displeased him. If she said something to disagree with whatever he wanted, he would bear down all his intelligence against Louise.
She proved to be no match for him, for she was too desperately in love.
He would start questioning her maturity and her “ability to love like a grown woman”, in a manner so clever that he
would always leave Louise feeling like she was completely in the wrong. Her boyfriend always managed to make her feel like she was an ungrateful child who had offended him, despite his great love for her. There were times when he would be so angry he would call her bitch or slut; on most occasions he’d be dismissive of her, saying, you talkin’ to me? I’m sorry—I thought it was the cat. She often ended up in tears, apologizing to him for various offenses too numerous for her to count or understand.
With each passing day, Louise grew less and less confident about herself. Because she had become so attached to her boyfriend, she couldn’t figure out why she was feeling lousy both at work and at home. Somehow she refused to see that the source of her misery was simply her boyfriend’s shoddy treatment of her.
Louise finally broke off from him after she discovered he had been seeing another woman, and that she had just gotten pregnant by him. “That shook me up,” she said. “I had such low