Laurentopenbook aboutherexperience
Lauren is working on a book detailing her experiences door.
She explained: “I went into hospital with a perforated eardrum after he hit my head off a door.
“You end up lying to people about it, and the more you lie the more it becomes real.
“I heard him making jokes to people at work about it and I worried about what would happen if I told people. “I felt like people wouldn’t care.” She said she felt unable to leave the relationship because they lived in Perth and she went to college in Fife.
Lauren feared that if she left him, she would need to move back in with her parents in Alyth and would be unable to travel to college and would have to drop out.
She continued: “All abusers think they are evil geniuses but it is all pretty textbook once you know the signs.
“We got on really well and I used to feel really angry with him because we had a really good relationship and he was ruining it.
“Every time something happened he would promise to stop.
“When we ended up breaking up it was over something really silly. It was not a huge thing.”
After they split up, Lauren’s mum suggested she should see a counsellor, and it was not until then that she discovered she had been in abusive relationship all along.
“Mum had a hunch something was not right, particularly because I was totally fine when we broke up,” she said.
“I went to counselling and they told me it had been abuse and it was not until I started talking about it I realised.
“I didn’t believe the counsellor at first but I bought a book on abuse because I felt I needed empirical evidence of it.
“I went through the book with a highlighter to see if anything felt relevant to me, and 100 pages of the book ended up being highlighted . It was only then I realised the counsellor was right.”
Since then, Lauren has found happiness with a new partner, who has