THIS summer, I shall be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Closed Door Theatre Company and we are creating a piece all about controlling and mentally abusive relationships, something that we feel needs more awareness.

So that’s what I thought I would write about. It’s difficult when it comes to relationships because of course everyone is different. But how do you know when someone loves you and when someone is being selfish and not allowing you to lead your own life? The trouble with the topic is that often people do not even realise that their partner is like that and it is not until you are removed from the situation that you can truly see what the relationship is like.

I have done a lot of research already and also through friends and found that controlling and mentally abusive relationships can leave deep hidden scars on a person, which just shows how the way that someone manipulates you or your brain can be extremely damaging.

Relationships like this happen more often than we think and if we can recognise when this may be happening to people around us, then maybe we would be able to stop it in its tracks before it gets worse.

But with that comes the difficulty of the partner being able to walk away as that in itself can be another difficulty.

It is important to remember that there are all kinds of abusive relationships and that sometimes it isn’t just the physical that can be extremely dangerous. The relationship can affect a person’s social life, physical being and their entire mentality. So if you think that one of your friends or family members may be suffering from a controlling relationship, it's vital to give the best advice you can and to see if you can give them the strength to escape from it.

We wanted to create a piece of theatre that had a message behind it and, without giving too much away, we felt that there had to be a complete journey for the characters. That is another thing to bear in mind, that you have to look into things a little deeper and think about why this person would behave this way and have a look at the whole picture. Often the first signs of this type of relationship are very subtle and so you wouldn’t notice it until later on.

For me the whole point of being in a relationship should be about loving that person for who they are and contributing to their happiness. It is all about communication and finding the right balance between spending time together and spending time apart.

Often in certain relationships, all of the time is invested with each other which will mean that each individual doesn’t have time to themselves and in a controlling relationship they latch onto this, encouraging their partner to speak or see no one other than them.

This is just another way of being able to keep an eye on exactly where and what their partner is doing and is to do with trust. Trust is one of the major factors that you have to have with your partner, this then in turn leads on to more freedom and one quote that I heard the other day was that: “If you feel freer with your partner than before you met your partner, then you have met the right person.”

With healthy, loving relationships being what everyone strives for, it pays to know what that actually means and to make ourselves more aware when something isn’t right.