Category: Advice Column

I don’t remember the day I was taken.

I was three. Whatever happened before that lives in paperwork and fragments and the way my body still reacts to certain tones of voice. My life inside the system starts not with a clean break but with a long blur of doors closing behind me—front doors, bedroom doors, car doors—until “moving” became my normal and “home” became a temporary word.

Over fifteen years I lived in roughly thirty-two foster homes and two residential homes. You don’t move that many times because you’re “unlucky.” You move because trauma turns kids into puzzles most adults were never trained to solve. You move because carers get overwhelmed. You move because you start testing people before they can leave you—pushing, melting down, stealing food, saying the ugly truth out loud—anything to see if they’ll fight for you. And when they don’t, you move again. That pattern wires itself into your bones.

My wife (34F) has a best friend (male, 36) who’s been around since before we met. I’ve always tried to be cool with it because they genuinely seem close and have history. But lately, it’s getting weird. He constantly texts her “good morning” or sends random “thinking of you” memes. They hang out one on one sometimes — dinner, coffee, whatever. She swears it’s platonic, and I do believe her to a point, but it’s starting to feel disrespectful.

The other day he joked that if we ever divorced, he’d “finally get his shot.” She laughed it off, but that one really stuck with me. I told her it bothered me, and she said I was “reading too much into it.” I don’t want to sound insecure, but I also don’t want to ignore red flags. How would you handle this without it turning into a fight?

My wife and I got into a fight, and afterward I discovered that she shared extremely personal details about our relationship with her friend. This wasn’t just general venting — she exposed our sex life (or lack of it), called me a loser, said I don’t do anything for her or the kids, and generally painted me as a terrible husband and father.

Venting to a friend is one thing, but this feels like a complete betrayal of trust. These are things I believed were private between us. I feel humiliated and deeply disrespected.

I don’t even know how to start this. I’m pretty shocked at the conversation I just had. My boyfriend has been sending me reels showing a theory where the earth is encapsulated in an ice wall and is a tiny part of a greater earth and land we don’t have access to.

He also informed me that the earth does not rotate and the sun is actually revolving around us. I’ve know him for 2 years and he sometimes has brought up conspiracies but not anything like this. I have a science degree and tried to explain to him gravitional pulls but he said that’s what “they” want us to believe.

My wife is currently 37w4d pregnant with our first child and she’s already had enough and just waiting for the birth.

She’s on medical school and I know that I can’t begin to understand what she’s going through, having to attend lectures and walk around all day on the hospital, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling exhausted myself.

I feel like I’m doing 95% of the chores. Basically everything but laundry. Take the dog out for a walk on the morning, work full time job, comeback and take the dog out again, make dinner, clean up after, go to appointments, help her with bedtime routine and almond oil, prepare food for the week, etc. I feel like the only time I have for myself is after 10pm when she goes to sleep.

I’ve been with my boyfriend, Jake, for five years. He’s worked at his current job for a few years, and until recently I’d never met any of his coworkers. One in particular—let’s call her Amy—has started to worry me.

Jake sometimes does favors for her, like fixing her car or things around her house. He told me all his coworkers were much older than him, so I didn’t think much of it. But one night while he was asleep, his phone kept blowing up. When I checked it to see who was calling, I noticed several unread texts from Amy. One of them said, “Great Jake, now everyone thinks we’re fucking! 😂”

I asked him about it the next day. He said they’d both been late to work and it was just a joke, but I told him it made me uncomfortable. He invited me out with his coworkers that night so I could meet her.