For Eight Months I Thought I’d Found Love After My Divorce — Then a Woman I’d Never Met Recognized His Photo and Said “When I Knew Him, He Went by a Different Name,” and I Understood Every Breakfast Had Been Reconnaissance

That was the moment the fear in me began, at last, to turn into something more useful.

He had just made a threat toward my child, on tape, and I was no longer a frightened girlfriend.

I was a woman building a case.

That shift, from fear to record-keeping, was the single most important thing that happened inside me during the whole ordeal, and I recommend it to anyone who ever finds themselves where I was.

Fear is a state that a man like Gregory can use; it is, in fact, the exact fuel his whole method runs on.

A frightened woman freezes, complies, second-guesses herself, keeps quiet to avoid making things worse.