Q: I’m a woman in a straight relationship. I woke up this morning, and my BF wasn’t in bed with me. He felt ill in the middle of the night and went to sleep in the spare room—where he found a condom in its wrapper behind the nightstand. Now my BF thinks I’m cheating on him. I haven’t cheated on him and have no desire to. I have an IUD and we are monogamous, so we don’t use condoms. But I used to keep condoms around to use on an old sex toy that I liked but was allergic to. That toy is long gone (I found out it was made of terrible materials and disposed of it), but I kept the condoms in case I met someone. That someone ended up being him—but by the time we met, I had an IUD. I explained all this to him, but he doesn’t believe me. We’ve lived together for two years and were just talking about buying a house and having kids. —Condom Resurfaces and Shatters Happiness

Q: My boyfriend of six months tied me up for the first time a month ago. He didn’t know what he was doing, and I didn’t get turned on because it hurt. I got him two sessions with a professional bondage top as a gift. I was the “model,” and I was very turned on as the instructor walked my boyfriend through safe bondage techniques and positions. The guy was attractive, but not as attractive as my boyfriend. At one point I shuddered, and my boyfriend is convinced I had an orgasm. He says I cheated right in front of him, and now he wants to dump me. What do I do? —Helplessly Explaining My Predicament

A: There are only two reasons your boyfriend would be making jokes about your bed-wetting problem: He is trying to be nice (he mistakenly believes these jokes put you at ease; he’s trying to make you feel less self-conscious, not more; he wants to make the bed-wetting seem like no big deal, i.e., something you two can laugh off together) or he is a giant asshole (he knows you’re sensitive about it and makes these jokes anyway because HE’S AN ASSHOLE; he makes jokes expressly to demean you because HE’S AN ASSHOLE; he is intentionally shredding your self-esteem so that (1) you’ll think that no one else would ever want you and (2) you’ll settle for this guy even though HE’S AN ASSHOLE).