Results for: be the change
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You Need Help: Trusting Yourself After Leaving an Abusive Relationship
The first thing I want to say is that I’m so sorry you had this experience with someone you loved, who you trusted. You deserve to be treated with respect and honor and grace. Remember that when you feel yourself doubting your heart and mind in the future.
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You Need Help: What If My Mom Hates My Girlfriend?
Of course you’re being thoughtful about if, when and how you’ll introduce your girlfriend to your family — given your mom’s previous actions, there’s a chance she won’t grant you and your girlfriend the respect your relationship deserves.
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You Need Help: Your Straight Partner Is a Great Ally – But His Parents Aren’t
Setting up boundaries around family members can be a complicated and painful thing, but doing so without the support of your partner will likely be more difficult, and could potentially create some challenging situations for the two of you to navigate.
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#PolyamoryProblems: Opening Your Relationship 101
Welcome to the first installment of #PolyamoryProblems, a new advice column on Autostraddle. There are countless things I wish I had known before I started out, and lucky for you I’m here to tell you the things that will hopefully make your transition into polyamorous relationships much smoother.
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You Need Help: Quarantine Smothered My Sex Drive
If you use this opportunity to sharpen your communication, your dynamic will be stronger (and hotter) on the other side of a crisis.
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You Need Help: Is It Normal To Be Happy In a Relationship and Still Think About an Ex?
Time won’t necessarily “fix” it, but the more distance you have from the relationship and the more time you invest in healthy coping mechanisms, the less destabilizing these thoughts will feel.
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You Need Help: My Partner’s Pandemic Practices Suck and I Want to Break Up
Transmitting a deadly virus doesn’t exactly say “I love you,” so it makes sense that this particular conflict is bringing up big questions about your relationship.
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You Need Help: Trusting Yourself in a New Relationship After Early Attachment Trauma
Possibly your trauma history is being triggered out of context in this relationship – but maybe it’s not. YOU are the expert, no matter what your trauma history is.
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You Need Help: Why Am I So Tempted to Cheat?
Cheating is a form of escape from our current situation; it allows us to momentarily be with someone else, maybe even be someone else, for a night. Honesty has consequences. Cheating, if we don’t get caught, does not.
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You Need Help: Navigating Aggression, Desire and Gender in Dating
You don’t need to measure up to any of the things you’ve been taught are the “right” ways to be as a sexual being. There is no way to do sexuality “right” by any objective, external standard.
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You Can Leave Your Partner Who Scares You
“I’ve been dating this person for four years who is genuinely the light of my life but has some anger management issues. Though they would never, ever turn that anger towards me, it still terrifies me just witnessing it. They are aware of it, but I don’t think they’ll ever go to therapy about it. They don’t really want to even though they acknowledge it’s a problem.”
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You Need Help: Is Love Really a Lie? Should You Even Try?
It’s a hard time to have hope, but friends, don’t give up.
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You Need Help: Long-Distance Relationships
So far away! Courtney Trouble gets blunt about LDRs.
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You Need Help: Talking to Your Family About Your Partner’s Pronouns
If they are feeling hurt by people who don’t want to use their pronouns or just by a long day of having to gender in the world, listen to them and ask how you can help ease the stress.
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You Need Help: How Soon Is Too Soon To U-Haul, Get Married, Have Ten Babies, Be Together Forever and Ever and Ever and Ever?
“…there’s a value in extending the period of time in which the way you build a life together is directed only by what’s in your heart and guts and brain, not by leases and legal documents and bill payments and shared sofas.”
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You Need Help: You’re Bisexual and Your Girlfriend Wishes You Weren’t
“Am I in denial? Should I view this as a total dealbreaker? What is a girl to do?”
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You Need Help: Will Studying Abroad Break Us Up?
Studying abroad or going long distance isn’t a death knell for a relationship, but I’m hearing something else in your question.
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You Need Help: Is She “The One”?
HOW WILL YOU EVER KNOW?
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You Need Help: Will You Grow Together or Grow Apart?
“When my boyfriend came out to me as trans, he was worried what that would mean for me and us. It’s a few months later and I should be really happy for him. And I am! But I’m starting to feel kind of lost and scared and I don’t know if it has to do with the fact, that he is, of course, changing.”
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You Need Help: You Want Different Things
You are in love with someone who wants different things. What do you do?