Once Upon A Time….
Your stories of dangerous dating

Once upon a time has occurred to most women. We grew up on fairytales that told us that men were rescuing princes and if one kissed us we would awaken to new life or be rescued from our dysfunctional step sisters. Unfortunately, we didn’t always abandon those myths when we became adults. They hung around us plaguing us with belief systems that weren’t easy to shed. They often perpetuated our own choosing of dangerous, abusive, addictive, or unhealthy relationships. 

Fairytales about dangerous relationships have been told to us in many different ways: 

** Through the culture we live in 

 

** Through gender roles that say women ‘should be’ this way and men ‘are allowed to be’ that way 

 

** Through our families which we have watched female family members accept dangerous men into their lives and then normalize his dangerous behavior by calling it something less than it was 

 

All of these actions help to create a fairytale that traps us in an unreality about dangerous men and ‘what’ is dangerous, who they are and what they do.  

In the book ‘How to Spot a Dangerous Man’ the ways that culture supports and perpetuates fairytales, the ways that predetermined gender roles have labeled male behavior as excusable, and the generational family traditions about how women view men are all discussed. Read how society, gender, and family have taught us to accept dangerous relationships!  

Once upon a time is when our choices weren’t the best, a time when hopeful relationships turned bad, a time when we were lucky to just get out. Many women have these experiences because they have not learned to ‘see and recognize’ dangerous men early on. Not all dangerous men are violent. In the book ‘How to Spot a Dangerous Man’ only one of the eight categories is violent. How women are traumatically injured in these relationships is not merely physically.  

Once Upon A Time is a solicitation for stories—your story. These are stories that may appear in our next book, workbook, or right here on the website. Your name and other information will be changed to protect your identity. You never know to what degree your story will help another woman recognize who she’s with or give her the courage to get out.  

Below is the type of story we are currently seeking. Please keep it to 800 words (which is about 2 typed pages). 

 

WE NEED YOUR STORY!  

We are looking for stories about women who were in dangerous relationships with white collar professionals. Maybe he was a doctor, attorney, congressman, high powered business man. How did his career and social standing side-swipe you from seeing the red flags early on in the relationship?

What happened in the relationship? To you? In the end? Tell us your story—how it started, the red flags, why you ignored them, how it ended, and what you learned. What would tell other women about this type of dangerous man?  How many of these types of men have you dated before? Please include your email address.

 

Click here to email your story to us.