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He wasn't my first boyfriend. Maybe he was the third or fourth.

It was a head-over-heels situation. We met in the early summer, while working at the same newspaper. We went to lunch. Things progressed.

I was 17, I think. He might have been 20. Maybe a little older.

When I went back to school, we carried on, even though he was in the Midwest and I was states away. It seemed to me that we'd mastered the long-distance thing. I'd see him on vacations. He'd make the daylong drive to visit me or hop on a Greyhound.

There was no question of chemistry. We seemed compatible in nearly every single way. I trusted him. Completely.

I didn't see the signs.

One morning, when we'd been dating for about a year, my phone rang. There was a girl at the other end. She didn't know me, but she'd seen my number on his phone. She wanted to know who was calling him all the time. After all, she said, he was living with her best friend and had been for a few months. Things were serious, she said.

I didn't know what to say. It's true, he'd moved into an apartment. It's true, there was often a girl there - someone he claimed was his roommate's sister. It's true, he'd never taken me there - we always went out when I came home to visit. And it's true, he wasn't answering his phone as often.

He never admitted anything. And after all those months of long-distance effort, I didn't give him much opportunity to explain. I was too appalled. Too disillusioned.

After we split up, my friends came out of the woodwork to tell me all the reasons they never liked him. Everyone seemed shocked at the specifics - but they weren't suprised he turned out to be scum.

Since then, I've been through a number of heartbreaks - but only one other was anywhere near that bad. Looking back, though, I wonder how I could have been so blind.

Have you ever trusted anyone so much that you overlooked the danger signs? Are women more likely to be so trusting than men are?

And are long-distance relationships just risky territory from the start?