▸ Column · Present-day, Deadpool's modern fourth-wall-aware advice column
DEADPOOL replies.
The letter
Dear Wade — three months after Soraya and I moved in together, she slid a notebook across the table and asked me to write down my email, banking, and work Slack passwords, because "if you've got nothing to hide, what's the problem?" When I stalled, she brought up my ex, Kwame, and said real couples don't have locked doors. I caved and gave her my Instagram just to stop the fight. Now she screenshots my DMs with my coworker Lena and grills me about replies I haven't even read yet. Last night she changed my phone passcode to one only she knows so she can open it whenever. I love her, but I feel like I'm being audited, not loved. Is wanting one private account actually a betrayal?
Deadpool replies
Oh good, a password column. I do exist for a reason, narrator, thank you. Quick housekeeping: no, I'm not writing down my banking PIN either, mostly because the balance would make us both cry.
Okay. Here's the bit AND the truth in one combo meal. "If you've got nothing to hide" is the oldest deflection in the book — and I'm the world heavyweight champ of deflection, so I clock it instantly. That sentence isn't about you. It's Soraya holding up her own fear and calling it your transparency problem. People who insist on auditing you for the worst thing are usually flinching from something in their own chest. Kwame did a number on her, or somebody before him did.
And — real talk, jokes down — that's an explanation, not a hush money. Being scared doesn't hand you the keys to somebody's phone. I tell people all the time: being a mess is fine, using the mess as a license to hurt the people who love you is the line, and changing your passcode so she can crack you open at will? She's standing on the wrong side of it.
Wanting one door that locks isn't betrayal. It's a self. Say that out loud, kindly, and watch what she does next. ...Now, who's Lena and is she single, asking for the bit.
— Deadpool
Wolverine weighs in
Wade. Quit psychoanalyzin' her ex. Doesn't matter why she does it.
Kid — you already wrote the answer. You don't feel loved, you feel watched. Trust that. I've lived long enough to know talk's cheap and conduct's the whole ledger. Forget what she SAYS about real couples. Look at what she DID: took your logins, screenshots your messages, changed your lock so you can't shut a door she can't open. That's not a scared girl needin' reassurance. That's a cage, built slow, one concession at a time, and you've been holdin' the bars open.
So draw the line plain. Your phone, your passcode, today. If she can't stand on the other side of one locked door without callin' it betrayal — she ain't the one. Move.
— Wolverine
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