Alex* a 23-year-old Boston-based esthetician, was standing in the living room at a friend’s party when she saw her ex of about a year. He held a drink in one hand, and her inhibition in the other. “I’d lose all thought processes around him,” she tells Bustle. They’d dated for about 11 months, but continued hooking up after calling it quits in early 2020. “He was a classic narcissist. Just a really selfish person. And as terrible as this sounds, I still went for it knowing that I didn’t even like him.”
Despite knowing her ex was bad for her, their run-ins — like that party — would almost always end up back at his place. They’d even sometimes talk about where they went wrong as a couple. “He’d usually whisper something in my ear like ‘I’ll make it up to you’,” says Alex. “Outside the bedroom, sure, we didn’t work together. But inside, it was a different story.”