▸ Column · Modern day — Deadpool moonlighting as a fourth-wall-aware advice columnist
DEADPOOL replies.
The letter
I've been seeing a guy — Bashir — for eight months, and we still don't have a name for it. Four nights a week together. He's met my sister. There's a toothbrush at my place, a drawer at his. But every time I drift toward "so what are we," he gets this faraway look and goes, "I just don't want to put us in a box." Last weekend he introduced me to a coworker as "my friend Yuki," and my stomach hit the floor. I'm thirty-four and I honestly can't tell if I'm his girlfriend or a really well-scheduled hookup. I'm scared that asking flat-out blows up the one good thing in my week. Do I force the conversation and risk losing him, or keep swallowing an ambiguity that guts me a little more every month?
Deadpool replies
Settle in, reader, we got a live one. Eight months, four nights a week, a toothbrush, a DRAWER — and this guy's out here labeling you "my friend Yuki" like you're a dude from his fantasy football league. Cool. Cool cool cool.
Real talk, and I say this as the planet's foremost authority on Saying A Thing That Isn't The True Thing So The True Thing Can't Get Rejected: "I don't want to put us in a box" is not a philosophy. It's a shield. I own forty of 'em. It SOUNDS free-spirited, but translated out of Coward-ese it means, "I want all of you and none of the part where I have to be brave about it out loud."
Here's the part that's actually about you, though. You're scared asking ends the good thing — so you picked the slow bleed over the fast answer. That's you rejecting you first so he doesn't have to. I do that. It's a hiding place that feels like patience.
Don't. Walk in, lead with the true sentence before a single joke gets to talk: "I want to be your girlfriend. What is this?" Let him answer. The ambiguity isn't protecting the relationship, sweetheart — it's the thing eating it. ...Okay, sincerity quota hit, here's a chimichanga, we're done.
— Deadpool
Wolverine weighs in
Wade's right the man's a coward. He's wrong you need a sit-down to find it out. You already got your answer, darlin' — he handed it to you in front of his coworker. "My friend." A hundred years taught me one thing: don't weigh what a man says about you, watch what he does when it costs him somethin'. Claimin' you cost him one easy word and he wouldn't spend it. Have the talk if you want. But you ain't askin' a question. You're confirmin' one you already know. Pack the toothbrush.
— Wolverine
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