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I was a junior in college when I met my real, grown-up first love. He was instantly attracted to me and let me know it, but not in the way your usual frat-tastic college boy does. He asked for my phone number, and called me. He invited me on dates, opened the door, pulled out my chair and picked up the tab. His family was quite wealthy (his parents gave him $600 of spending money each month!), and he spared no expense in taking to me on very "grown up" feeling dates--nice restaurants and weekend hotel trips. He quickly told me he loved me. He told me I was beautiful and smart, and, for the first time in my life, I believed it.

After we'd gone out a couple times, he and I casually discussed going to dinner one Saturday night. At the last minute, I was invited to go out of town on a school trip that my girlfriends were participating in. I called my new boyfriend, ecstatic, to report my plans.

"Guess what!" I squealed into the phone, "I just got invited to go on this trip with the girls and I am so excited."
Silence.
Then he exploded, "WE were supposed to go to dinner on Saturday night!"
I stammered something about it being a great last-minute opportunity.
"Well, I hope I'm going to SEE YOU before you go."

I laughed it off, went on the trip anyway, and he never mentioned it again. All the same, I noticed his overreaction at the time. The tone wasn't his usual new-love enthusiasm, it was downright angry. It seemed strange.

We continued to date. From time to time, I'd notice him getting disproportionately angry at a fellow driver or a professor. He got into a few little disagreements with mutual friends that turned in to him trashing them whenever I mentioned them. But he was also sweet, the king of romantic gestures. He sent me a half-dozen roses every single Friday. (Sent them.) He encouraged me to take an internship, think about graduate school and asked me to edit his term papers.

During winter break of our senior year, my boyfriend came to visit me at my parents' house. After my parents went to bed, we stayed up talking in my bedroom. My boyfriend had recently accepted a job in another city. I hadn't yet begun my post-graduation job search, but I was planning to consider not only the city where boyfriend would be working, but also my hometown.

Now, my boyfriend and I were pretty serious, and pretty in love. I had every intention of ultimately choosing to settle in the city where his job was located. I just felt that, at the beginning of my adult life, I needed to consider all of the options, explore the job market in a number of places, before committing. I tried to explain that to my boyfriend, but the more I explained, the angrier he got.

Soon, the argument got very heated. Knowing my own temper, I tried to stand up to leave the room so that we could cool down. My boyfriend stood in front of my spot on the bed so that I couldn't get completely upright. His physically restricting my space only made me angrier. I barked at him to get out of my way. He crowded closer. I repeated myself, "I am leaving. Get out of my way." He refused again. Finally, I raised my hand and slapped his cheek. He responded by hitting me so hard in the ribs that I flew back onto the bed and the wind knocked out of me.

For a long moment, we just looked at each other, and I saw that he was as shocked as I was that he had just hit me. He quickly moved out of my way, and I silently went to bed in a different bedroom.

The next morning, he snuck into my room and apologized. Well, sort of. He said, "I'm sorry I hit you, but you did slap me first." I tried to explain that, for me, his blocking me from moving out of the room was physical, too. He didn't buy it.

That incident, understandably, stayed with me. We rarely discussed it, though, because every time it came up, the conversation descended into whether he "started it" by crowding me or I "started it" by slapping him. And, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that it shouldn't matter who started it. I'd felt the anger with which he hit me. I knew how out of control he was at that moment, and I knew that it didn't compare to the frustration I felt when I slapped him.

Months passed. We graduated from college, and I ended up taking a job in the same city that he lived in. We moved in together that summer. Around the time that my boyfriend's job started, he began struggling with some mild depression. I encouraged him to seek counseling; he opted to call his mother's psychiatrist and have a prescription for an antidepressant phoned to a nearby pharmacy. While I think antidepressant medication is great for many, many people, it worried me that this doctor was prescribing it to my boyfriend sight unseen.

My boyfriend's new chemical routine did not deter him from taking advantage of his new job's twice weekly happy hours. I noticed a difference immediately. Before the antidepressant, my boyfriend had been a funny drunk. Now, he was belligerent and careless. After a few weeks of this behavior, I talked to him about it. I gently suggested that he call the psychiatrist and ask about mixing the new drug with alcohol. My boyfriend blew me off, and, as if to prove me wrong, went out and got even drunker that night.

When he returned to our apartment, I was angry. He was in a sweet sloppy state, wanting to cuddle and kiss. Stupidly, I let my anger get the better of me and I confronted him about being drunk, while he was still drunk. He was not amused and lumbered into the bedroom, where he threw himself horizontally on the bed, leaving no room for me. I was not thrilled about potentially curling up on the sofa for the evening. I went into the bedroom and yelled at him to at least move over so that I could sleep in our bed.

Then, all hell broke loose.

I remember very little from the ensuing minutes. I don't remember my boyfriend getting out of bed. I don't remember him hitting me for the first time. I remember him pinning me to the ground and hitting me in the face so hard that one of my crowns snapped in half. I remember trying to hit back or get out of his grasp, but being no match for someone six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier.

I remember the moment it stopped. Both exhausted from the struggle and the emotion, we collapsed in bed. The next morning, he called my boss and his own and told them we wouldn't be in to work. He called my dentist and made me an emergency appointment to have my crown repaired. Even though it was July, he handed my a long-sleeved t-shirt to wear to hide the bruises. He took me to the dentist and sat with me as they fixed my crown, even as the hygienist looked suspiciously in his direction when she saw the bruise blooming on my cheek. That afternoon, he went out for flowers, my favorite magazine and a chick flick on DVD.

I would like to tell you that I left then, but I didn't. I struggled with what had happened for a full three weeks, until, one day at work, I walked outside, called the only person from college who I new in the new city. He met me for dinner and told me to leave. I wasn't even very close to the college friend, but he was literally all I had, and I am forever grateful to him for knowing that and pretending he was my best friend for that one night. The next morning, a Saturday, I told my boyfriend I was leaving. Once again, the anger and aggression rose in him. Once again, he stood in the doorway. He yelled. I threatened to call the police, and he backed down. As I packed a bag, he shouted, "You're not really going to leave me." I said, simply, "Watch me."

With my mom's credit card, I booked a hotel room and spent the day looking for a new apartment. By the end of the day on Sunday, I'd signed a lease. My boyfriend and I have communicated a couple times since then, but we remain out of touch.

About a year later, there was an ad on television saying that one in three women will be the victim of physical abuse in a relationship at some point in her life. Perversely, it makes me kind of happy. As physical abuse goes, I got off pretty easy. Two incidents, one broken crown, and I got out quickly. I think of my mother and my sister and I am glad that experience makes me the one in the three of us who has to go through this. I know it doesn't work that way, but I feel as though they're somehow safe. Because I'm the "one in three," they will never be hurt that way.

I don't talk about this experience very much, partly because I really did love my former boyfriend and I have mixed feelings about reducing our relationship to this one thing and partly because I feel that the abuse was so infrequent that I am overdramatizing it. But I will say, here, that this is abuse. One fight that gets out of control and gets physical? It's abuse. If you slap him first? It's abuse. If he was drunk and you picked a fight? It's abuse. If he is an extremely smart, successful and rich college student? It's abuse. It's all wrong, and it's all inexcusable, and you should strongly consider leaving. Now.

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