Researchers who study intimate partner violence have established that infidelity can lead to abuse. Until Steve told me an eerily similar story. A few weeks after talking to Steve, I found a 2011 academic paper that examined intimate partner violence through an evolutionary lens. Intimate partner violence can thus “backfire on the abuser, as some women find avenues for escaping,” the paper noted. I don’t want anyone to be gutted in that searing, utterly destabilizing way; and I don’t think anyone deserves it.