Dismissed True Stories

The Cost Of Acceptance Ep 4

• The Survivor Sisterhood • Season 3 • Episode 4

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You can hear the tension in Sarah’s voice before the first promise breaks. We open with care—clear content warnings, boundaries—then step into the hardest rooms of her life: three relationships that sold safety and delivered control. Each man arrives with a storyline of protection, family, or stability. Each one, in time, uses that storyline to manage her money, movements, and mind. We trace how love bombing recycles after breakups, how “screening” and “systems” can mask coercion, and how a dog’s collar on a kitchen table becomes the spark for a terrifying eruption of violence.

We also rewind to where the pattern takes root. Sarah is hungry, isolated, and young; survival means unlocked car doors, weekend begging scripts, and arrests that deepen a trauma bond with Boyfriend B. Affection is followed by paranoia, possessiveness, and neglect that stains the house and her memory. Later, Boyfriend C offers the feeling of being chosen—until a laugh triggers an assault in a hotel room. That barefoot run into the night marks a boundary: she will no longer accept harm disguised as love. It’s not a tidy victory, but it’s a turning point.

Beyond partners, we confront the power of institutions. An ex-husband in uniform stretches time as a weapon, exploiting stigma around sex work to strip her of credibility in court. Police call it “civil,” leaving her parked and powerless; a judge eventually recognizes the pattern, awarding a partial, imperfect balance. Through it all, Sarah keeps working, saving, and asking for help even when it costs her dignity—because survival is logistics as much as courage.

This chapter closes with a chill: the worst man is still ahead, and he’s the reason she still looks over her shoulder. Yet there’s community now—listeners who can witness, share, donate, and call to leave words she can carry. If the story moved you, subscribe, share it with someone who needs the pattern map, and leave a review so more people can find it. Your voice helps make safety possible.

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SPEAKER_00:

This episode of Dismissed True Stories contains discussions of domestic violence, sexual exploitation, and animal abuse, as well as descriptions of physical and emotional harm. Listener discretion is strongly advised. The stories and accounts you'll hear are based on one survivor's personal experiences and are told from her perspective. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy and safety. Dismissed true stories does not condone or promote illegal activity of any kind. If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, help is available through the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-Safe. And real quick before we begin, I just want to say thank you so, so much for coming back in the fourth week of season three to support Sarah and her fight for safety. So last week in The Cost of Survival, we heard Sarah reach essentially a breaking point. It was a moment where desperation and motherhood collided for her. She had lost her job, her home, and nearly everything that she owned for a second time. And in that place where she was feeling hunger and fear, she had made a choice that many people could simply never fathom. A choice to sell her body just to survive. But survival doesn't really stop once you find shelter. We're recovering from years of abuse and trauma, and a lot of times that survival will just take on a different kind of form. In this episode, The Cost of Acceptance, Sarah takes us deeper into that season of her life. The years where she spent believing that love and safety could exist inside of chaos. And I've broken this part of her story into three different relationships. Three different men, each representing a pattern of control that kept her trapped in cycles of violence and hope and heartbreak. And for privacy, we'll refer to them as boyfriend A, boyfriend B, and boyfriend C. And as you listen, you'll notice the ways that each man will echo the last. The promises that sound like protection and the apologies that eventually blur into gaslighting and confusion. And the quiet moments where Sarah starts to secretly question if she actually deserves more. This episode contains discussions of domestic violence, sexual exploitation, physical abuse, and animal abuse. So please take care while listening. And if you've ever found yourself staying longer than you meant to, believing that if you just love a little harder, that that could fix what fear has broken over the years. Please believe me when I say you are not the only one who has done this. As a survivor, I can confidently say that I have done this too. So let's start where we left off last week, where Sarah has just escaped homelessness. She's tired and she's scared and she's about to meet boyfriend A. The man who promises to protect her and ends up doing the opposite.

SPEAKER_01:

Whoever will show me any kind of love, that's who I need to be around. And it was not healthy at all. At all. Um I thought that I didn't deserve better in some ways. Like I knew I didn't deserve it, but then also at the same time, it was like, finally, somebody wants to be around me. Finally, somebody cares. They say that they are always gonna be there, and you settle for people that you know aren't any good for you because you just are so desperate to be loved.

SPEAKER_00:

Aside from from wrecking your car and dragging you into like these illegal activities, what what did he provide to you?

SPEAKER_01:

A sense of belonging, a sense of being wanted. Um That's about it. We ended we actually were on again, off again quite a bit. During the time that we were off, that's when I became homeless. I ended up losing that duplex that we were in. I became homeless. I was hungry a lot. I got arrested a couple more times for stealing food, and I was just so hungry and so desperate, and that's when I ended up meeting.

SPEAKER_00:

I tried as hard as I could, but I couldn't get the editing right on this part to be able to chop and screw this in a way that makes sense. So, just a note for you: we are talking about boyfriend A.

SPEAKER_01:

And then that was a very traumatic cycle of he would promise that he was everything I ever wanted. He was also very narcissistic. He continued to make me feel like I wasn't worthy of him because I was stupid or I was less than, and we were very on again, off again because I would go through phases of I don't deserve this, this isn't right, you're not the man that you keep telling me you are. But then we would split up and I would be lonely and miserable, and he would come back around and I miss you, I love you, we can fix this, let's get back together. And he pulled me back in so many times. You know, there was so many times that he beat me where I had black eyes, I had broken blood vessels in my eyeballs, and somehow he just continued to pull me back in and pull me back in. You know, I I'm definitely not proud of these relationships by any means, but also in the same sense, I understand why I allowed some of these things, and it was really just out of desperation to finally be loved by somebody.

SPEAKER_00:

Raise your hand if you've ever been a victim to love bombing even after your relationship ended. Because at this point, Sarah says that she's already left him more than once. And if you have ever loved someone who has hurt you, it doesn't mean that it's over when you leave. Because what's tricky about love bombing is that it doesn't just happen in the beginning. Sometimes, you know, it happens just right after the breakup because they're able to flip this switch where suddenly they're saying everything that you've ever needed to hear. Things like I've changed, I get it now, and you're the only one who has ever understood me. And for a moment, you want to believe it because it feels so good, because you remember the version of them that once made you feel safe or seen or chosen and special. And you tell yourself that maybe this time things will be different. And maybe if you love them harder or you change a little more, or you do things your way, that it won't all fall apart again. But it's never about love, it's about control. And in Sarah's case, he used that same charm, the same false promises of a better future to introduce her to what he said was a safer and smarter way to make money. A new system, a new start. But what she didn't know then was that this so-called upgrade wasn't for her. It was for him.

SPEAKER_01:

The clientele on this website was typically very rich, married businessmen who wanted secrecy. They wanted anonymity. It wasn't as bad, if you will. So I started creating my own clientele. I ended up cutting that girl off, going independent, if you will. I was keeping all of my own money and I was making my own decisions on who I was willing to see or not see. I thought that I had created this screening process, if you will, to determine who I was gonna feel safe with or not feel safe with. It wasn't always entirely accurate. The man that I was dating, he was like, I can support you, I can protect you, I can make sure that nobody hurts you. He became involved and he was supposed to protect me, but he did not.

SPEAKER_00:

Sarah says that there were times when the work itself became dangerous. She describes encounters where clients had crossed lines, where fear was replaced with control, and where she left those situations bruised physically and emotionally. And in her words, that's when she turned to boyfriend A, the man who promised to keep her safe. And she says that when she went to him shaken and asking for help and asking him to step up and step in, that promise of protection never came.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, I told him what happened and I said, I need you to go back and get my phone and my car keys. You said that you would protect me, and there's no protection. He was like, I don't know what you want me to do. Go kick his door in and then get the cops called, and then I'm gonna get arrested. And I was like, But you said you would not let anything happen to me, and yet all these things keep happening to me. This man was extremely, extremely manipulative and extremely good at masking his true intentions. He would tell me constantly, let's build a life together, let's be a family, let's start over, let's use this money that you're making so we can save up to buy ourselves a house and we'll create this life together. And what he really meant was, let me pretend to love you while secretly being your pimp and trafficking you and taking all your money. Um he would let me keep enough money to keep paying my lawyer, but outside of my lawyer fees and my hotel fees, I wasn't allowed to keep anything. He would make me work when I was on my period, he would make me work when I was sick, would constantly threaten me, he beat me multiple times. I would have black eyes and broken blood vessels in my eyeballs, and he would be like, Well, you better find some good makeup and figure it out. He used to call his brothers a lot, talk shit on me to his brothers where I could hear him. So he's just degrading me and making me feel very small. I was always to blame for everything. Everything was my fault. He was this wonderful man and I was this stupid bitch who couldn't do anything right. Was one day where I was we had finally gotten this home that he had promised, and we had finally moved in, and I was cooking dinner. I let his dogs out in the backyard so that uh they could use the restroom. And when they came back in, the one dog's collar was like, I don't know if he like stuck his head under the fence, and he some somehow the dog was able to get the collar mostly off of his neck, and it was just kind of like a headband around his head. So I just pulled it off and I set it on the kitchen table, and I was like, I need to finish cooking, I'll worry about it later. So he comes in the kitchen and he's like, You really put the dog's collar on the kitchen table? So he makes me sit at the kitchen table and he pushes the table into my chest so that I'm pinned between the wall and the table. He's telling me that I'm a such a disgusting person, that I was trying to poison his children because the dog germs were gonna get on the kitchen table, and then his children were gonna eat there, and I was gonna poison them and give them diseases. Obviously, I didn't care about him. Obviously, I didn't care about his children. Obviously, I was incapable of being what he needed because I was stupid enough to think it was okay to leave the dog's collar on the table.

SPEAKER_00:

Use a fucking Clorox wipe, man. Like they just look for a reason to let it all just and explode. And they can find the smallest of reasons many times. And it could create this one big huge eruption of violence.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, he threw cans of Lysol at me, he beat me with a broomstick. If I would try to lift my arms to protect myself in any sort of way, he would scream at me to put my arms down and hit me again so that I wasn't able to block the blows. He wanted me to feel it.

SPEAKER_00:

And this is the same I'm sorry, this is the same guy that said that he was going to protect you, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Um I I did leave him multiple times, and he was able to love bomb me and get me to come back multiple times, even though he had beaten me so many times before. Again, when you have been starved for love your whole life, and the two people that you trust the most betray you, it really deepens that ache in your heart to have somebody who does love you. And I feel like that's a big part of the reason why I continued to go back, is because I just wanted to be loved so badly. And when things were good with him, things were great. And when it was bad, it was horrible.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's what we say, I think, is like we hold on to the good times and we tell ourselves, like, I'm not crazy. Like, there is good in this person, and I've experienced it. That's why we stay for so long, because we hold on to that hope.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we hold on to that dream of what they promise us, and we think, surely that man that they said they were, surely that man that you saw in the beginning will come back. It's not gonna continue to be like it is. And they promise, I won't do it again. I I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. And you stay, and it only ever gets worse, in my experience.

SPEAKER_00:

How did how did you end up ending that relationship?

SPEAKER_01:

So he had beaten me so many times, and I had left and come back and left and come back, but the the final straw for me was that um he pulled a gun on me and I ran out of his front door thinking that he was gonna shoot me. I decided this is it, I can't go back. So I started working independently as a sex worker. I lived out of a hotel and drove a rental car for months and months, and I couldn't get a bank account in my name because my ex-husband um got a bunch of payday loans while we were still together, and then he removed his direct deposit from the bank account. We had a joint bank account, and so Bank of America said that I owed them thousands of dollars, and I couldn't even get a bank account. I still had no work history, no education. So I was at a point where I really had no choice but to go to my mother and ask her, will you please help me get an apartment? I'm spending an ungodly amount of money on having a rental car and having a hotel full-time when I could just rent an apartment and buy a vehicle. Having to come to my mom and beg for help after everything that had happened was a very degrading experience. Initially, she didn't want to help me, but I continued to prove to her how much money I was really making. She offered to start holding my cash for me. She was like, Well, if you keep all this cash on you and you get robbed, then then what? She was holding all my money for me. There was multiple times where we had discrepancies of, you know, I I swore I gave you$2,000 the other day, and you say I only gave you a thousand or whatever the case may be, but I was kind of stuck in that situation. I really didn't have anyone else I could rely on. And although I was pretty sure she was stealing money from me, I I really didn't have any other options. Eventually, she did co-sign on an apartment for me. I was able to purchase a vehicle, I was able to pay for my lawyer.

SPEAKER_00:

When Sarah talks about that season with her mother, you can still hear the ache in her voice. Asking for help felt like surrendering that last bit of control that she had. She says that it was humiliating to have the same woman who had failed her so many times now holding her money, deciding what she could and what she couldn't have. But at that point, she truly didn't feel like she had anyone else. And while we've been following the thread of her relationship with boyfriend A, the man who introduced her to that new system of survival, this next part of her story actually takes us back a few years earlier to another relationship that came long before him. And this is important because it helps us to understand what came next, how the pattern started. Boyfriend B enters her story at a time when she was younger, still in her early 20s, still trying to figure out what love was supposed to feel like. Before the website, before the promises of safety, before any of that, there was this man.

SPEAKER_01:

When you are star for love as a child, and you think you finally find somebody who cares about you, and you think that they love you, and then you find out they're having an affair with your mother, and then you meet somebody new, you're like desperate to hold on to something. Like, somebody please care, somebody please love me, somebody please want to spend time with me. Um, I felt very isolated, I was very lonely, I was very hurt, and I just wanted what I've always wanted. I wanted somebody to care about me. So I put up with a ridiculous amount of stuff. He was also there during the time frame where the inheritance money had run out and the paid up rent had run out, and I had lost my job. And right before I lost my apartment, he and I started walking the neighborhoods late at night. Whatever cars were unlocked, we would get in them, take change, or whatever we could find because we were hungry and we hadn't eaten. And there was days where I didn't have toilet paper or hadn't eaten in a couple of days. And another thing that I used to do during that time frame was Friday, Saturday nights, he would always go to the bar with his friends. And his excuse was, well, I'm not spending any money. They're the ones buying me drinks. So he would go out to the bar and I would get all dressed up like I was gonna go to the bar, except I would just walk to the gas station by my house with an empty gas can in my hand, and I would tell people, I went out to the bar tonight with my friends and somebody stole my purse, and now my car just ran out of gas. I'm literally just trying to get home. Could you help me with some gas so I can make it back home? I don't have my wallet, I don't have anything, someone stole my purse. Can you please help me? Basically, I would just repeat the process for a few hours until I had enough resources that I could survive off of it for the week. That really only worked on the weekends. You know, I couldn't say on a Tuesday night. Well, we were out at the club and somebody stole my purse because they're gonna be like, Why are you at the club on a Tuesday night? You know, but eventually the gas stations they started to recognize me and notice that I was out there, you know, begging every weekend and they started asking me to stop coming on the property, and I ended up getting arrested a few different times for stealing food. And so one night Keon and I were like, we're gonna go to a different neighborhood and try to see what we can come up with. I was going through cars. I thought he was also going through cars, but apparently he was breaking into people's houses. He entered a woman's house and she saw him and she called the police. And he did not tell me that this woman saw him or that, hey, we should we should get out of here, basically. He didn't say anything. The police both arrive and tackle both of us, and um, we ended up going to jail together. Unfortunately, during the time I was delusional and it strengthened our trauma bond, if you will. You know, after you would think after that, I would know you need to leave this guy alone. He's trouble, nothing good is gonna come of this. You need to move on. But again, being lonely and desperate for somebody to finally care about me.

SPEAKER_00:

I understand this to a point where I never went after the guys that I saw or thought were like quote unquote better than me. And so I feel like I always dated down. And and to go after someone like like that, like you don't feel like what's the word? Like you just don't feel worthy.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

And then so you accept less than what you deserve because you think that that's what you deserve.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

But this, this lifestyle, when you were living this, this is did you honestly think that this is what you deserved?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I just I thought that I didn't deserve better in some ways. Like I knew I didn't deserve it, but then also at the same time, it was like finally somebody wants to be around me, finally somebody cares. They say that they are always gonna be there, and you settle for people that you know aren't any good for you because you just are so desperate to be loved.

SPEAKER_00:

Did he have a way that he was there?

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

There was a lot of affection. I feel like we did have a really strong bond for years. We just life was crazy during that time frame. Um, we were just really struggling to survive, and he has an anger problem. He's gets violent, he gets very verbally abusive um at times. And yeah. How did you finally walk away from he moved in with me and I was paying to him to like be my security guard. So he would hang out in the other bedroom while I had clients over, just so that God forbid anything went wrong that he was there to protect me. Um, he just became very possessive. There was one night I woke up in the middle of the night because I'm smelling something, and I'm like, what is that smell? And I go in the kitchen and he had taken apart this radio. He had taken all the wiring out of it, and he was using a lighter to melt the plastic off of the wires because he thought he was gonna be able to turn in the copper from the wires to get money. He also had three dogs at the time, and the dogs ended up getting in a fight one day. The one dog got attacked pretty bad, and essentially he let his dog die in my living room and then left the dog's body and wouldn't even move it. It was one night where I woke up because he was standing over me going through my phone, and I'm like, What are you doing? And he was like, Why would you text this person lol? Why is that funny? You think it's okay for you to text LOL to other guys? And I was like, That's my cousin that I was texting. That's not some guy. And he was like, sure, sure, sure. Like, he didn't believe me. Um, he got very belligerent. He tried to put his hands on me, and I ended up just being able to get in my car and leave. I ended up telling his mom that he had a drug problem. That was like an ultimate betrayal to him. How dare you tell my mother I'm on drugs? How dare she know the truth about what a monster I really am? And how dare you tell her that I put my hands on you all the time, and how dare you tell her that I use you for money. And so that was basically the end of that.

SPEAKER_00:

When we zoom out, what we see in Sarah's story isn't just a string of bad relationships, it's a pattern that lives inside of so many stories of domestic violence. Sarah's life had taught her that love, it comes with pain. That the people who say that they'll protect you will also be the ones to hurt you. And when that message is all that you've ever known, you start to mistake chaos for connection. She says that boyfriend B really just depended on her to hold his life together while hers was to put it simply falling apart. And then when boyfriend C came along, this next relationship we're about to dive into, he promised her something real, something lasting. He pursued her and convinced her that she was finally worthy of being chosen. But the moment where she laughed that she threatened his masculinity, the smallest sign of his confidence turned to violence.

SPEAKER_01:

We got reconnected later on, years later, and he was like, you know, I'm ready for something serious. We should, we should be together. And I was like, Are you sure you want this? Because people keep telling me that they want to be with me, and then it ends up super crazy and terrible. And he's like, No, like I'm really serious. Like we can we can do this. So I'm like, okay. We ended up going to New Orleans. Uh we went from Mardi Gras. The trip was good, um, until it wasn't. I don't even really remember what we were arguing about. We were arguing about something in the hotel room. All I remember is that I laughed at him, and that's what made him attack me was me laughing at him. He was trying to choke me and beat me in the hotel room. I was able to get out of his grasp. I ran out of the hotel barefoot. I had left all of like my suitcase, all my stuff in the room, didn't care. I was ready to get away from him. I was tired of being abused, and I was tired of accepting that these men thought it was okay for them to put their hands on me, and I knew that I didn't deserve that. I knew I was a good person. I knew that it was unreasonable for them to be angry enough to put their hands on me.

SPEAKER_00:

For Sarah, this isn't just one cycle of abuse. It was literally everywhere in her life. In her relationships. Yeah. But also in her work where men used her body and her vulnerability in her home life, where her mother's help came with control and betrayal. And in the court system where her ex-husband, a man who once sworn to protect, still used power to punish.

SPEAKER_01:

So every time the judge would set a custody agreement, we would leave court and I would, you know, I would think, okay, well, I get Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then we switch every week. Every time I would go to pick up my kids, he would either be several hours late. He would leave me sitting in parking lots waiting for hours, show up super late or not show up at all when I figured out where they were living. I would show up at their house. You know, today's my day to see the kids. You need to let me have them. And he would be like, Well, call the police if you want to. And then I would call the police and they would say, ma'am, this is a civil matter. If you want to see your kids, you're gonna have to take him back to court for custody again. And I'm like, I've been taking him to court for custody for over two years now. I didn't see my kids for about a year and a half during our custody battle. And then once I started seeing them again, he would just dangle them over my head. Oh yeah, you get these days because the judge said so. And then when it was my turn to have them, he would rip the rug out from under me and ha ha, just kidding. And it was a really funny joke to him and his new girlfriend. He would show up to court for our custody hearings in his police officer uniform, and he would stand with his hands behind his back like he's just this respectable citizen and servant of the city. And he would tell them that I was a drug addict and I was a prostitute, and he would print out pictures of me from and be like, see, she's clearly deranged, she doesn't deserve these kids. Um, she's a terrible person. I just continue to pour my heart out to the judge and say, sir, I've been through some things. Yes. Am I proud of my profession? Absolutely not. But if that doesn't show you that I will literally do anything to get my kids back, then I don't know what else will. Because I'm literally selling my soul to come up with the money, to pay my lawyer, and have a place to live so that I can get my kids back. And so eventually the judge started to see through all of his lies. He saw the real me that was just begging to just be a mother and begging to have my kids back. And I wish that he would have supported me a little bit more, but he decided that 50-50 custody was fair.

SPEAKER_00:

Over these last four episodes, we've watched a pattern take shape. Different men, different faces, but the same kind of power. The same cycle that pulled Sarah in broke her down, and then forced her to start over again and again. And just like in a courtroom, patterns matter. They tell the judge what's really happening beneath the surface, who's trying to change, and who's just changing tactics. That pattern is what brought Sarah here to the place where she finally thought she'd seen the worst of it, but she hadn't. Because everything that you've heard so far, every betrayal, every promise, every bruise that faded, was only preparing her for the man that she is running from today. And next week, we meet him. The man who would become the reason that Sarah has to keep looking over her shoulder. Even now, with him behind bars. And if Sarah's story moved you, please, please share this episode. Stories like hers deserve to be heard, not dismissed. You can find a link to Sarah's GoFundMe in the show notes below if you'd like to help her rebuild her life in safety. Every share, every donation, every small act of support helps make that possible. And if you'd like to leave Sarah a message, a few words of encouragement, or what her strength has meant to you, you can call the Dismissed True Stories voicemail line at 1-844-TELL-DTS. And some of your messages may be featured in future episodes. Thank you for listening. Thank you for showing up. And thank you for helping us remind survivors everywhere that their stories matter. Because today, and like in every episode before, we're breaking the silence. One sentence, one story, and one episode at a time.

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