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

In response to a question about advice on “what not to do” (287), Sugar says that we should never do what we know to be wrong on a gut level. Most often, we know actions are counterproductive in the moment and make excuses because the right decision is often the harder one.

While answering whether she thinks her advice is always right, Sugar says that she is not so much aiming to tell her correspondents what to do but rather to “present a perspective that might be difficult” to see (288).

Happily Ever After, a 29-year-old woman on the brink of marriage, wonders if she should retract the offer of having her 53-year-old sister and brother-in-law walk her down the aisle. While she used to consider this couple’s relationship a model marriage, she changed her mind after learning that they had both dabbled with infidelity. She feels that infidelity would be the breaking point of a relationship and is dejected that two people who seem so perfect for each other find it hard to stay faithful all the time.

Sugar writes that while she and Mr. Sugar were madly in love from the outset, there was this point about a year into the relationship where she discovered that he had been unfaithful to her.