W hen I was 17 in the late s, I fell in love with a boy from work. He was 19 and from another country and when our work time was over, he had to fly home. What followed were many love letters international phone calls were far too expensive then , every one of which I saw as fiercely romantic. One day about six months into the relationship, a letter was waiting for me at home. My long-distance boyfriend often addressed letters with silly names or in-jokes.
She told me that this was possessive and too serious for our age, and that I had to write him a letter to break up with him immediately. I did, but I was still in love. Secretly, I kept writing the letters. At age 21, after five years of separation by an ocean, I started an in-person relationship with him.
It was deep and real love—or so I thought. By 24, I was being so emotionally abused and physically threatened, I barely knew my own name. This is how it happens. I was deeply in love but was very confused by these behaviors because he would tell me how much he loved me while he was doing them.
I was smart and educated. I knew about domestic violence, and I knew what he was doing was wrong, but no one had told me how to actually handle it—the frozenness, the confusion, and the gaslighting.
Intimate partner violence is the number one cause of serious injury or death of women ages 18 to 24 in America, according to a statement released by the American College of Surgeons, and homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U. This trend also applies to adolescent girls, who are being murdered by their intimate partners in increasingly dangerous numbers. Adolescence is a critical developmental time when young people are more vulnerable to societal pressures.
