How We Love Under Threat

My body has always been fluent in contradiction. A textbook of scars and soft spots, annotated in bruises. Men have tried to read me like scripture. Tried to possess my softness like a parable that ends in obedience. But I have never been holy, only hungry. And you should know by now: hunger is not a flaw. It’s a theory.

Intimate partner violence — what a phrase. A bureaucratic euphemism for the war waged in bedrooms. For the ache that follows I love you when it is said with clenched fists and curfews. I read about trauma bonds in an academic journal once and immediately thought of the man who used to alternate choking me and sobbing into my lap like I was his priest. He said love made him crazy. I said, Try therapy. He said, Try not making me mad.

Desire makes a strange accomplice. That’s what no one wants to admit: sometimes it’s the sweetness that snares you. The orgasm that earns you a beating. The morning pancakes he made to apologize for breaking your nose. You stay because your body is bilingual: it recognizes both fear and affection, and sometimes they sound the same.

In the global archive of suffering, there are patterns. A Black gay man in Texas dragged by the man who claimed to love him. A South African woman, six years a prisoner in the home she paid rent for. A Latina mother silenced by deportation threats. A trans lover who couldn’t tell if her bruises were from kink or from cruelty, because the safeword never worked.

I don’t read these stories because I’m a victim. I read them because they are my mirrors. Because every time I say, That could never be me, I hear a girl somewhere whisper, It already is.

They call it a trauma bond, but that makes it sound too scientific. Like it was forged in a lab instead of between moans. Like it didn’t start with love-bombing and body worship. With the kind of obsession that makes you think danger is devotion. One minute, he’s praising your thighs like they’re scripture. The next, he’s telling you your mouth is too loud. He wants you pliant, not poetic.

And I? I am always too much. I narrate every touch like I’m submitting it for peer review. I theorize while I climax. I treat every kiss like a syllabus. My lovers don’t get off easy — they get footnotes, full citations, and sometimes a restraining order.

The thing about violence is that it never starts with a slap. It starts with a silence. With letting him pick the restaurant even when you’re starving for something else. With apologizing when he raises his voice. With deleting texts to avoid the next interrogation. With telling yourself you’re strong enough to fix him.

By the time the violence becomes visible, your autonomy has already been siphoned off drip by drip, like honey through a crack. You don’t even notice you’re bleeding until someone points it out. And even then, you say it’s nothing. You say, But he’s trying. You say, But he’s been through so much.

You say, But I love him.

And here’s the sickest part: you do. That’s what makes it harder to leave. You don’t just mourn the abuse — you mourn the version of him you fell for. The one who kissed you like you were the only language he wanted to learn. You think, If I just translate myself better. If I just soften. If I just stay.

But the thing about intimacy under threat is that it turns your body into a battleground. You fuck to survive. You perform pleasure like a ritual of protection. You dress down to avoid attention. You dress up to keep him interested. You become a shapeshifter — anything to avoid detonation.

Love should not require that kind of choreography.

So now, I study touch like a scientist with a vendetta. I trace the lineage of violence from colonization to cohabitation. I analyze pillow talk for microaggressions. I read text messages like sacred scrolls of manipulation. I flirt like a weapon and fuck like a dissertation.

I am not safe, but I am aware. I am not healed, but I am armed. I keep my softness sharpened. I sleep with one eye open and both legs closed until I say otherwise. My mouth still waters when desire enters the room, but now it speaks a new dialect. One with boundaries. One with bite.

And if you want to love me, come unarmed. Come honest. Come correct. Or don’t come at all.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.