Looking for testimonies of people who are/have been in abusive relationships

I'm going to remind everyone to keep things civil and appropriate to this forum. We are a PG-13 forum, so please keep that in mind with what you share.

Also, everyone responding to stories posted need to do so respectfully. I'm really uneasy about this thread and will be keeping an eye on it.

I have dealt with toxic relationships, but I have to ask, What is your purpose for this? Why are you writing a story like this and what is your goal?

@mlogan I understand, I feel a little uneasy about this topic too and, had I seen that answer before, maybe I'd have refrained from posting. I will do my best to keep it appropriate though, since I would really like to document myself on that topic and the RM forum is the place I trust most for life stories. Wouldn't want to get fake testimonies, so that trust part is really important.

@Adonael Well, a lot of the game focuses on the protagonist, but since he's mute, there's no way for him to express his inner torment. You, as the player, get to explore the psychology of this broken mind through sequences that repeat inside his dreams, which are the reflection of his pain. The important part is the 'broken mind' thing. What's interesting here is that the player isn't told that the Protag has had a terrible life. The player sees it, feels it as reflected in the deeper, darker parts of the protag's dreams, and is able to piece the story together with the help of various clues. The game itself will have as few text as possible.
That leads me to the toxic relationship theme in particular. The Protagonist is pretty young, and that's why I wanted to incorporate obstacles only a young person can encounter. Since love is difficult to understand during the teen years, I thought I could have a go at it. What I thought would be interesting would be to showcase a bad relationship. In games, when love is put into the mix, it's usually the right kind of love, with everything working out in the end. I felt like going against that. I wanted love to be seen as something deceitful for the Protagonist. Having a terrible love relationship that early can be pretty harmful, and could induce some trauma that would make one avoid love.
All in all, I have to admit the main reason for my choice comes from the originality of this concept. I don't want to beautify society, I want to show it as what it is and what it may be, and how a few bad possibilities could destroy a child and make him into a sad, sad loner with no trust for anyone and a crippling fear of relationships. The only person he still had trust in was his sister, but when he ran away, he basically cut all bridges with her and, even though he has a phone, doesn't answer calls, because he's shy and scared of all people, on the grounds that they might be malevolent.
I can provide more detail if you want me to, but I like incorporating uncommon but psychologically interesting themes, and reflect them through the thoughts, the behavior or the subconscious of a character.

(I'm just posting here to say your first post is impossible to read on the forum's dark theme...)

Eh, it's kind of a long story. I've been in a series of abusive relationships and even been the one doing the abusing sometimes. But, at some point you have to grow up. And, sometimes, someone comes along to remind you that you deserve better, can get better, and you shouldn't have to deal with nonsense.

While I've never been in a relationship where there was physical violence, most of it was always emotional or psychological.

The worst one I was in, was with a woman who had decided Guilt Tripping me constantly was her favorite drug. Everything was my fault, or if it wasn't my fault, if I'd just helped, it wouldn't have been so bad. Someone at work told her she was a terrible person, it was my responsibility to tell her that she wasn't, or my responsibility to talk to them and tell them that she wasn't. If I snapped at her, she would suddenly play the victim. "Oh, you're right, I'm terrible, I shouldn't do that to you. I don't know why you put up with me, you should leave me" and she'd get sad and cry, or pout. The Guilt Trip went on and on. "Oh, you always know what to do, I never make the right decisions.". Anything to make me feel sorry for her, or guilty over what I'd said to her.

Even worse? She wouldn't sit and talk with me, or even listen to anything I had to say. She'd complain about her day, and all she wanted from me was to be a sounding board. I was to offer no input, I was only to listen and agree with her. I'd sometimes get yelled at for having an opinion on whatever she was talking about. I'd offer "unwanted" advice to her constantly (I'm the type of person who looks for solutions and doesn't mope about thinking "woe is me", so when people come to me with their problems, they get advice and solutions. Just in my nature) and frequently get told that she didn't care, it didn't apply to her, and she didn't want it. If I had something happen in my life that I wanted to talk about, I was subsequently ignored. She'd pretend to listen and play on her computer or her phone, or start doing chores.

Oh, and she LOVED to talk about other guys in front of me. An ex boyfriend, one of her guy friends, some guy she had been talking to online, some new drama with a male coworker... Always the guys. She spent a good deal of time making me insecure (and I suspect sleeping with these guys she was so excited to talk about constantly).

I stayed for the rare occasions when she'd do something to somehow prove to me that she loved me. Spend a day with me in bed, play a video game with me, want to cuddle and be cute. Show me off to her friends and family.

I thought I loved her. I thought nobody would ever treat me the way she did. Made me feel loved like she could. She convinced me that all the problems I had with her and her behavior were my fault. I was just a jealous guy. I couldn't handle her talking to other guys. I was a chauvinist. I was a sexist. I had no right to tell her that the guys she was hanging out with and talking about constantly were making me feel bad and insecure. It was my fault I wasn't an interesting person that did interesting things she cared about. Video games were kind of boring, who cares what some fantasy character does? I should just grow up already. The funny thing my friend did last weekend was stupid and not funny. I have a bad sense of humor. It was my fault that people didn't like her. I was supposed to be defending her and proving to those people that she was X, Y, and Z. That she was amazing and wonderful. What kind of boyfriend was I, if I wasn't defending her reputation and honor? How could I say I even loved her and cared for her if I wasn't willing to yell at some guy who called her a name?

You know what snapped me out of it? Another woman. "Why do you let her treat you like that?" "I love her, and she's right, those things are my fault. I need to be a better boyfriend." "No you don't. If you loved her, you'd tell her where to stick it and to stop treating you like crap. If you loved her, you'd have respect enough to not change to fit her and to realize it would never work out with you two."

It got me thinking. I made a list. Everything she ever did to make me feel bad. Everything she did to make me irritated, upset, angry. Then, everything she did to make me happy. The list was so lopsided, you wouldn't have believed it. I'd been genuinely happy with her during our 6 year relationship roughly 5 times. I didn't love her. I loved what she represented. Not being alone. Not feeling like nobody would ever date me.

The breakup was nearly violent. Things were thrown and broken. Across the room. Not at me. I didn't throw anything, but I was yelling so loudly that I was hoarse for the next two days. But, it ended. Something like that never ends pretty. She was losing her doormat and I was losing my entire identity.

When it was over, the woman who saved me... Well, she spent the next two years continuing to save me. I'd changed so much of who I was as a person over the course of those 6 years, that I didn't know who I as anymore. Everything I was, was who I became for my ex. You know what the woman who saved me said? "Then, let's find out who you are together. Let's try everything. Tell me what you like and what you don't like. Let's hang out. Let's be friends. Find out who you are. Fix yourself." I did. Every day for two years I spent talking to her, figuring out who I was. Figuring out how I'd no longer be. I'm immune to being guilt tripped now. I'm immune to feeling sympathy for people who have inflicted problems on themselves. I can walk away now when I don't think I'm being treated well.

It became something I'd say to my savior, "When I find out who I am, I'm going to give myself to you". It was something she'd smile and blush to. It never happened. We're still good friends, she's still my savior. She helped me when nobody else would. She slapped me in the face when everyone wanted to coddle me. She proved to me, through sheer force of her own will, that I was worth something to the world. To someone. To a girlfriend. She continues to tell me how amazing and wonderful I am. I can do nothing to repay her except try to prove to her how wonderful and amazing she is.

But, I can tell you this: Getting out of a toxic relationship? Getting out of an abusive one? It isn't easy. You need someone to force you to kick and scream for yourself. Without that, you can't escape. Nobody can fight for you. They can only tell you how to fight for yourself. But, sometimes, you get lucky, and you find someone who forces you to fight for yourself. Give you no other option except to. That's what you need to leave. I learned that the hard way.

I'm not even going to read the first post. The text is explicitly black instead of no color and I'm using dark theme, so on a tablet it's unreadable for me.

@Milennin Oh, in what way is it unreadable ? Maybe it's because of the font. I accidentally changed it when writing and was not able to find the default font (it always looked wrong to my eyes with every font available).

@Tai_MT Wow, thanks a lot for the very detailed story ! That'll definitely help me with figuring out how to implement that theme. This kind of 'manipulative' behavior that goes between guilt-tripping and playing victim, I'll write it somewhere, because it's an interesting element I see in many toxic relationships that don't have anything to do with love (like toxic professional relationships or toxic friendships). Also the element of outside help. I'll probably write down a short summary of that story, too. That could help if I ever meet someone who's stuck with such a relationship. And by the way, since it's a real life story, I'm glad you were able to escape such a predicament. The hypocrisy of people when they guilt-trip other people just to be right is enough to make my blood boil. And, since I tend to defend myself with facts and analyses, it's really frustrating when the other person is defending themselves with feelings.

@Poryg Ah, okay, I guess the font change changed the font color to black instead of 'no color'. I've tried cleaning the text formatting, it should work now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I'm not entirely sure you can write about the internal effects of abuse without some sort of direct knowledge of it. Growing up I knew some people who had been abused, who trusted me enough to tell me what they were going through, what it looked like, and how it changed the way they did everything. I thought that learning so much about it through multiple sources taught me what I needed to know to see it and even avoid it for myself.

I was so, so wrong.

The abuse I went through was very short and very minor. I lived three months with an abusive roommate. It was never physical. But it still affected me tremendously, I am still feeling the effects even years later. I even knew this woman before, had even roomed with her before, knew that she had trouble with at least one roommate in every living situation she'd been in. I didn't see it coming, didn't see it happening until it was happening directly to me. She was the sort of person who needed a bad guy, so subconsciously in every new living arrangement she would pick one person to be that bad guy. The first time we roomed together that person was someone else. I couldn't figure out why they couldn't get along, I just assumed that this other person was more severe with this abusive friend. Years later it was my turn. I could literally do no right. Watching a show with her? Everything had to be set up perfectly and had to be on her terms or I was being an inconsiderate jerk, down to if the pillows had been washed. Watching a show on my own? How could you leave me out like this, you knew I wanted to see it! Have some friends over? I needed my alone time, you know I do, you need to warn me more than a day in advance. Go home to see family (like I do every weekend)? I had no idea where you were! You need to promise me to get my permission to leave before you go next time! Stay inside quietly by myself in my room? You need to leave the house more often, I get stressed if I don't get enough time with the apartment completely to myself! Everything was on her terms or it was a huge blow out fight. Unless there were other people around and she'd give me this look that said "You know what you did", pretend to be considerate and forgiving while others were there, then she'd corner me and yell at me later. Trying to get away from the yelling would just mean that she would quite literally and physically corner me, and since she was bigger and stronger, she'd loom over me to get what she wanted. There is no doubt in my mind that if I'd stayed long enough and kept standing up for myself it would have become physical. And even with the constant fighting I couldn't even talk about leaving the apartment for a new arrangement because of what it would do to her. In the end I just left anyway, grabbed a few things and lived out of a suitcase until I could get a better living arrangement. I tried to compromise, leave some of my stuff there as justification for still paying rent until the time she said she could get a roommate, but that just left me without access to my stuff, the locks changed, and her complaining about how I made it impossible to rent to someone else. Even though I was still paying rent. If you're in a situation like this, don't compromise, they'll use it against you. The fight that leaving caused took over a year to resolve, mostly because she refused to talk to me but would constantly do things that still caused me problems an entire state away, like expecting me to pay utilities. She convinced all of our mutual friends that I was a terrible person. She turned everything I did into a cruel awful thing, and I think she honestly believed it. I will never get back some of those friends. I'm learning to be okay with that. I'm learning to not flinch every time I think of her. I'm learning to keep doing the activities I love even though I might run into her while doing them.

Abuse doesn't care if the person is good or bad, loves the other person or not, if they're usually kind or cruel. It's about control. It's insidious and tiny. It wears down even the most self assured person and makes them feel worthless, unstable, and dependant. It's so innocuous that it can sometimes be impossible to see from the outside or even inside until you're drowning in it. And even if you see it, you may not be in a place where you can break free. Sometimes you just have to survive it.

If you write about it correctly, abuse is the only awful thing you need to happen to this character of yours to make a severely broken person. But I really don't know if you can fully understand that kind of constant pressure that digs in at any crack. I thought I did, but I really didn't until it happened to me. And my experience is going to be vastly different from someone else. I know it's different from the experiences of my friends who were abused as a child. I just think that the type of game you're describing is so very personal, something that would work best as a way for the creator to work through their own trauma. I think it's awesome that you want to do something that explores reality in that way, but without grounding it in personal experience I fear that it will come across as inaccurate, superficial, and sensational.

If you still feel that you want to do this, maybe you should look into getting more personal experience. I don't mean finding a toxic relationship, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. I mean getting to know people who have been through this on a more personal level than you can get in a forum. Maybe something like volunteering at a center for abuse. It could also be good to start studying psychology.

The type of people you're most likely to attract to the game you're making is going to either be people who know someone who has been abused and wants to know more about what that means, or someone who has been abused and is needing some catharsis. If you're inaccurate in your portrayal at all, these are exactly the people who will be able to pick up on that. It's not something you can be casual about researching.

Anyway, that's my thoughts. I hope they're helpful.

@Sharm That's very helpful indeed ! Your story and analysis allow me to get a better grasp on what abuse means, even outside of the whole love thing. I know I don't have the personal experience that some people count as necessary when writing such an element of story, but that's what got me motivated on researching that in the first place. I don't want to be inaccurate in my portrayals, especially on matters like this where people shouldn't joke around. Those stories actually help me get a look into the psychology of the abused, and the abuser, and with that I have a much better chance of being accurate when targeting said psychologies.
I have a deep-rooted interest in psychology (especially the study of social behavior) that began when I documented myself on Asperger's Syndrome for the first time. About the same time, I started paying attention to society, to how people acted around me, around other people I knew, and I'm currently still learning from external sources, or from what I personally observe. I want to know more, and that's what pushes me to take interest in psychologically interesting but cruelly under-represented themes, which include (but are not limited to) abuse.
One of the main problems I could have with volunteering at centers and such is that I'm just sixteen, and since I don't live in the city it would be hard for me to find centers, apply as an underage volunteer, and work there regularly.
Anyway, in order to try and understand the feelings of people, I tend to make connections with what I know personally. I know I was pretty badly bullied during my middle school years, because not behaving as society dictates makes you weird in other people's eyes, and weird is funny and makes a perfect target, go figure. My behavior was unconventional because I have Asperger's syndrome, that's why I researched it in the first place. After taking therapy and accepting that I was different from other people, things started to get better. The link between this personal experience and my game is the act of bullying. I believe that a mute person would receive some attention from mean-spirited bullies, because they need amusement, entertainment, but they also need easy pickings. If you're mute, you can't talk back to them. If you're not especially strong, you can't fight them back. Nothing much would be left then, except trying to endure and ignore them, like I did for many years until it eventually worked. But I draw the line here because I had friends to support me when I was feeling down. The protagonist, unlike me, doesn't have friends. He has his sister, true, but he's already devoted to helping her and refuses to express himself (often under the form of drawing or mimics, as many people don't understand Sign Language) about him being bullied, because he feels like his sister is more important and he wouldn't want to bother her with his personal problems. Apart from that, it feels like the rest of the world either doesn't care about him or is against him. Even sympathetic people probably wouldn't dare to help him, out of fear that the social image they've created would be damaged. This social image, often constructed using bits and pieces of society's positive and negative constructs and its vision of good and bad, is really important for a person in middle school years, and sometimes earlier and/or later, depending on the individual. And if your social image is damaged or broken, your reputation is doomed, with the consequences you could easily imagine. I use this kind of sociological analysis and viewpoint to find an understanding in a person's condition, and that allows me to better imagine it and picture it. First I draw comparisons to my own life, and then, when I draw the line, I try to assemble everything I know that can help me understand it and such an analysis leads me to conclusions on how I should handle the writing on such elements.
Back to the actual topic, I use the same method to understand the feelings associated with relationships like that. Of course I can't get everything, but detailed analyses and some metaphors (like your 'constant pressure that digs in at any crack') really help me with understanding the hang of it first, and then elaborate that understanding. And the more testimonies I'll have, the better I'll understand the feelings associated with it, and the better I'll be able to replicate them. That's what made me come here, I knew I needed a deep understanding of abuse and the feelings of the abused to be able to write that into my character and that I wouldn't be able to correctly portray it using only my own knowledge and experience. As said before, I'm not one to joke around about psychology and I am compelled by my ethics to do my absolute best to not incorrectly portray the feelings of those I wish to know more about.
I'll end this quite long answer by talking about the target audience. Actually, I do not wish to attract people who know abused ones, and I do not wish to attract abused ones in particular either. My game would require a rather niche audience because it is very unconventional as a game, but I wish to target many kinds of people who are in the niche of surrealistic atmospheric games, and I believe I know where to look. I absolutely want to make the mental design of my character interesting. His story, the tragic events that happened in his life are the main topic of his deeper dreams, while the superfluous ones are cutesy and innocent. Since the deeper dreams have interesting backstory told through indirect storytelling, that's what I want the player to be aiming for. Basically what I'm saying is, I'm writing the character that way to make the player interested in his story especially compared to the outermost layer of his dreams, where everything seems fine. You must discover his broken mind, not know that he has one.
I hope I made myself clear, it's 1:20 AM at the time of finishing this text and I might have forgotten or badly explained things at times. Sorry if this turned out to be a mess...

So I can speak for a parental situation first hand and second hand; you seemed more interested in romantic relationships though but relationships also come in many forms as well, as does love. Honestly my own experience pails in comparison to that of my brother's and that's the story I think worth telling to you.

He is high functioning autistic, he struggled in his teen years dealing with going through school, having to fight just to get earned mediocre or failing grades in a school system that wanted to just get him through and give him 90's. His exact illness wasn't clear at first; at times they thought maybe aspergers, others said it was autism (later he was placed as being on the fringe of high functioning). He also had to deal with where he was living ever other week and ongoing changes in court between my parents as well as being on constant medication primarily for anxiety.

What they did know though was that he needed a schedule, he needed a routine to be on track and function. He would go to my mother's and not have a routine, she wouldn't make him do anything, she wouldn't enforce him to even go to sleep at regular times, taking him out for midnight bowling on a school night. She wouldn't help him learn or grow, only keep him trapped. She would even make him feel like garbage, make him cry and lock himself in his room because she made him feel bad for having or wanting to go back to my father's. He would come back to my father's a little bit more broken than he was when he left and half the time he was over was spent picking up the pieces. She would pick him up from school on days where he should have gone to my father; of course the response was always it was some sort of misunderstanding about whose day/time it was. Sadly even today, despite being past the age of 21 he still has to deal with brief visitation to my Mother's and even the ramifications of court cases.

Did any of these instances ever make him question what was going on? No, at the core was one very simple fact for him; it was his mother and his father. He loved them how he could and how he understood he should, he was their son and a son is supposed to love his mother and father who look out for him. He had no friends or school chums to pal around with, his world was his family and that was something that was taken advantage of by someone he trusted.

I don't think my mother saw how we were affected, that wasn't even in her "radar." I don't know if it really was parental love on her part or if she saw us as objects or means to an end, something she could gain something from, something that made her feel whole.

@Vox Novus Thank you for the interesting story ! Based on the few things you said, I believe he could have Asperger's. But then again, Asperger's is on the spectrum of autism (with syndromes such as Childhood Disintegrative Disorder and Rett Syndrome) and is considered very close to the actual category of 'autism', so that gap isn't really wide.
Anyway, I believe the most likely reason for what happened would be the need to feel 'loved' combined with the need to 'compete' with the father. Some kind of love competition where you don't actually have to be loved, just feel like you're loved. That might explain the bowling night thing at midnight, she took him here to go bowling and that gives her the impression that she's being a good mother, when clearly she shouldn't be doing that on school nights. Meanwhile, jealousy/hatred/spite towards the father would push her to shame your brother for just wanting to see him. At least that's how I see it.
I'll have to draw further comparisons to the information I already have, to see if it can help me with what I'm working on. I guess this could help me with understanding the moral state of the abuser, but I only have my own interpretation about that and I might be wrong. Nevertheless, I'll keep that in mind, maybe I'll suddenly realize something important by thinking about it longer.

@Blackyu You're welcome. Idk, I've think they mostly figured out he is just high functioning autistic, I know he's been through a lot back and forth about it. He's doing comparatively better in life though now.

I guess the part I wanted to emphasize about the story the most was near the end and I think that's the part you could take away from it. My brother couldn't see the abuse going on around him and happening to him, he couldn't really even understand it because at the end of the day for him it was just his Mother and he didn't know or have the capabilities to distrust his mother. The nature of the relationship between the abuser and the abused can be one of blindness and ignorance; they can't see the abuse happening to them because of that or the exact way they gauge its severity can be greatly eschewed.

Ah, I see. That makes sense and that correlates with what I've been told by Tai_MT before. You might need someone to shake you out of this situation, as you might not understand or even see the wrongfulness of it.

(As a non-native English speaker, the word 'wrongfulness' sounds really weird to me.)

(Not actually sure how helpful this will be to you, since there was absolutely no affection involved, but hopefully you'll be able to get something out of it...)

I had abusive relationships with several of the foster families I lived with in high school. The worst was when I was fifteen and the family I was with kept trying to shove their moral values down my throat. They would dictate who I could be friends with, what extracurriculars I could participate in, what books I could read, etc. and all the time, they'd be telling me I was "part of the problem" in an attempt to control and shape my view to the world to match theirs. It culminated in me getting dragged down to the local police station after some "friends" and I got caught vandalizing businesses in support of a cause which went against everything I considered myself to be.

Needless to say, I didn't stay with that family very long, but it was long enough to have a lasting negative effect on me. I couldn't talk to anyone without panicking. I would lie in response to any kind of personal question--"what's your name?" for example. I was absolutely terrified of anyone knowing anything that would affect their opinion of who I was, and as far as I was concerned, that meant literally everything about me. It got so bad that I was questioned on four seperate occasions as to whether I was dissociative.

To make a long story short, the next family I lived with was only better in the sense that they at least weren't getting me arrested. So by the time I turned eighteen and could get out of there, I was completely terrified of any human interaction. I ended up having to drop out of college because of this, and spent the next several years working every job I could find that didn't involve people and scrambling to make enough money to live on.

Even knowing the relationship was toxic and being removed from it, it took a conversation with a total stranger in the airport ten years after the fact to really start breaking about the mental and emotional barriers I had erected to protect myself.

@NonsenseInTomatoJuice This one might help with the feelings of the abused. The fact that you've remained terrified of social interaction for years even when you broke out of your foster parents' authority is really interesting. That shows just how long the trauma resulting from such a relationship can last. Your story could also be compared with what Sharm said about abuse in general. It's about control. I think it pretty much is the reason why this family was so restrictive. Either they were too scared of failing your education and therefore tried to force you into their mold, or they just didn't want you to think and act any different from their morals and ethics so they could ensure control.
Thank you for replying, too ^^