I’m a white woman married to a black man. He goes to a black church. A year into our marriage, he still won’t bring me to his church or any church functions because he says it “might make black folks uncomfortable if they think they’re going to be in their community but someone starts bringing white people around.” I thought that was reasonable, but my friends are saying I’m “blinded by white guilt” and that he’s ashamed of me. Are they right?

Your husband won’t take you to his church. One more time now. Your husband won’t take you to his church.

Are you fucking kidding me? Your husband is a gigantic asshole for excluding you from that aspect of his life, and you are a fucking doormat for putting up with that level of outrageous disrespect.

If you want to go to church with your husband, then go to church with your husband. If he refuses to take you, then tell him he can choose between one of two options: Either find a new church, or find a new wife.

Despite my own personal opinions about organized religion and the institution of marriage, this kind of shit is a dealbreaker. I’m not kidding. He doesn’t get to make this about black and white. You are his wife. Matrimony is holy. If he won’t even let you stand by his side and worship together, then he is a dirtbag husband and the worst kind of hypocrite.

My boyfriend of 5 years cheated on me. I found out because he video taped the whole ordeal. We’ve decided to try and work it out, and he’s agreed to do whatever it takes to regain my trust.

But here’s the thing, all of the ‘cheating experts’ on the internet recommend full access to passwords and phones as a way to help rebuild trust, and that shit is not working for me. I know my boyfriend is technologically savvy enough to keep a secret email or google voice number. Checking his Facebook messages just stokes my anxiety that he is just keeping it squeaky clean for my eyes. And to be completely honest, I don’t have the energy for all of the (condoned) snooping and the worry that accompanies it.

What can I do to start trusting him again?

Yeah, the password access thing is bullshit. It doesn’t rebuild trust. It’s an emergency stopgap measure to keep the relationship from exploding in the immediate aftermath of infidelity. If you’re already past that initial “should I stay or should I go” moment, give him back all his passwords. You will feel better, and honestly, you won’t trust him any less than you already do.

As for the process of beginning to trust him more, that will simply take time. There’s no quick fix when it comes to trust. That shit has to be rebuilt brick by brick, and it’s different for every couple.

What I recommend for you right now is to first accept the fact that you don’t trust him. (It’s pretty clear that you don’t.) That’s okay. You’re entitled not to trust him. I know it sucks to be in a relationship without any trust, but you’ve chosen to stay, so now it’s your burden to bear. Make that burden a shared experience. He should feel it too, but try and make it so that he feels it with you instead of from you.

Start by separating yourselves from the distrust. Let the distrust become a third party in your relationship, one that the two of you team up against to defeat. Recognize that you both experience the distrust in different ways, and do your best not to identify with it.

In other words, you are not “untrusting,” and he is not “untrustworthy.” Instead, you experience negative emotions as a result of the distrust, and he experiences negative consequences as a result of the distrust. You both acknowledge the distrust as a source of negativity, but you don’t let it define either of you.

Once you’ve both successfully externalized the distrust, you can start chipping away at it together. You can be on the same side, which in itself will help rebuild trust. After that, it’s really just a waiting game made of time and good behavior.

I was the one raped by a cop a year ago. Besides some dude that was on and off again before and after that, I haven’t really been physical with anyone. I’ve felt asexual for so long… Until last night I was with a guy I’ve been dating. It got physical for the first time last night and I had a physical reaction- there’s no better way to describe it besides straight PTSD. I was so scared I’d ask him to stop and he wouldn’t be one of the outliers that stops on the first hand push away or “no.” But he did. But I still cried and had to explain. He held me and was amazingly sweet, even told me he’d sit in the waiting room at therapy when I mentioned I definitely need to go back, but I still feel torn up inside. I didn’t think it still had a hold of me, but now I feel like it will always creep back into me when with someone new. How do I accept and live with that? How do I live with this? I got so angry last night because I had convinced myself I cleansed myself of it months ago, but now it feels like such a major part of my story forever.

It will not always creep back into you. You will get better. It will always be a part of your story, but you will not always have to live with it.

There was a part of you that didn’t think the rape still had a hold on you, and there was a part of you that manifested all of that asexuality you felt. One was a coping method of the thinking part of you, and the other was a coping method of the feeling part of you. Both parts were doing their best to protect you from pain, but they weren’t reconcilable, and they certainly weren’t sustainable.

It really is okay that you had a breakdown. The physical reaction you had was a good thing, one that quite frankly was inevitable. You needed to have it. You needed to feel all of that pain you’ve been avoiding. I know it didn’t feel like anything positive, but it was. It was progress.

You’re absolutely right to want to go back to therapy. You’ve still got some work to do, and this is the perfect time to do it. On a practical note, I highly recommend you find a therapist who specializes in EMDR. It really works, and it’s exactly what you need for the kind of trauma you experienced.

I know you aren’t feeling it at the moment, but this is you healing. You’re ready to move forward now in a way that you weren’t before, and things will be different. It won’t be an act of cleansing this time. It will be an act of acceptance, and you will get better.

The person I’m sleeping with is convinced that my mother is a monster. He’s never met her. All he knows is that at the age of twelve, I was taking paxil, lamictal, Ritalin and 200 mg of trazodone to sleep.

All of those drugs were prescribed by a psychiatrist and I don’t believe my mother wanted to hurt me, but I’m starting to think my boyfriend has a point when he says she “poisoned” me to make me easier to deal with.

He’s convinced that this “abuse,” which lasted for years, has permanently altered my brain. I have been mostly unhappy since I was 12, so I wonder if he’s right: I have a lot of trouble with my emotions and relationships; although I’ve never done anything intentionally cruel, I am not an easy person to know. I’m sure I meet the criteria for being a toxic person.

He thinks I should find a doctor that will help me detox and deal with underlying problems. I agree. I had been thinking about that exact thing for years before I met him. But I actually don’t know how to live without drugs. When I’ve tried coming off them before, I was overcome with despair and self hatred. I have been hospitalized twice, both times after coming off the meds. (Mental hospitals, by the way, are incredibly dehumanizing and abusive, as you probably know)

So I’m not sure what to do. On some level I’m choosing between my loyalty to my mother and my trust in this man, right?

I’ve got a bad feeling about this guy. He sounds awfully controlling, especially for someone who rises to the level of “the person I’m sleeping with.” As a general rule, I don’t let dudes I’m regularly fucking have any kind of opinion about my mental health. Who is this guy you hesitate to call your boyfriend? Where the hell does he get off telling you jack shit about your medication or your mother? Seriously, if he’s making you feel like you have to choose loyalties between him and a family member (particularly one he’s never even met) then stop sleeping with him and run.

Also, we need to talk about how you use the word toxic. Stop referring to yourself like that. You have a mental disorder that causes emotional dysregulation, and yeah, it’s probably wreaked havoc on your past relationships, but that doesn’t mean you’re toxic. It means you’ve got some problems with your neurochemistry, some of which might best be solved with medication. That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with being on mood stabilizers. It doesn’t mean you’ve been poisoned. It doesn’t mean you need to detox. (Again with the idea that you’re somehow toxic.) Clearly, you’re someone who benefits from the meds, and again, you shouldn’t be made to feel bad about that. Quite frankly, this guy is kind of an asshole for thinking he knows better than your treatment team.

I understand the desire to live life without the drugs, but you have to consider what that has meant for you in the past and what that might mean in the future. If you spent the next couple months slowly coming off your medication under the strict supervision of your doctor while concurrently starting some kind of behavioral therapy, that might prove to be a worthy endeavor. At the same time, you might have another episode and have to go right back on the medication, perhaps even involuntarily. You have to be in the mindset where that isn’t failure, where it’s okay to need a little medicine to live your best life.

Oh, and one final note. Your mother was not an abusive monster for taking you to a psychiatrist at age twelve. That was her taking care of you. That was her loving you. That was her dealing with a difficult situation as best she knew how. I’m not hearing that she whacked you upside the head with a bunch of chemicals just to make you docile. I’m hearing that you have a genuine disorder that bears significant consequences if left untreated, one that has continued into adulthood. Again, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re broken or toxic or somehow less worthy of leading a normal life. It just means you were dealt a shitty hand, and you have to take care of yourself thoughtfully, responsibly, and without the input of douchebags who think that sharing your bed somehow grants them a medical license.

Can you take off your headphones for a minute?

Fuck off.