But her letter to her father was different. He appeared, from her writing, to be a brutal man—and one that she was having trouble forgiving. He was a sober alcoholic, which she pointed out was almost worse, because he couldn’t contain his fury at not being able to drink. And so the family dealt with the ebbs and flows of his moods—his rage, really—and Daphne outlined it all back to him. Brutal fathers were hard to shake as you moved through life. It was more acute for daughters, it seemed, because fathers were our models for how men should treat us. I finished my tequila and ordered another, this time asking for two limes.

There is a theory in self-help circles that a certain early relationship dynamic imprints onto you and you seek to play out that dynamic with each new mate you let into your life, hoping for a different outcome each time. Think of it as a sort of do-over but you keep making the same mistakes. For instance, watching my mother trying to love my father enough to make him happy—to save him from himself—imprinted onto me as the proper way to love someone. Over the course of my own relationships, I had replayed this dynamic with my own emotionally unavailable men and destroyed myself in the process. With the men I consistently chose, Bobby included, I had been the strong one.

But I also now knew that being with men who were emotionally unavailable meant I could be emotionally unavailable, too. In fact, I could be just as emotionally unavailable as they were while pretending I was giving it my all. And when Bobby or anyone else would confront me by saying, “You always seem like you have one foot out the door,” I would say, “I’m all in. And you’re not.” Or, “I only seem that way because you make me feel unsafe—like you’re going to leave, so I want to get the jump.”

Bobby once called me an emotional terrorist. In turn, I told him he was a willing victim. It was not always like this. We fell for each other like normal people. There was texting. There was excitement and nervousness about having sex for the first time. There were the days after, when I couldn’t quite think straight because all I did was replay every moment we spent together. I could smell his cologne even when he wasn’t with me. The first time we had sex, I didn’t shower for two days so I could still smell his sweat on me. Maybe I was veering into obsession, but what I felt for him was more intense than anything I had ever felt before, and I found it both extremely uncomfortable and supremely exhilarating.