Before the sucess of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, two of the stars of the hit show, NeNe Leakes and Lisa Wu Hartwell, were the subject of abusive relationships in their past. The two have decided to join forces and take a stand hoping that their stories will give other Black woman who are in abusive relationships the inspiration to break free and leave.

Leakes talked about her abusive ex in the upcoming issue of Essence Magazine. “He had a great personality; he was fun. Whenever we went out, he was a gentleman. I thought he was a great guy,” Leakes says of her ex. “I call him a Jekyll and Hyde. He’s extremely sweet and caring and all those things, but he has a flip side.”

“When we got ready to go to bed, he took out a gun and laid it on the nightstand,” Leakes revealed. “I’d never been around a gun before. It really freaked me out. My thoughts were, Okay, I need to do what he says. I need to be really nice tonight. That should have been my warning.” But Leakes failed to heed her own intuition.

On the other hand, Lisa Wu Hartwell suffered the severe verbal abuse. “He was very sweet at first, but looking back on it now, there were signs of him being controlling from the beginning—little things like taking keys from me so I couldn’t leave or standing in the doorway so I couldn’t get by,” she says. When the verbal abuse began, “I’d dismiss it by saying to myself, Oh, he’s upset-he’s calling you these things because he’s angry. You can’t see clearly when you’re in the situation—it’s almost like you don’t want to acknowledge it, especially if you’re all about that person.”

The two reality stars have decided to write book which talks about their past abusive relationships. They plan on shopping it around to publishers sometime this year.

For the complete story, pick up the March 2009 issue of ESSENCE, on newsstands everywhere February 12.