▸ Column · Modern-day Manhattan, contemporary Marvel-adjacent grounded New York
DEADPOOL replies.
The letter
My boyfriend Grayson and I have been together for four years. About a month ago something shifted — I can't explain it better than that, there's just this low hum in my chest that something between us is off. And I genuinely cannot point to a single concrete thing. He still texts me in the morning. Still plans our weekends. Isn't distant, isn't cold. (Nothing obvious happened, we haven't even fought.) No secret phone, no weird receipts, no name that keeps coming up. Just this feeling, like the air in the room changed and I'm the only one who noticed.
Part of me wonders if I'm just projecting old insecurity onto someone who's done nothing wrong. Like maybe I've been waiting for something to go bad because it's been good for so long, you know? I'd hate to blow up a four-year relationship over a hunch. But I also can't just ignore it.
So — how do you even tell the difference between actual intuition and your own paranoia when there's literally zero evidence either way?
— Unsettled in Hell's Kitchen
Deadpool replies
Hi, Wade here, advice columnist extraordinaire. (I still don't know how this happened to me. No notes. Send chimichangas.)
Quick heads-up: you just did a thing I recognize at a cellular level. You wrote — and I'm going to need you to read your own words back slowly — "Part of me wonders if I'm projecting some old insecurity onto a man who's done nothing wrong."
That's not a question. That's a verdict. You've already filed the paperwork: "I'm probably the broken paranoid one." So when something does or doesn't happen, you were on record as the problem. It's a pre-emptive guilty plea. I INVENTED this move. Been using it for years. Decide you're the mess first, so the rejection doesn't get credit. If you're already the unreliable narrator, you can't be surprised by what comes next.
Here's what actually gets you information — not the dossier of nothing, not the court in your own skull. One true sentence, out loud, to Grayson: "Something feels different between us and I can't name it. Is everything okay?" Not an accusation. Not a case file. Just the feeling, given air. He either has something to say or he doesn't. Either way you know more than you do right now.
The voice in your head saying you're just the paranoid one? It lies. Mine does too. We have a whole group chat, very active, terrible vibes.
ANYWAY — eat something before that conversation. Seventeen percent braver, money-back guarantee.
— Deadpool
Wolverine weighs in
Wade told you to go make a feelings speech. Real predictable.
Here's the other read, and I hate this part, so I'll keep it short: stop trying to figure out what the feeling means by sitting alone with it. You can run that loop for years. You won't get out the other side knowing anything.
Read the man's conduct. Not the good-morning texts — those cost him nothing. Does he show up when it's actually hard? Does he stand next to you when there's nothing in it for him? That's the only honest signal. What's in your chest is noise until you check it against what he does.
And don't start closing yourself off over a hum. I ran that experiment for a long time. The walled-off years weren't the safe ones. They were just empty.
— Wolverine
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