Way, way back, when cell phones were beginning to be a thing, I had a boyfriend who moved quite a distance away. I really cared for him, perhaps too much. But then, he did something incredibly nasty when I visited him, and then insulted me once I returned home. After a verbal cannonball shot from the vast depths of my larynx, I refused to consider him as a willing participant in my love life. Boyfriend didn’t see it that way, however.

As a project manager, Boyfriend created schedules for his staff to keep. And true to his self, he called me at exactly 6:25 every night. That telltale number posed as a message, since no room was ever taken up in my phone’s memory. Usually, I’d be at the gym after work, or running an errand, or enjoying drinks in a lively bar in New York’s Upper East Side.

This went on for about 3 months, until finally I answered his plea for attention. He didn’t call to apologize. He thought he left his coat at my house and would I send it back to him. No, I answered, because the only coat hanging in my house was mine. After a moment of silence, he confessed to being lonely, making a mistake moving so far away, but never admitting that he treated me in a less than desirable way. I hung up, never again to hear his voice pollute my phone.

Perhaps I should’ve heeded my phone’s warning about this guy’s repeated calling and blocked it. Truth was, I simply ignored it.

Jump to 2016. I’m a married woman with a husband who’d been cranky and remote as of late. Nothing I ever did was good enough, or I resembled an old lady, or some such nonsense. After my husband came out of shoulder surgery, he rested on the couch so that the bolsters would support his arm. He stayed there the night, and I checked on him to see what he needed. In the morning, I went into my nearby office and heard my charging phone buzz. I turned it over.

And there it was: a woman blowing him a kiss. “Feeling better this morning, sweetie?” the text said. It was a selfie taken in the bathroom mirror. Chin-length wavy brunette hair framed her face, seduction coloring her eyes. Let me tell you, it was a hell of way to be informed of my husband’s infidelities. But how? Why? I chalked it up to my recently passed parents, perhaps from heaven, choosing a rather interesting but effective method of delivering me a painful, but necessary message. I needed to know. Boy, did it hurt. My marriage ended that day.

Looking back, as tough as it was to see that image, it ultimately freed me.

Skip to last week. While on the phone with Glamour Man, he abruptly ended the conversation and hung up the phone…or so he thought. I kept listening, curious. And there it was: another woman’s voice in the background, calling out to him, and GM answering in his cheery, charming manner. Once again, it was something I needed to hear. For the first time in the two or so years that we’ve been acquainted, I finally l saw him for the man he is. Painful, yes. Were Mom and Dad pointing this out to me? Who can say. I’d like to think they had a hand in it somehow, though.

And once again, I feel free.

Three times the phones I possessed led me through breakups in quirky ways. These digital appendages might’ve caused me pain, but they showed me what I needed to know. And for that, I’ll be grateful.