It happened to me. And I thought I was the problem.

*Disclaimer: This is a deeply personal share on my experience with abusive and extractive relationship dynamics, yet it is also an exposé of how these dynamics show up for women everywhere, all the time. If you have experienced this dynamic, my story will likely speak to you. If you haven’t, I hope it will help you understand.

I have noticed a massive awakening happening for the feminine in the collective. A clearing and illumination regarding distortions and abuse, coercive and manipulative dynamics. As we experience Saturn conjunct Neptune at the first degree of Aries, following that Venus retrograde which inspired a rebirth of the feminine force — these revelations are becoming impossible to ignore and must be faced, acknowledged, and seen by the public eye.

In light of recent events involving a major spiritual influencer playing on the wounds of women to siphon energy from them, I want to share my own story with this pattern of manipulation and abuse. My story is different, and yet the extractive, siphoning, and manipulative energy that is playing out in that very public story is exactly the same. 

In these times more than ever, we need to be attuned to the frequency of truth, and also to the frequency of distortion, lies, propaganda, and manipulation. Spiritual teachings and beautiful wisdom are being attacked by dark forces and are being co-opted to suit an agenda of extraction, power and domination over truth and love. 

This is my story…

I had a history of men coming on really strong and then slowly or suddenly distancing themselves after a few months of deep connection. I had an abandonment wound and trust issues to match. I was well aware of my wounds, my fears, my patterns. I was doing the work to clean up my side of the street — healing my anxious attachment, becoming aware of codependency, forgiving the men who had betrayed me, understanding the roots of my distrust in men from past lives, unlearning the ways I had tried to control or feel safe, integrating and healing my own inner masculine, regulating my emotions, making space for my inner child… I was doing the work.

What I wasn’t aware of is that I had a history of being in relationships with manipulative and abusive men. I had no idea the pattern of withdrawal I had experienced was the beginning of an abuse cycle, one I was deeply familiar with, and therefore kept unconsciously repeating.

The cycle goes like this: a man comes in, strong and fast, and seems to meet you in all the places you’ve always longed for. This is especially appealing for women who have abandonment or trust wounds. This man seems to fully choose you and claim you. He understands you in a way you’ve never felt before. You feel safe, known, seen, and loved. Of course, the depth of resonance and the feeling of finally being met makes you believe: “this must be my soulmate”. 

This man will pedestalize you at first. You are a shiny new thing that has caught his attraction and lust. He sees himself in you, and it affirms his illusions of grandeur. If you, someone this magical and wonderful, are choosing HIM — he must be magical and wonderful too. He will get to know you by studying your wounds and insecurities, and you will share them willingly in the name of intimacy. Unbeknownst to you, he is harvesting the information to present himself as a perfect match for your deepest longings and unmet needs.

After some time, you begin to fall from grace in his eyes. The illusion of perfection falters and he is disgusted by the true vulnerability of your insecurities. This is when he begins to withdraw. 

At first you don’t notice. Then you brush it off. But by the time his effort and involvement gets down to 70%… you finally say something. The effort returns to 95%, never 100% again… but then slowly begins to decline once more.

This pattern hooks into attachment and abandonment wounding and causes you to unconsciously chase the highs you experienced in the very beginning. Now he is the one on the pedestal: that perfect love you have always longed for, but now it is slipping away. You think you must be doing something wrong for him to change like this. You chase the momentary high of feeling his full devotion and love that you experienced early on. You have no idea he was playing a part, perfectly mirroring the ways you longed to be seen, admired and adored… because you handed him the script. 

This is how abusive men get their hooks in you. They don’t start out abusive, they start out as your dream man. Periodically they sprinkle in doses of that perfect man again to keep you hooked and chasing. When people ask women “why didn’t you leave?” it’s because of this. The cycle creates an addictive pattern that works with intermittent reinforcement. Your needs are met — only intermittently. You know it is possible to feel that love and safety you had in the beginning, because you FELT it. You believe if you only heal yourself, you’ll get back that love.

I had no idea this was an abusive cycle. I thought I was doing something to scare them away. When my relationship with one man like this began, he asked me one day what my biggest triggers and fears were. I opened up to him in the name of vulnerability, connection and intimacy — after all, I was well aware of my wounds. I told him I was afraid this pattern I had experienced of sudden withdrawal would happen between us. He reassured me that it wouldn’t.

“What’s your greatest fear about us?”

“That you’ll blindside me. That it will all change, and I won’t see it coming.”

Flash forward several months later, and my insecurities had slowly begun to surface… in hindsight, this was in direct correlation to his slow and subtle withdrawal. When I confronted him about his energy shifting towards me a few months in, he sat me down and looked into my eyes, then gently asked —

“Has this ever happened to you before?”

When I admitted it had, he slowly convinced me it was my “pattern” that was causing his abrupt withdrawal. My insecurities were a “turn off” to him. He was willing to be patient with me while I healed myself, but this was something I had a pattern with after all, so it must be my own wounding playing out.

This was just the first time he would use my vulnerabilities against me, subtly twisting reality to make me believe I was the problem. You’re always the problem in an abusive relationship. It’s always your fault. You always have more healing to do, and the relationship triggers your “wounds” more and more over time — because it is unsafe. Not because you are unhealed. 

Somehow every conflict followed this loop. What would begin with me gently inviting a conversation around something that wasn’t working or feeling safe for me, would end with a deep dive into my wounds. He would pull on a thread of truth and spin a story that would have me following him down the rabbit hole, always eager to do my own inner work. Yet over time I noticed that we never came back to HIS behaviour, the one that sparked the conflict in the first place.

He was strategic, intelligent, and good with words. All qualities I find very attractive. He was charming and persuasive, and a little dominant — but not too controlling… at least so I thought. And I was in a perpetual search for the love and devotion I felt from him in the very beginning. Every few months I would get small doses of it, just enough to have me believe it was real. 

The gas-lighting reached a climax when, after my fall from grace in his eyes, he inevitably sought after a younger, shinier, more naive woman to extract from. While I was “insecure” and “causing problems”, she admired and looked up to him — the same way I had at first. It started with her name being dropped more often than I was comfortable with. Then after I returned from a trip, he shared many stories of the time he had spent with her while I was away.

I eventually asked to not speak about her. This was met with teasing about my jealousy, and being told she was more similar to me than different. It’s worth noting that she was almost half his age. There was a moment when he told me he came home early in order to “make it clear to both of us” that I was his partner. This confused me… why would there be any confusion in her mind about that? When I asked him about it he brushed it off, so I let it go. Until I saw something I couldn’t ignore and confronted him. 

The conversation turned into one about my jealousy, wounds, fears and insecurities. Places I needed to heal so I would trust him. In the days following, he punished me for this confrontation by stone-walling me. Then told me what would make it better would be if I “took accountability”. So I did. I owned my wounds and fears, but the punishment continued regardless.

In a final attempt to keep me chasing his admiration, he told me this was all happening because he had stopped admiring me. That I was too obsessed with him and it was a turn off. He said I was expecting him to be the source of my happiness and he couldn’t take it. 

I had just come back from hosting a wildly successful Wild Woman retreat in Costa Rica. I was seeing friends, growing my business, and inspired and lit up by my life outside of the relationship. One night the week prior, I had left his house after he fell asleep at 8pm. I went home, gave myself a massage, an orgasm, watched a movie and ate popcorn happily alone. 

So when he tried to manipulate me into believing I was the problem to be solved, that his withdrawal, stone-walling, and lust after another woman was my fault… it didn’t sit right. 

Something inside me woke up. “You’re wrong” I said. “While that might have been a pattern for me in the past, it’s not what is happening now. I am happy and fulfilled in my own life. This relationship is the one area of my life causing me problems. And if you have stopped admiring me, that is a problem with your perception — not a problem with me. Objectively, I am an admirable woman, and if you can’t see that, it’s not my problem. But I won’t be with someone who doesn’t value, respect, and admire me — both to my face and behind my back.”

Needless to say, in that moment I broke the pattern. I stopped bending, contorting, chasing, and adapting to become an impossible version of perfect. I stopped putting him in charge of my value and worth. I stopped believing that if this man didn’t choose me, didn’t want me, didn’t stay with me — that I was the problem. I stopped believing that if I only fixed myself, he would love me like he did in the beginning. 

Because that “love” from the beginning was never love at all. It was infatuation and idolization. It was him recognizing a bright, shiny light he could extract power from. And the devaluation that followed, the slow exacerbation of my fears and wounds, was how he kept me trapped. How he made me worship him while keeping me small and dependent. 

Men like this exist everywhere. Call them extractive, siphoning, abusive, narcissistic, demonic, controlled by dark forces, possessed by entities, deeply wounded, neglected as children… Whatever you wish to call them, it is important to understand them. To see and know the pattern, right from the beginning. To know what the energy behind this experience feels like in your system. To see it for what it is, and to set fierce boundaries around it at all costs. 

Men like this hate to be exposed. They will manipulate others and tell lies about you to sell their story. They will play the victim. They will say “it wasn’t that bad”, “the harm wasn’t intentional”, and they treated you that way because “they were just hurt”. Many of them will use spiritual lingo and psychological intelligence to weave their lies with truth. They will twist and distort spiritual teachings to fit their selfish agenda. They will call it “freedom”, “evolution”, and “love”. 

But when you know the frequency behind this game — you will not be able to miss it. It feels like a drug. It feels addictive and intoxicating, especially at first. It feels like “fuck it, why not”, and crossing your own boundaries. It feels like it’s filling a hole deep inside you. And then, over time, it feels like exhaustion. Like contorting yourself and gas-lighting yourself to believe in the twisted fairy tale. Like being slowly, quietly drained of your life force and calling it love. Like your wounds just “keep coming up”, even the ones you’ve already healed, always asking you to “face your shadows”… because the relationship is re-traumatizing you. It feels like high highs and low lows. Like a journey to the underworld. It feels like you’re not safe, because you’re not. It’s not your inner child, it’s not your patterns, it’s not your fault. It’s time to wake up, and get the fuck out. 

With so much love,

Hannah