Actress Laverne Cox opens up about a
toxic relationship in the November issue of UK LGBT glossy Attitude.
Last week, Cox, who is best known for
playing transgender inmate Sophia Burset on the Netflix dramedy
Orange is the New Black, was honored with the magazine's
Inspiration Award at its Virgin Holidays Attitude Awards in London.
Cox told Attitude that she
stayed in the abusive relationship because she felt unworthy.
“I was so young, this guy was into me
and I thought because I was black and trans that no one else was
going to love me. He was an alcoholic, and I became his caretaker and
enabler,” she explained. “He was never physically abusive, only
emotionally, that’s important to say. Sometimes that’s worse, he
was such a mind fuck.”
“I could have died because of his
alcoholism.”
“I thought that if I could be perfect
and great in bed, prepare him food and take care of him that I would
be worthy. If I could turn someone who was emotionally abusive and
unavailable and manipulative in some ways into someone who was
available and unabusive because I was so amazing, it would heal all
of the childhood trauma that I had taken into the relationship,”
Cox
said.
“Now I know it’s not about me, it’s
about him. It’s not about me being perfect or changing someone.
That was never going to happen. This person is not going to change
and I deserve better. I deserve someone who’s going to treat me
like a queen because I am one.”
“I just needed to let him go,” she
added.