The first several months were straight out of a fairy tale, as that villain dressed in princely attire gave you the life of love and excitement you’d been hungry for. It was perfect, exhilarating, and your shaking decision to move away from home was finally confirmed as sound. But inevitably the harmonic tune of your relationship went silent, and the debilitating song and dance began.

I sat on the floor of Barnes and Noble sifting through books, determined to unlock his nonverbals and understand what I’d been blind to for so long. In my determination to convince myself I wasn’t crazy, I found body language and deception detection, which helped take me far away from a toxic relationship that was sucking the life out of me.