“Oh,” I said, startled. “Hi!” I hadn’t expected an actual human to answer, more like a somber recording. “I think I called the wrong number.”

“Are you looking for the Ledge?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then you’ve got the right number! What brings you to us?” She sounded breezy, too casual, as though she were taking my order at a drive-through.

“I don’t know exactly,” I said. I looked at the wall in front of me, where Anna’s cat clock eyed me accusingly. “I guess I just know I need help.”

Nancy proceeded to ask me a series of questions about my childhood—“happy until it wasn’t”—my family—“if you can still call it that”—my relationships. I told her about the professor, about Anna, our breakup. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with me,” I said.

“Let me ask you,” said Nancy, “have you ever heard of something called love addiction?”

“No,” I said. “Is that a real thing?”

“Do me a favor,” she said. “Look it up. And feel free to call us back afterward.”

At the Strand bookstore that evening, I slinked into the personal growth section. Google had informed me that a woman named Pia Mellody, who ran a treatment center in Arizona that was far more expensive than the Ledge, was the foremost expert on love addiction. She sounded like a character out of a self-help fairy tale; I pictured her with a tiara and a wand. I picked Facing Love Addiction off the shelf and opened it to the beginning: “Love addicts have an uncontrollable appetite for the object of their affection.”

Her Barthesian language was slightly off-putting, but I felt soothed by the sentiment. “When love addicts reach a certain level of closeness with their actual partner, they often panic and do something to create distance. Frightened by healthy intimacy, they devote an obsessive amount of time, attention, and value to someone who cannot or will not love them back.” I ran through the list in my head: The nutritionist. The editorial assistant. The ambassador’s wife. The sacrifice. The professor. And in a way, Kate. I kept reading: “Unable to be present in their own relationships, they find an escape hatch to numb the pain.”

I felt myself light up—this was a real, diagnosable condition! One that seemed to perfectly circumscribe my behavior. It was a designation that abstracted my obsessions from all context and almost sanctified them, while obscuring their actual source.

I bought the book and tucked it deep in my bag.

I called the Ledge again at nine a.m. the next day. Nancy picked up. “Morning!” she said, chipper as an Egg McMuffin.

“I read about love addiction,” I said. “Do you treat it?”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “We treat all kinds. Alcoholics, drug addicts, sex and love addicts—you name it, we got it covered.”