Hugh Hefner

Holly Madison and Hugh Hefner attend the launch party for the third season of The Girls Next Door on Feb. 27, 2007 in Los Angeles. (Photo: Mark.

“For me, when I shared my story, it was just important for me to share everything about it, like the bad things as well as the good things, because on Girls Next Door, our lifestyle was packaged to look just very fun and happy and almost like family friendly in a way,” Madison said. “So I made a lot of excuses for it but I found that, you know, my story connects with a lot of people, and they see echoes of it sometimes in their own relationships that they then got out of.” She also referred to Hefner, who was in his 70s when they began dating, as “manipulative.” So it was just me realizing that he was the problematic one. “I started to get a lot more confidence, because I was working. “But also, like, a strange thing kind of happened toward the end of the relationship where the other girls were leaving and it was just me, and he started to get really verbally abusive toward me…” Madison said.