What happened in this episode?
Alex Cooper delivers a solo “Sunday Session” focused on how trust issues form and how she says she learned to move through them. She traces her hypervigilance to an early serious relationship marked, in her telling, by an age-and-power imbalance, inconsistencies she questioned, and being repeatedly labelled “crazy” for raising concerns. Cooper recounts one incident in which she says her boyfriend told her he was staying in, but she arrived at a party to find him with his ex sitting on his lap; she says he then shouted at her and accused her of stalking. She describes how taking him back nonetheless trained her to treat suspicion as self-protection.
Cooper says the fallout followed her into later relationships: she describes intrusive checking behaviours (including demanding passwords and “hacking” workarounds), picking fights without evidence, and pushing away partners who were, by her account, reliable and kind. She argues that familiarity can feel like love even when it is unhealthy, and that intensity is often mistaken for intimacy.
Discussing her relationship with her husband, Matt Kaplan, Cooper says she initially “tested” him by creating chaos and being unresponsive, but that direct conversations, reassurance without ridicule, and consistent follow-through helped rebuild her sense of safety. She emphasises that healing does not guarantee nobody will ever betray you, but centres on learning to trust yourself and responding to the person in front of you rather than past partners.
