Disclaimer: This is based on a true story. Some details may have been altered or removed to protect the identities of those involved.

CW: abuse

They met on Tinder.

Not someplace you’d expect to find a long-term, faithful, healthy relationship, but luckily for them, they did. Or so they thought. She fell in love with him because he treated her well. He fell in lust with her because she was good in bed. She was young, in her early twenties, attending university as an undergrad. He was older, on the brink of thirty, working fulltime. They both loved country music, but that’s where the similarities ended. Their relationship was relatively smooth for the first 9 months. She had depression and anxiety, and sometimes she withdrew from him, but they always worked it out.

That is, until the day they couldn’t. It ended amicably.

One day, a couple months later, he showed up. She walked outside her classroom that afternoon and was heading to her car to go home when a familiar frame appeared next to her; it was him. She could tell by his short, aggressive steps, the determined, locked stance and the forced, stiff way he moved that he was aggravated. Her heart stopped, and her lunch began to churn in her stomach. He looked angry, she thought, and it terrified her. She’d never seen him like this. She was strong, but he was bigger than she was; she wouldn’t be able to physically fend him off if it came down to it. Not that she ever thought he’d harm her. But these were the thoughts she considered as they moved uncomfortably through the campus. He had never been violent toward her, not even slightly aggressive, not until that day.

He was pissed, drunk on some horrible thought, not to mention probably high, and definitely not mentally stable. He wanted to scream at her, throttle her, cry at her “WHY?!” Why did she do this to him, to them? Why did she hurt him? Of course, she hadn’t actually done anything to him, but his mental state insisted that she had. He was ill.

She tried to rush off campus, silently begging him to move faster, away from her school, her home. Away from her friends, colleagues, coworkers, peers, and professors. She knew this would get ugly, and she was terrified. He yelled at her. He threw what, at best, could be called a tantrum. His words didn’t make sense to her; he raved about cheating, which she had never done, marijuana pipes, which didn’t seem to her to be a thing to get angry over, and orgies, which completely befuddled her.

Then he let slip that he had been inside her apartment, without her approval, without her even knowing. He had gotten a key and broken in. She felt violated. He had snooped around her place, made a mockery of her privacy. Still, she did her best to remain calm, to calm him too, but he wasn’t having it. She knew this wasn’t him. In the year they’d been together, he had never, ever been like this, or anything remotely like this.

Then suddenly, he was gone. He got into his car, and he drove away. She was left shaking, frozen where she stood, mortified. She slowly regained the ability to breathe and made her way back to campus. After a few minutes that felt like years, and some deep breathing, she came to her senses; he was driving not sober, angrier than anyone she’d ever seen, to his home a few hours away. She didn’t think it was safe, for him or anyone else on the roads he was driving. She called him.

They only spoke for a few minutes. This time she spoke, and he listened. She tried to remain calm. Mostly, she was just terrified that he would get into an accident and kill someone. She managed to convince him to seek help and they agreed that they would talk again once he’d calmed down.

When they hung up the phone, he was calm, but she was still shaking. As she reflected on the events of the afternoon, she found her terror shifting into anger. How could he do this to her, show up out of nowhere with no warning and make wild, angry, baseless accusations, and in such a public setting? She was livid, upset, and still shaking.

He was sick, paranoid, and he reacted poorly. He needed help. It wasn’t entirely his fault. But still, she was traumatized, and that wasn’t okay. It isn’t okay.

The “she” in this story did her best to help someone she had once loved, despite the fact that he put her in an awful and potentially dangerous situation.The “he” in this story didn’t realize he needed help soon enough and regretfully had a breakdown. It's important to begin to recognize the signs of a potential breakdown before they happen, but sometimes, there simply aren't any signs. It's also very important to handle such events with care, both for the sanity and the safety of all involved.

Talk to your loved ones. If you think something may be wrong, bring it up with care and grace, not with accusations and volatility. And never forget to tell them you love them; there's no such thing as hearing "I love you" too often.