The Story of Alex & Taylor

Alex and Taylor began dating a couple of months ago. When they first started spending time together, Taylor would always wait for Alex in the hall and walk her to classes, and he soon began to give her rides home from school. Taylor would call Alex every night just to say goodnight, and always acted really sweet.

The longer they dated, the more interest he showed in her. He would drive her to and from school, text her all the time to see how she was and what she was up to, and wanted Alex to spend all of her free time with him. Then, before she knew it, if Alex didn’t reply to Taylor’s texts within a few minutes, Taylor would question where Alex was and who she was with. When she asked him why he got so upset when she didn’t respond right away, he said that he was worried about her and didn’t like not knowing where she was.

Alex found that she was unable to do all of things she liked and needed to do, so she decided to quit basketball so that she could spend more time with Taylor and keep up with things at school and home. Alex found herself planning her afternoons and weekends around hanging out with Taylor. Even though Alex still thought Taylor was great, something just didn’t feel right. She wished that she could spend more time with her friends and not have to worry so much about making Taylor upset.

Several weeks later, Alex was hanging out in the hall with a bunch of friends instead of meeting Taylor as prearranged in the cafeteria. Taylor came charging down the hall, grabbed Alex by the arm and pulled her down the hall questioning where she was and why she was with those people. After school that day, Alex’s friends dropped by her house and invited her to go to the mall with them. Alex refused because she was afraid of missing Taylor if he stopped by. One of Alex’s friends asked, “What’s the big deal if you go with us? You hang out with him all the time.” Alex explained “I just don’t want to upset him. You don’t understand, he really cares about me, and worries.” Her friend responded, “So what? What would happen if you went?” Alex said, “I don’t know. I just know that I better not.”

A couple of weeks later Taylor picked Alex up to go to a party. He slammed the car door as she got in the car and said, “I thought we talked about you wearing shirts like that.” He handed her his hoodie and said, “Here, put this on. I don’t want guys staring at you. You better not wear that again.”

Later at the party, Alex went looking for Taylor and ran into Sam, a friend’s brother. Taylor saw them talking and laughing, and felt really jealous and angry. Taylor then grabbed Alex’s arm and pulled her outside. Once outside, he slapped her and began yelling. Some of their friends overheard Taylor yelling and threatening to hurt Alex and but no one said or did anything. They left shortly later.

The next day one of Alex’s friends called to see if she was okay. Alex made light of the incident and said that Taylor had never hit her before. She told her friend, “Oh you should have seen him later. He felt SO bad about the whole thing. Besides, I shouldn’t have been so stupid in the first place. I know he doesn’t like when I talk with other guys when he’s not around.”

 

* While the pronouns used in this story reflect a male abuser and a female victim, they could easily be swapped to reflect Alex as the male and Taylor as the female, or Alex and Taylor could be a same-sex couple.