moreover, she reminds her that how and when a person dies is out of her control and that warning her partner about a potential cancer death would be like him warning her of his potential demise in a car accident.

Constantly Hitting Refresh asks Sugar how she is ever supposed to get over an ex with whom she is still trying to be friends when faced with their social-media updates.

Sugar says that during her social-media-free youth, post-breakup despair was characterized by waiting by the telephone in case one’s ex called and potentially driving past their house and peering in through the window. However, she notes, one would ultimately be left in the dark about their ex’s life and be forced to move on. She advises that Constantly Hitting Refresh unfriends and unfollows their ex and does not attempt a friendship with them, as this is the only way they will properly be able to move on.

Awful Jealous Person, a 31-year-old graduate from a prestigious MFA course with an unpublished novel, is furiously envious of writer friends who have been more successful than them in the same endeavor. They then feel disgusted with themselves for their begrudging feelings. Awful Jealous Person wants to know if envy is normal for a writer.

Sugar advocates that while we all want to be the chosen ones and “why not me?” feelings are common, they do not have to rule our lives (258). She reminds Awful Jealous Person that book deals are difficult to land, as they rely on external authorities seeing the potential in a manuscript. While quality of writing is in a writer’s control, getting a book deal is not. Awful Jealous Person’s fixation on the latter is eroding the passion and energy they should be devoting to the former. Instead, when something good happens to one of Awful Jealous Person’s peers, they should remind themselves to be grateful for the positives in their life and also that another’s success has no bearing on their own. Writers who can continue through the tough business of serial frustration and rejection are those with an abundance rather than scarcity mindset. Sugar adds that a portion of Awful Jealous Person’s jealousy comes from their sense of entitlement, which in turn stems from the privilege of being “given a tremendous amount of things that [they] did not earn or deserve, but rather that [they] received for the sole reason that [they] happen to be born into a family who had the money and wherewithal to fund [their] education at two colleges to which [they] feel compelled to attach the word ‘prestigious’” (262). This means that they think being a successful writer is owed to them. They ought to investigate this, as it may be at the root of their grievance.

A 47-year-old Midwestern lesbian who describes herself as a “feisty broad” is struggling in an on-off relationship with a woman she describes as withholding and libidinally repressed but whom she nevertheless feels is her soulmate (264). She fears that given her complexity and demographic she will never find another woman to love her.

Sugar tells this woman that her conviction that this highly incompatible, withholding partner is the only one for her is the most unsettling part of her letter. While the woman is fixated on her partner’s fears, it is her own that are “messing with [her] head” and making her feel desperate (265). She informs the woman that the ups and downs she experiences with this partner are not true love but emotional turmoil. While there is uncertainty about when the woman will find a more suitable partner, staying in her present relationship will definitely cut her off from it.

Desperate, a woman who had an abusive childhood and was medicated on “‘a cocktail’ of psychotropic drugs for depression, anxiety and insomnia” (268), feels guilty about her past compulsion to steal from those close to her. While she has spent six years without stealing, she is beset by self-loathing and wonders whether she should confess her misdemeanors to those she stole from.

Sugar tells Desperate that she will continue to feel this way until she forgives herself. Forgiving herself will bring her closer to the person she wants to be, rather than staying stuck in a nonproductive guilt cycle. This is what Sugar did for herself when she went through a stealing phase during her teens, when she was processing feelings of hurt and loneliness. She deduces that Desperate was also lonely and stole when her mother was abusive toward her to fill “a mother-sized hole” that she hoped would disappear by taking stuff that did not belong to her (271).

A woman who has been in a 21-year relationship with a man she considers her soulmate wonders whether she should confess to an online flirtation that she had in the aftermath of a midlife crisis and her partner’s own hurtful online tryst. She wonders whether keeping her secret will create problems in her relationship.

Sugar advocates keeping her husband in the dark about her online relationship, as telling the truth in this instance may unnecessarily complicate matters. She adds that “sometimes the greatest truth isn’t in the confession, but rather in the lesson learned” (276), and that she can use the insights gained from this experience to make her marriage stronger. 

Living Dead Dad, a 58-year-old man bereaved by the loss of his son, who was killed four years ago at the age of 22 by a drunk driver, composes his letter to Sugar in the format of a list. While on the surface he appears to be doing OK, with a loving girlfriend and a rewarding job, he is privately in deep pain and ruminating on the life that his son would have had if he were still living. He also regrets his own initial negative reaction to the news that his son was gay, although he soon came to accept him and his boyfriend. He asks Sugar how he can become human again.

Sugar, who similarly answers in list format, does not profess to be an expert in knowing how to move on from bereavement, but she assures him that he will. She asserts that he cannot change the fact of his son’s death or that he won’t have the future his father expected for him. It is especially hard to lose a child, as children “are not so much who they are as who they will become” (284). However, his love for his son is untouchable and will be with him until he dies. As he has no choice but to live in grief, his best option is becoming the man his son “didn’t get to be” (285). He may find, as did Sugar, who lost her mother prematurely, that this loss makes him into a better person. She advises that he celebrate both his son’s life and his death and use it to create something beautiful.