I'm a divorced man with no children in a very small town. My divorce was unbelievably contentious, and we both weaponized our friends and families against each other. Once we finalized the process I thought that the madness would stop, but then one night the police arrived at my door and placed me under arrest for an act of shocking violence that I did not commit. (I don't know for sure that it was my ex-wife who called it in but it certainly isn't hard to imagine it was.) The police were actually very understanding and I was "quickly" let go and charges were dropped but it's the kind of accusation that doesn't rub off, especially in a town as small as mine.

Now that I'm socializing again, I'm finding that despite the very real fact of my innocence, pretty much everyone I know has become convinced of my guilt. Most people have just stopped talking to me or sent me messages essentially telling me I'm a lying monster/should be dead or in jail, but the most disturbing is that sometimes they will keep communicating with me but with a very strange and off-putting conspiratorial air. Like "Oh, of course, you're innocent - wink wink, nudge nudge, I won't tell anyone if you don't." Of all the ways to respond, that one really distresses me the most, and I can never look at them the same again. How can I make people understand that I DID NOT DO IT without seeming sketchy or defensive? Is it even possible for me to live here normally after this happens? This is the town I was born in, but I've already lost most of my old friends and some family as a result of this, and I just want the hemorrhaging to stop.

-Innocently Guilty

My wife and I have been married for two years and recently settled in my hometown and bought our first house. We previously lived in an apartment building in a big city with maintenance people who came to fix anything that broke. Shortly after we bought the house, I got a promotion at work and now work out of town a lot. Whenever anything goes wrong with the house, or car, usually my dad will come over to help out.

For instance, one day my wife got a flat tire, and it would take AAA an hour to get there, so I told her to text my dad and he'd come help her change it. More recently, a fuse blew and needed replacing so my dad came and fixed it. Whenever he comes over to fix something, he likes to walk my wife through how to do it so that if it happens again she'll know how. He has two sons and three daughters and this is how he taught all of us basic tasks like changing a tire, changing our own oil, replacing fuses, unclogging a drain, cleaning gutters, etc. My wife was never taught these things and spent her adult life having building maintenance do everything for her.

The thing is, this annoys my wife. She complains to me that he is "mansplaining" to her. I spoke to her on the phone after the fuse incident and made sure everything was taken care of and she said "yea, I just had to listen to your dad mansplain the whole time about how to do it." This is upsetting to me. I told her that was disrespectful-he was taking time out of his day to come help her and also it isn't "mansplaining" if she doesn't know how to do it-it is literally just explaining how to do it so she can do it herself in the future. She replied that she didn't need him to explain it to her because she could just Google it if she wanted to learn, so I told her next time to use Google instead of calling my dad.

Now she is mad at me and saying I am being "unsupportive" and I should talk to my dad and explain how he is making her feel. I told her I would not be doing that and if she wanted a maintenance guy that didn't talk, she could call one up the next time a fuse blew and sit in the dark until he found time to get to her. She hung up on me and our communication has been chilly since. I am not sure how to move forward. I think she is being rude and she says I am not "hearing" her and keeps talking about how harmful "mansplaining" is to women. I get the bigger picture of mansplaining but that's not what my dad is doing! I'm also a little dismayed that my wife has no interest in learning how to maintain our house. I don't expect her to learn how to rewire the whole thing but knowing how to light the pilot light on the hot water tank would be nice.