Manipulative Male Coach
I had an unexpected guest on Threads this week, a relationship coach! I didn’t immediately recognize him as a coach, but could tell he was very familiar with abusive tactics. I posted, “Being single means I never have to have sex if I don’t want to.” A lot of people responded and it was nice to see mostly healthy people calling out the issue with that phrase. But there were a handful of men activated by it and responding defensively. David was one of them.
He starts with the popular “you chose him” deflection. It’s meant to draw the conversation away from what’s actually happening. As quickly as possible, men will shield themselves from the implications of rape. In that one phrase he’s attempting to reverse it onto me as my choice of partner. As long as he stays focused on me, he never has to acknowledge the man in this scenario, and by proxy, himself.
“Who you allowed to pressure you” is something he wants to bring attention to. He wants to be sure any pressure his own wife feels is actually her “allowing” him to pressure her. Men like this deflect by placing blame on those who allow the behavior. Distracting from the behavior itself, they can direct your attention elsewhere. It’s a brilliant move. He is never responsible for anything because there is always someone who “let” him or “made” him do it.
“He had his wounds. You have yours.”
Here he begins to diagnose with a crafty balance, putting me and the abusive husband on the same plane. We are the same, equal. If my husband is abusive, then I am too. It’s important to him that we not be separated. That divide will begin to unravel the curtain he’s trying to hold between him and the truth of the situation.
“A healing feminine woman…”
Now he describes something he thinks I want and have not yet. I get the sense he’s done this a lot. The words come out effortlessly and I can feel the ease. He’s not frantic like other men are; his words are calculated, habitual. He’s on autopilot, not noticing this is not something that applies to me. He’s treating me like the women in his comments who push back against his content.
He describes “her healing masculine man” again, as an ideal, something he thinks I long for. Maybe he’s been watching witchtok. I can tell he hasn’t seen me before because he would know this isn’t something I desire. Although I would always love to see men heal, I have no desire to heal them myself, nor own one. He is not “her healing masculine man”, he is his own healing masculine man. His attractiveness is in owning himself—and his desire for me to own myself. I am mine and he is his. This is where my heart is, and why it’s so elusive to David. I’m a moving target for him.
“Stop concerning yourself with…”
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, says the relationship coach. Sweep the abuse under a rug and look at yourself. He might not know this, but looking inward is the most dangerous thing for a victim of abuse to do before she’s healed. Going inward is something she’s always doing, and it’s what’s keeping her bound to abuse. Everything is always her fault, her responsibility to fix. A victim of psychological abuse often lives in a dissociative state. She’s going through the motions to survive one day to the next. Maybe he’s does know this. Maybe.
For good measure, he repeats the idea that I am at fault for choosing him, just in case I missed it the first time. This point is important to him.
“No one holds another individual accountable…”
Now he’s on a bit of a tangent, like a script he has for conversations like this. He has likely said this to several other women, maybe a few before me today. But I have said nothing of wanting retribution, apology, or compensation. He’s arguing with a ghost—imaginary women he’s fighting with online because he can’t have this fight with his wife. He has honed his words, he’s perfecting his script. He’s feigning concern for my healing journey, thinks I’m holding onto the past. He’s projecting a bit too, because he’s not the type to use trauma to help others. He’s the type to sweep it under a rug and think only of himself.
I don’t spend time defending my position but I will clarify things for women reading the comments. This response to him is mostly for them.
“Policing others actions to warn others…”
The hunter sees me as a fellow hunter. But I am a gatherer. I’m not out to hurt men, I’m gathering women to mobilize them on their own behalf. This threatens a hunter because it’s easier to prey on lone women. It’s more difficult to trap woman with community. Women make better targets when we’re not all on the same page.
The hunter wants me to stop talking to other women about all this and stay separate. He wants me to focus on my healing so I can move forward (and away from the content that activated him today). He repeats the imaginary goal of attracting a “healthy masculine man”—it’s what he thinks women want.
“The wounds you’re carrying…”
Years ago when I started TikTok, I had men in my comments try this with me. It’s manipulation dressed up as care. Even as foggy headed as I was back then, I felt the slime of it. Intuitively I understood what they were doing and I rebuked it. I didn’t know why it felt wrong in the moment, but it was and I knew it.
What I’ve learned about men since has helped me see it more clearly. When a man is being genuine with me, he’s not pushing advice onto me because he knows I’ve got it. He’s not trying to change my mind about anything, he’s inquiring about my mind. He doesn’t tell me what I should do, he asks me what I’d like to do. A man who values a woman is not trying to lead her, he’s supporting her in leading herself. ‘
A manipulative man feigns concern to shift the conversation away from his discomfort. You can learn a lot about a man from what he doesn’t want to talk about.
“I’m healed. I’m good.”
I decided to call attention to the gaslighting to see what he’d do with it. I intentionally tell him I’m healed because I know he’ll push back on that. It’s important to his narrative that I be wounded, so I offer him a worm. It’s true we’re always healing—my brand is Always Mending. But it’s also true that we plateau healing a lot of things along the way. We will still have little triggers come up and heal those, but the big stuff eventually gets taken care of. That’s what I call healed. It’s only for you to know, and for no one else to tell you when you have healed.
“No one is healed.”
He takes a bite. Introducing childhood trauma, he wants to direct me even farther away from marriage. This is not a surprise. The idea of “past trauma” is juicy to abusive men. They love the idea that something else happened to you before. It absolves them of any responsibility for current trauma. Since nearly every woman has been traumatized by a man, every man has the tool of “past trauma” available to him. On some level he understands he is the one traumatizing someone. But if he can point to some bogeyman from your past, he never has to look at himself.
“Gaslighting is…”
Mansplaining is expected. But he is gaslighting here. If I’m being charitable, I can say he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. Maybe he really does perceive a wound in me. Still, it’s not wounding behind my social media post. I believe he is in fact trying to make me believe an untruth about myself. It’s very important to him that I believe I’m acting from a wounded place because it discredits anything I say. Only healed people are valid. But no one is healed. He contradicts himself.
So let’s go back to the original conversation and put his comment into context.
“Being single means I never have to have sex if I don’t want to.”
This is the message he objected so heavily to and what he felt so compelled to push back onto me. Why? The obvious implication in this post is that if I am not single, I am not free to refrain from sex when I don’t want to. This is how relationships are. Relationships sometimes involve unwanted sex. Rape is par for the course.
Women generally understand they will have to give in to sex they don’t want if they’re in a relationship. That’s what people in relationships do for each other. Men like David benefit from this, and it’s threatening to call it rape. This defensiveness is what drives their responses to me. David has simply had more practice with it than most men.
A lot of men pushed back on that post, it wasn’t just David. But there were a few men who got it. There was a gamer named Oscar and a physicist named Peter who both said it should be the case in a relationship as well.
Marcus expressed full agreement. He gets shit for not always wanting sex the way men are expected to. This is what makes that expectation harmful to men too. Many men feel socially obligated to sex because society says they’re not a “real man” if they decline it.
Aseem, a stand-up comedian asked if we’re in the Middle Ages. And Scott called for a matriarchy.
The world is changing. Women and men are waking up to these things. Men like David are going to end up left behind if they keep trying to push the old world on us. I didn’t try to teach David anything or try to convince him of my position. The way he spoke to me is the same way abusive men have spoken to me for years. This is how they operate. There is no getting through to them. The only thing we can do with them is gray rocking.
If you’re not familiar, this is essentially ignoring a manipulative person. It’s easy enough with an internet stranger, but with a partner it’s more difficult. The idea is to not feed them anything. Don’t answer questions or ask any of them. Don’t engage unless it’s absolutely necessary for parenting or survival. And when you must engage, keep it to the bare minimum. If someone is trying to manipulate your thinking, never let them know what you’re thinking. Move quietly, calmly, and stay grounded in what you know is true. You have a right to decline sex anytime for any reason—even if you’re in a relationship. Any message telling you otherwise is coercive.
