“I’m become this weak, pathetic, needy, deluded person,” I said to my friends one night, after hiding everything that had been going on for months and months. “I’ve literally become that girl I used to pity. The one who keeps making excuse after excuse for her shitty boyfriend who isn’t even very clever or smart or good at anything, but somehow he’s a mastermind at manipulating her and getting her to keep giving him more and more chances to ruin her life.”

While I was with Scott, I cut myself off from everyone who cared about me. I stopped seeing my friends and replying to their texts and emails and phone calls. When they asked me how things were going with Scott, I said, “It’s complicated. I don’t feel like getting into it.” Every time I thought I had reached my breaking point, he drew me back in. Every time we discussed breaking up, he threatened suicide, flooding me with texts and emails and voicemails about how he couldn’t go on, how I was the only one he could turn to now. Before we started formally dating, I told him that I didn’t want to be in a monogamous relationship and would only consider dating someone who accepted that and embraced that and was on the same page—someone who could be open and honest and communicative and unafraid.

“I can be that person,” he promised me. “You make me capable of anything.” But somehow, Scott had the uncanny ability to time all of his breakdowns and suicidal thoughts to the exact nights when I had plans to see other people. When I told him that he didn’t seem like someone who could deal with being in an open relationship and perhaps it was not such a great idea to keep dating, he became despondent, self-destructive, and suicidal.

So I picked up his calls. I replied to his emails and chats. I didn’t sleep for days. I found new white hairs on my head constantly. I frequently woke up in the middle of the night, panicked at the thought that Scott might be emailing and texting me and leaving me voicemails at that very moment. I told myself that I had limits, that I had been in relationships before, and I always knew when to get out.

There would be a sign, I told myself. There would be an obvious sign.

Scott knew how to explain away “signs,” though. “I’m the king of coincidences,” he said to me when we first met. “Really, it’s uncanny how many coincidences I’m a part of.” Like the time I wouldn’t go with him to the bodega around the corner from his house to get a sandwich after an extremely exhausting late-night fight, and when he came back half an hour later shaking and crying, I ignored him, knowing his pattern too well by then. When he saw that I was unmoved by his tears, he broke down in front me and said, “I was robbed! At knifepoint!”

I took him in my arms. After all, he had almost nearly died… AGAIN! AT EXACTLY THE MOMENT WHEN I WANTED TO LEAVE HIM!

This mugging was a “coincidence” in another way, too: Scott said that his attacker was the same guy who had tried to steal his phone one month earlier. The same guy who had come up behind Scott at one in the morning when he was on the phone with me while going back and forth between his apartment and the Laundromat. We were in the middle of a tense argument when his voice dropped out just as I started to say I needed space to breathe and time alone. When he came back to the phone, he told me that some “big Latino dude” had slapped his phone right out of his hand. Scott pleaded with the guy to take his money instead, which, incidentally was my money, as Scott had, earlier that day, offered to take my clothes to a consignment store and sell them for me.

“I’m sorry I lost your money,” he said. “I was just so scared that I wouldn’t be able to finish our conversation. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to tell you how much I love you.”

I felt so bad for him that I told him to forget about the money, even though it was quite a bit of money, and decided that it wasn’t a good time to ask for space, as he was so clearly shaken and in need of comfort. After all…he did it for me. He gave away my money so that I wouldn’t think he was mad at me and had abruptly hung up on me. It was because of me.

Now was not the time, I told myself, to hold grudges, to be cold, to be concerned with what I needed, which was to be alone, which was to get the hell out of the relationship.

For the same reasons, I didn’t question this second mugging, in which, Scott said, the guy HAD successfully made off with his phone. I had to spring into action. I had to calm him down. I suggested that we get into Scott’s car instead of standing exposed on the sidewalk. Once we got into the car, I tried calling Scott’s phone as a last-ditch attempt to perhaps negotiate a deal and get it back from the guy who stole it.

As the call was being patched through on my end, I heard the faint sounds of Scott’s ringtone from somewhere inside the car.

My immediate reaction: “Oh my god. YOUR ATTACKER IS HIDING IN THE CAR WITH US!”

And then: “Oh. Wait a second…”

And then, Scott: “OK, don’t be mad but…I lied.”

It turned out he had stashed his phone in the trunk of his car and was planning on lying to his parents about the stolen phone and having them wire him seven hundred dollars to buy a new one. Instead of using it to buy a phone, he would use that money on me to win me back. He ALSO admitted he wanted me to see how wrong it was for me to not have accompanied him to the store. That it was dangerous out there, that I was wrong to be so stubborn, that I could have gotten hurt, that he could have gotten hurt, that I should have gone with him instead of sitting alone on his stoop.

If at this point you are wondering why I didn’t break up with him right then and there, I’m wondering the same thing. I think I was in shock. I think I couldn’t even process how supremely fucked up this was, and worst of all, that this was no more fucked up than anything else he ever did to me, only this time he got caught.

“I’m not mad,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”