Later, after that third date, we agreed on a set of rules and boundaries. I shared everything I was usually too afraid to tell a new partner.

“My dad died three months ago,” I said, “so maybe we avoid the ‘daddy’ stuff?”

“Got it. What else?”

“I’m not a blackout drunk, but if I drink I get really depressed. I’d prefer you didn’t drink around me.”

“Great,” he said. “I’d like you to be fully aware anyway.”

For the next two months, Dan texted me constantly. His aura of calm control was a revelation for me. Rather than fleeing from my emotional baggage, he welcomed it without fear or judgment.

The nights before his visits I would stay up until 4 a.m. cleaning, eager to please him. He would ring my doorbell as the garbage trucks blared down the street, and it was exhilarating — until it was exhausting. Though Dan wouldn’t admit it, he was a sadist. He would leave me with bite marks and bruises that lasted for weeks.

And I was not a masochist. I hated the pain but found catharsis in how undeterred Dan was by my outbursts. I would cry when his leather belt stung my thighs, but he never tried to curb or deny my feelings. I could sob from the physical pain and then about everything else I had been too afraid to talk about: the relationship I would never have with my father, my impulse to deaden everything with a drink. None of it fazed him.

Then Dan would leave and I would sit alone in my bedroom, his sweat still fresh on my skin, wanting so badly to be held.