A reality TV star became an advocate after experiencing domestic violence.

Their relationship began as a “whirlwind,” says Real Housewives Beverly Hills star Taylor Armstrong of her late husband, Russell Armstrong. But just as quickly as they fell in love, the relationship turned abusive.

There was one instance Armstrong says she’ll never forget. She was getting ready for a charity event in a hotel room, with her two stepsons – Russell’s boys from a previous relationship – running around her. She ordered a pizza for them hoping she could buy more time to get dressed. As the boys were enjoying the pizza, her husband returned to the hotel room. He looked at the boys, then headed straight toward Armstrong. He wrapped his hands around her throat and looked her straight in they eye and said, “If you ever give my boys pizza without a vegetable ever again, I’ll kill you.”

“It seems like a small thing,” Armstrong says of the altercation. “But that’s the scary thing about being with someone that loses control easily.”

From the outside looking in, Armstrong says the logical response would have been to just leave. But “just leaving,” she says, can be dangerous and potentially haunt victims of domestic violence down the line.

She was financially and emotionally tied to her relationship with her husband and abuser – factors that appear in many domestic violence cases. Financially, Armstrong had few resources of her own to get up and leave. Her husband didn’t let her have access to cash in their shared bank accounts. He let her spend on credit cards, but that was only so he could track where she was going: “He would turn every little transaction into an investigation,” she says.

Emotionally, Armstrong didn’t want to risk breaking up her family. They lived in a mansion, and she and Russell had a daughter, Kennedy, who was attending a good private school. “He made me think, who was I to send our life into chaos?”

But chaos was already embedded into their relationship. “Every time he’d walk into the room my stomach would ball up,” Armstrong says. She began trying to control all the factors that could set him off. She’d try not to laugh or smile too much in front of company, or he’d accuse her of being unfaithful. If she didn’t speak enough or laugh enough, he would accuse her of trying to make him look bad.

Instead of becoming more private, however, Armstrong thought cameras might protect her from him, and began filming for Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. To some extent, it worked: With reality TV cameras trained on them, she says, he acted normal. But then Armstrong realized she wasn’t being herself: “I had become a shell of myself – a real Stepford housewife.”

Taylor left after six years, remarried, and today is an advocate for domestic violence victims. That work brings her to Monterey this month for a benefit for YWCA Monterey County.

Her nonprofit, Taylor Armstrong Foundation, helps spread awareness of domestic violence and also helps survivors of abuse cover costs associated with moving out, while organizations like the YWCA help cover larger expenses like legal costs.

Covering unforeseen expenses helps logistically, Armstrong says, and also emotionally: “All victims need to know that they are worth something.”

TAYLOR ARMSTRONG speaks at YWCA Monterey County’s Domestic Violence Awareness Luncheon at 11:30am-1:30pm on Friday, Oct. 27. InterContinental The Clement Monterey, 750 Cannery Row, Monterey. $60-$5,000. 422-8602, ywca.org/montereycounty