Dear Emily: Bad advice is here!

Emily Writes

12 Oct 2026 — 8 min read

I don't know why, but people often ask me for advice. I get DMs all the time asking what I'd do in situations I hope I'll never find myself in and people ask me for tips about matters where I self-evidently have very little wisdom.

But, I do have a newsletter and so I thought, why not? Why not me? If people are going to get advice from all of the terrible influencers out there why shouldn't they get advice from a chaotic, ADHD-addled, menopausal, anxious mess?

So, welcome to Ask Emily - The Bad Advice Column where I try to give good advice, but I'm not very good at that, so it's bad. Email me at emily @ emilywrites dot co dot nz if you want to be in the next edition!

Feel free to skip to the comments if you read this already in your email!

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Hello Emily,

I don't know who to vote for. I want to get rid of this government, but I'm scared of who to vote for to do that. Please just tell me who to vote for.

Vote Greens. If you want to get rid of this government, vote Greens or Labour. In my opinion, Labour needs to be pushed to make brave policy that creates real system change, and they need the Greens to do that.

This is the only one of these that I guarantee is actual good advice.

Hiya Emily.

Earlier this year I got involved with someone in a very intense yet casual way. I'm in the midst of a divorce, and it was so fun getting to know someone new and experiencing all the endorphin spikes of a fresh, exciting romance. And the sex was great.

Unfortunately, it came to an abrupt halt when he let me know that things had gotten more serious with someone else he was seeing. I was bummed out that our romp was over, and then more bummed out when I felt a wash of rejection and loneliness coming over me.

I wallowed in it for a while, trying to remind myself that the heartache was about the misery of my marriage ending, rather than this flirty, sexy situationship.

Anyways, a bit of time has passed, and now he's slid back into my DMs, proposing a threesome with him and his partner. I realise this is a bad idea, but I'm probably going to do it anyway, so the advice I'm after is about how I handle what comes next.

Is there a way of buffering myself from the complicated feelings that might arise afterwards?

Yours sincerely, Collecting Material For My Memoir

CMFMM, oh, how I relate to you going headlong into a mistake, knowing it's a mistake. I think that makes us human (and cool) that we self-sabotage in a sexy way.

Since we have established this is a terrible idea, and you're still going to do it (again, no judgement, I can relate), I think the best move is to build some scaffolding around this poor decision.

1) Organise a catch-up with your bestie afterwards. Choose the friend who wants to know everything about your sex life. Do a blow-by-blow (pun intended), and hopefully she'll celebrate the (hopefully) great time you have without letting you wallow in self-pity.

2) Organise a date with someone reliably interesting or good in bed for a day or two later - to remind yourself that you're hot and desirable (so hot and desirable your ex is still thinking about you).

3) Write some affirmations and put them around your room or on alerts on your phone. Things like: 'He's a man'. And: 'Ultimately, he is a man'.

I hope that helps. And I hope the threesome is good and his partner is hot and halfway through decides she just wants to focus on you and he gets stressed out and has a nervous breakdown about it. x

Emily! HELP! My friend cannot get over her ex. We don't understand at all why she keeps going back to him. He's mean and boring. She spends all of her time crying at us, but she never sticks with leaving him. He plays games with her and draws her back in. It's driving us all mad. What do we do? - Want to be a good friend but FFS, Tauranga.

Dear FFS,

I get it. I do. I've been where you are. And my god, it is frustrating. But heartbreak is heartbreak. It's amazing the kind of psychosis one can fall into when they're heartbroken. She will be released from the spell she's under, I promise you. She'll wake up, feel free, and look back on this time as confused as you are. And you will be free too!

Unfortunately, you just have to wait it out. I have never been able to convince a friend to leave a relationship before they're ready. But every woman who dates men has an ex that she looks back on and thinks, 'What on God's Green Earth was I thinking? ' But we often forget the heartbreak.

We forget what it feels like to be horrified, humiliated, exhausted by grief, and confused by the behaviour of someone you thought you knew. Breakups can be unimaginably brutal. So try to be patient with your friend. She will get there. Be gentle with her.

Dear Emily,

I am on the apps, and I'm not getting any matches. Is it the apps? Or is it me? I'm on HER, Nymph, Feeld, Bumble and Hinge. But people chat, then they ghost. Or they don't chat with me at all. What am I doing wrong? Lonely, Up North.

Dear Lonely,

You're not doing anything wrong. You're a goddess, and even though I don't know you, I really believe that. The apps are the problem.

In my limited experience with those apps, here's my advice: Get your friends together and workshop your profile. You might have things in there that are making matches less likely, and you might not even know it.

But remember, the apps are designed to keep you on them. They don't want you to match because when you do, you'll stop paying for the app! And I assume you're using the free versions of these apps, and these apps are designed to make you pay. So they're probably only showing your profile to the same four people who are like, 'why are all of these ENM people on my ENM app,' or they are super into some feet or something and you don't have any feet pics (I'm not saying put feet pics up. Unless you are into feet and you want your partner to be into feet in which case I don't think you're going to go without matches much longer but also God help you.)

I have run out of ideas for this one. Come to the next Date My Queer Mate. Even if you're straight you can bring a queer friend and if you're queer well the clue is in the name of the event.

Emily! I think my son is thinking about having sex with his girlfriend - they're 16 and I can just tell it's on the cards. Would it be weird to talk to him about how to have sex? As in, women's pleasure? Scared of Hamilton.

Oh Scared, I am terrified of the sex-negative psychopath TERFs going feral over this but, I'm just going to say it. Yes, you should teach your son about women's pleasure. How you do that is up to you, but yes, I will be talking to my son about pleasure because I think it's really important. I believe that when we understand that we have a right to pleasure, we are better equipped to negotiate consent. No matter our age.

It freaks parents out a lot when you talk about their teenagers having sex. But our teenagers will be having sex one day! Understanding their pleasure shouldn't compete with their partner's, and that their partner's pleasure matters, is sex education to me!

I want my kid to know sex isn't just Penis in Vagina. I want them to recognise the variety of ways sexual pleasure can be had, and to make good choices around that.

At a time when young girls are being choked, I think it's really important my kid knows where that trope comes from and knows things like: people with vulvas don't have prostates, so anal sex isn't like porn, and G-spots are not made up feminist propaganda.

I do not want my kid to buy into a hierarchy of pleasure where cis men are (literally, I guess) on top. I'll be doing that in a bunch of ways, but I do have some recommendations for resources:

Yumi Styles - Welcome to Sex - This one had people losing their damn minds, and it almost got banned. I think it's fantastic. It covers EVERYTHING. You'll probably learn something too.
With Pleasure: A View of Whole Sexual Anatomy for Every Body
Sex should feel good: A pleasure-positive guide for teens.
The Modern Guide To Sex - Georgia Grace - Featuring full-colour illustrations of anatomy and techniques, as well as practical, therapeutic support on navigating communication, common sexual concerns and exploration, this book is all about making sex pleasurable, inclusive and shame-free.

Hope that helps, scared! It's OK to be scared, but as parents we have to be brave, eh?

Emily, I am wondering what kind of water to drink. Should it be activated? If so what kind of moonlight should I put it under? Inactive of Takapuna

Look I hate to break it to you but pretty much any water on this earth has been under about a billion lunar cycles so it should already be active as fuck. If you want to make it activer still I recommend a squeeze of lemon and maybe just the tiiiiiniest bit of meth. Also if you subscribe to my newsletter I will remotely activate it for free!

Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, send them to me! I'd love to hear from you. emily writes @ emilywrites dot co dot nz. Thanks for being here! Arohanui, Emily x

You should give your advice too because why not?