As told to Ann DeGrey.

I'd been with Rick* for three years, though most of that time didn't feel very stable. We were on and off so often that my friends stopped asking whether we were together. The relationship was always either in a dramatic high or an excruciating low. I lost friends over him, not because they abandoned me, but because they were tired of watching me choose someone who treated me badly.

"Why do you put up with him?" my best friend once asked me. And I didn't really have an answer. I think, maybe I just didn't want to be single .

Rick could be charming and funny when he wanted to be, but even in public, he lashed out at me if he found me annoying. In front of my friends, he'd make comments about my makeup being "too much" or joke loudly about how emotionally unhing

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