abuse

This question comes up for a lot of people. In the past couple of weeks, I think I’ve talked to three or four different people about this issue, so I’m really glad you’ve asked this here, as it’s clearly important to you and to many others. It sounds like the journey you’ve taken to the point of…

The big emotion that comes through what you’ve written here isn’t love or loyalty. It’s anger. Big, big anger, in giant waves, in what you’re saying and in how you’ve said it. There is so much here – far more, I think, than your boyfriend using porn, or what’s in the porn he’s looking at – that a…

Feeling unhappy in or unsure about your relationship? Having problems you don’t know how to work through, or don’t even know if you should? We’ll talk you through making these choices, including how-to’s on conflict resolution and doing breakups better.

Before anything else, one very important thing for you to know is that if you’re underage, making and/or sending nude or sexually explicit pictures could be a felony for both of you. In the United States, those images of legal minors are considered child pornography, and his asking you for them…

I want to first make some short, essential statements. What I’d like you to do is read each of them, maybe more than once, and just sit with them. Try and really absorb them. Understand that when it comes to what those of us who work in these fields know about healthy relationships and healthy…

Good question! I wish I had an answer to give you as succinct and simple as your question. The answer is that it depends. Many countries have age of consent (AOC) laws that are federal, or the same throughout a whole nation, so it just depends then on what country you’re in. If you’re not in one of…

I don’t know what “just being a guy” means. I’m not messing with you, it’s just that boys and men, like girls, women and everyone else, vary so much. There’s just no one way guys are or behave. For sure, if he identifies as a guy, he’s going to be a guy no matter what, but who that guy is and what…

There is no one, unilateral stance on feminism and BDSM, whether someone is being dominant or submissive; whether women have partners who are men, women, both or neither. For decades, there has been a lot of feminist conversation around it and other aspects of sex with a lot of varied opinion…

When we have any kind of trauma, we don’t tend to heal by blocking it out. Of course, we generally cannot simply “block out” memories by sheer force of will in the first place. But it’s certainly common to wish we could. By all means, you had extremely poor care at the hospital – I hate even…

I think it might help if you made some adjustments to the way you think about intercourse and sex as a whole. You use the word penetration, and talk about what you’re doing as stabbing or a kind of invasion. I also hear you saying that sex is something you are doing to your partner or on your…