Trauma Bond

[SavannaT]

Woman who lost her virginity to an assault has to leave her therapist husband and kids to return home for funeral, ends up stalked by her assaulter who seduces, brainwashes and makes her his live in slut

Thoughts?

 

[liliput1]

That’s not trauma bonding that’s Stockholm syndrome.

 

[ericalauren]

Yikes.

 

[sirhugs]

That’s not trauma bonding that’s Stockholm syndrome.

probaby correct

 

[sirhugs]

Woman who lost her virginity to an assault has to leave her therapist husband and kids to return home for funeral, ends up stalked by her assaulter who seduces, brainwashes and makes her his live in slut

Thoughts?

Strong nonconsent. I don't hang out in that category, so not sure how it would play with the audience.
For me, if I can withstand the abuse section, it might work if hubby rescues her and they live HEA. I love HEA, and some jeopardy along the way makes it even sweeter.

 

[SavannaT]

HEA?

 

[sirhugs]

HEA?

Happily Ever After

 

[Rob_Royale]

This would need to be toned down to pass muster here. I'd just leave the assault out of it and make her home-town ex a very alpha sort of guy who was bad for her in every way except between her legs.

 

[Brandnewbuddy]

Yeah, lets rework it a bit.

Instead of a full on assault, what if she was 18 and she lost her virginity to an older guy, like say: her dad’s friend. It was inappropriate for them but he treated her like a grown woman and knew what he wanted, unlike the boys she had trying to date her.

After the first time she tried to push him away, threatened to tell her dad, etc but she always wound up in bed with him till she left for college. She found other lovers and eventually her husband but some night she still remembers the way he fucked her like she existed to just pleasure him and she gets wet enough that she has to finger herself.

Her dad dies so she goes to the funeral, hubby and kids stay behind as they feel kids aren’t ready to learn about death or maybe she and dad weren’t that close.

Friend is there and he acts the part of the grieving friend perfectly, so perfectly that she gives him a ride back when he claims he’s too drunk to drive. He’s just acting though: he gets her to help him to his room and to get his pants down then he picks her up and rolls her over on the bed. He’s not restraining her but instantly she’s back to being 18 and remembering how he made her feel.

Maybe she resists the first time but between her grief and some tension at home she eventually succumbs and he fucks her before after and maybe even during the ceremony. He doesn’t intend to make her a sex slave by brainwashing her but rather by giving her what she isn’t getting from any other man

 

[ShyestCougar]

Woman who lost her virginity to an assault has to leave her therapist husband and kids to return home for funeral, ends up stalked by her assaulter who seduces, brainwashes and makes her his live in slut

Thoughts?

I sat for a half hour scribbling ideas for what I would do if someone asked me to write this story. Based on that exercise, here is my advice to you:

There’s a potentially powerful psychological story buried in your premise, but in its current form it reads like coercive-fetish shorthand. The biggest danger is that the “brainwashed into becoming his slut” collapses the protagonist into a sex object instead of a character.

The premise becomes much more interesting if the story is framed around trauma reactivation and identity destabilization rather than erotic inevitability because of a kidnapping and coercion. That is why someone else commented that this is Stockholm syndrome.

It seems that you are reducing sexual assault to a backstory simply to be the fuel for later erotica. There should be a strong believable foundation that you let the erotic flow from.

A stronger version would treat the assaulter less like a dominant figure and more like a manipulative predator who understands her unresolved trauma better than she does. Instead of kidnapping her, he goes after her mind to make her a willing participant in her enslavement.

The therapist husband angle is excellent because it creates irony and emotional tension because she married safety after the trauma, she has structure, he offers analysis, language for healing,
yet she remains psychologically vulnerable in ways neither she nor her husband fully understands.

Returning home for the funeral is also strong because funerals naturally destabilize identity: old rooms, old smells, old power structures, old shame, old versions of self.

That old home environment can plausibly crack open dissociation, compulsive behavior, unresolved trauma bonding, self-destructive sexuality, or obsessive reenactment patterns without the story needing a literal “brainwashing” or a kidnapping.

If you want this to feel psychologically serious rather than exploitative, I’d suggest that you make the woman intelligent and self-aware, let her recognize the danger repeatedly, show how isolation and emotional regression weaken her boundaries, and make the assaulter frighteningly perceptive rather than hypnotically irresistible.

The best version is probably a domestic/psychological style: she knows she should leave, she even tries to leave, but the encounter awakens unresolved conflicts about shame, desire, punishment, identity, and control.

That creates tragic tension.

One thing I would strongly recommend avoiding: “She secretly wanted it all along.” Instead; she hates what he represents, fears what he awakens, and slowly loses confidence in her ability to distinguish desire from trauma reenactment.

That’s dark, adult, and psychologically believable.

The phrase “live-in slut” hurts the pitch because it flattens the story into exploitation fantasy before the emotional architecture has even been established. If you want broader buy-in, you may want to describe the transformation more psychologically: isolated, dependent, sexually compulsive, trauma-bonded, emotionally captured (not kidnapped), unable to return to her former life.

Good Luck.

 

[SavannaT]

I sat for a half hour scribbling ideas for what I would do if someone asked me to write this story. Based on that exercise, here is my advice to you:

There’s a potentially powerful psychological story buried in your premise, but in its current form it reads like coercive-fetish shorthand. The biggest danger is that the “brainwashed into becoming his slut” collapses the protagonist into a sex object instead of a character.

The premise becomes much more interesting if the story is framed around trauma reactivation and identity destabilization rather than erotic inevitability because of a kidnapping and coercion. That is why someone else commented that this is Stockholm syndrome.

It seems that you are reducing sexual assault to a backstory simply to be the fuel for later erotica. There should be a strong believable foundation that you let the erotic flow from.

A stronger version would treat the assaulter less like a dominant figure and more like a manipulative predator who understands her unresolved trauma better than she does. Instead of kidnapping her, he goes after her mind to make her a willing participant in her enslavement.

The therapist husband angle is excellent because it creates irony and emotional tension because she married safety after the trauma, she has structure, he offers analysis, language for healing,
yet she remains psychologically vulnerable in ways neither she nor her husband fully understands.

Returning home for the funeral is also strong because funerals naturally destabilize identity: old rooms, old smells, old power structures, old shame, old versions of self.

That old home environment can plausibly crack open dissociation, compulsive behavior, unresolved trauma bonding, self-destructive sexuality, or obsessive reenactment patterns without the story needing a literal “brainwashing” or a kidnapping.

If you want this to feel psychologically serious rather than exploitative, I’d suggest that you make the woman intelligent and self-aware, let her recognize the danger repeatedly, show how isolation and emotional regression weaken her boundaries, and make the assaulter frighteningly perceptive rather than hypnotically irresistible.

The best version is probably a domestic/psychological style: she knows she should leave, she even tries to leave, but the encounter awakens unresolved conflicts about shame, desire, punishment, identity, and control.

That creates tragic tension.

One thing I would strongly recommend avoiding: “She secretly wanted it all along.” Instead; she hates what he represents, fears what he awakens, and slowly loses confidence in her ability to distinguish desire from trauma reenactment.

That’s dark, adult, and psychologically believable.

The phrase “live-in slut” hurts the pitch because it flattens the story into exploitation fantasy before the emotional architecture has even been established. If you want broader buy-in, you may want to describe the transformation more psychologically: isolated, dependent, sexually compulsive, trauma-bonded, emotionally captured (not kidnapped), unable to return to her former life.

Good Luck.

I agree it would be boring and reductive to make her a ready made damsel, perhaps she sees herself as the predator when she heads home, sort of Lisbeth Salander type, the woman who hurts men who hurt women type and decides to “go after” her attacker but under estimates him, she feels armed by every weapon of coping her therapist husband has given her but ultimately fail her. I’d put in a bit about her wanting to but being afraid to heal from her trauma through safely roleplaying it with her husband but worried about being judged for it and ultimately this curiosity is used against her by her stalker. She expects to lead the man who upended her life into the trap but the trap was already set by him.