He Called Me a Cow and Publicly Humiliated Me

How a sociopath used my pain for his comedy act

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I wish this story weren’t true.

I’ve never written about it before because it embarrassed me. I felt ashamed. Not just by what he did, but because I didn’t recognize it as abuse until it was too late.

It’s one of those stories that sounds fake, like a bad comedy movie trope with a villain written too cruel to be true.

But he was real.
His name was David.
And I met him on eHarmony.

It was January 2009. I was five months away from turning thirty.

My long-term relationship had ended. And before that, I’d gone through a divorce.

I was single and felt like I was running out of time.

All the men I dated either ghosted or wanted sex and nothing else. I was dealing with grief, panic, and a body full of unresolved trauma.

I was trying not to feel like I had “expired” in the dating world.

I wasn’t looking for flings.
I wasn’t on hookup sites.
I was on eHarmony — the site that sold the lie that I could find something real.