When you first start dating someone, you spend a lot of time and effort covering up your faults. It’s not that you’re hiding anything, it’s just that you’re just trying to put your best foot forward. Well, she’s doing the same damn thing. Over the course of the relationship, when both of you start feeling more comfortable around each other, your guard comes down and you start to reveal who you really are. Normally, this stuff isn’t that big a deal. But sometimes it is.

I had been dating this one girl for a few weeks—long enough so that it was at least starting to get what you would call serious, and I told her I was going camping with some friends for the weekend. She was quiet for a minute, then asked why. I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer that, so I asked her what she meant. Then she asked if I was going camping with my friends because I had gotten sick of her.

Now, that raised an eyebrow with me, but I assured her that no, the reason I wanted to go camping had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the fact that I wanted to spend a couple days getting drunk and high with my buddies. I wrote it off to the fact that she was a Four Seasons type of gal and she didn’t understand the appeal of roughing it. No biggie.

Maybe a month or so later, she and I went to meet a friend of mine at a restaurant. This particular friend works in the movie biz and he’s always surrounded by two or three hot young actresses, and this instance was no different. On the way home, she said something about how she couldn’t believe how hard one of those girls was flirting with me. That surprised me because I’m usually pretty good at noticing when a hot girl is flirting with me, and I hadn’t picked up on anything that night. I told her that, but she insisted that the little slut was hitting on me really hard and she was mad about it. I could tell arguing was pointless, so I let it go.

No, “let it go” is wrong. I liked it.

I liked the fact that she was jealous and possessive of me. It was a huge boost to my ego. I’ve dated women who I felt were out of my league before and experienced jealousy myself, and it felt good to be on the other end of that. I should’ve seen the potential downside right away, but I was too damn proud of myself.

As time went on, every time a hot girl passed anywhere close to me, she would accuse me of checking her out and burst into tears. If I left my phone around unattended, she would read my emails and texts—once I caught her deleting a text a female coworker had sent me. It was completely innocuous, too. From there, the crazy grew and grew until eventually, I had to break up with her.

Well, of course she stalked me for like two weeks after that. Then, I realized the danger of nurturing a crazy woman’s irrational jealousy. Learn from my mistakes, I beg of you. It’s all fun and games until your psychotic ex shows up out of nowhere when you’re on a date and tries to stab you with a fork.