[Gráinne]

Of course you can still love someone who beats the shit out of you. That's the dynamic that keeps women in these relationships (well, that's simplistic, but it's part of it). I've been there.

You need to love yourself more than you love this abusive person. And you are already ahead of the game in that you don't live together and I assume you are self-supporting. Millions of women are not. You have youth and no dependents (I'm also assuming). (I'm not discounting that men are abused also, and vastly underreported, but just looking at women for the moment).

Back when I was being slapped around and emotionally abused (which began much earlier than the physical), I searched for anything to make it stop-I literally walked on eggshells, careful not to set my partner off. I was sick, and I'll go as far as say I was in a form of insanity. I learned much later that I couldn't control the abuse or stop it, as the "rules" kept changing in our mutual dance of death.

I loved my partner, and when the times were good, they were great! That kept me there way too long. I won't go into the details, but I wound up in a battered women's shelter full of women who spoke versions of your post, and it was a long time before I totally extricated myself from that relationship. Then I had to take years of therapy and a lot of healing to address why and how I got into that situation, and how to have anything close to a healthy relationship. That work continues today, though I am 1000% better off now than then. I left with little, but Lord, things are better today even in the grimmest days.

It doesn't matter if she accosts you in your apartment or on the Moon. Unless you do this work on yourself, and get free (read Ginny McCarthy's book Getting Free, and do anything and everything in it), this person or someone like her will surely kill you. Don't let yourself be a victim or become a statistic.