The evolution of the predator

The modern predator is either "enlightened" or "socially conscious"—and women are still paying a steeper price for the performance.

The last time I encountered one, I thought we were healing each other...

I was clear about my desire to be monogamous.
I was clear that this wasn’t a preference, but a state of values governed by my lived experience. He agreed.
Yet, polyamory and "the benefits of polygamy" made their way into every conversation we had.

We debated. We exhausted the non-violent communication formula. We excavated the vulnerabilities of my personal history.
I felt we were doing the deep work of two hearts trying to meet.

Then he dropped this statement:
"I need the intimacy of touch with my female friends. I do this with them in public or in private. I would never exclude you. This could even be something we do together."

I pictured what he was describing. Two of us and another woman, folded in on one another somewhere private. Stroking each other "platonically." Above the belt.

I became sick to my stomach.

The ingredients of that scenario set off multiple alarms in my nervous system.
We would be tiptoeing outside of my boundary to be monogamous—a "soft-polyamory," if you will.
It would create an environment of heightened arousal, physical acclimation, and inevitable pressure for another woman.
Double grooming.

My bisexuality, leveraged. Another woman's erotic energy, consumed.

Here is the thing: I’m sure all of it would have been "consensual."
He would have ensured that. He would have secured as many buy-ins as he needed after orchestrating a dynamic that manipulated our choices into his pleasure.
It would have been consensual, and it would have left us feeling uncomfortable with something hard to name afterward.

I realized why our "vulnerable" conversations always felt so one-sided. It wasn't authentic relating. I was being mined for information he could use to negotiate my boundaries.

Now, I don't just mean to share a bad experience I had.
I’m breaking down the anatomy of a "yes" under conditions where the advantage is not mutual.

Whether it happens in an open relationship or a traditional one, the mechanism is the same: the erosion of the spirit through the distortion of sovereignty.

"They consented." "We communicated openly."

Yet either of these things, especially when initiated repeatedly, can be a sophisticated way of wearing someone down—while absolving oneself of the integrity of what they said "yes" to.

My body told me something wasn't right, and I ended things the next day. That is also when he revealed he was already seeing two other women.

Why am I sharing this? Because I'm realizing that where there is a power discrepancy, there is usually a blurring of what that power is doing.

Coercion, grooming, and manipulation all violate consent.

And those are all individual fractals of a reality I find to be universal:

Consent is not enough in a system where the language of "love," "needs," and "freedom" obscures the shadow of extraction.

The modern predator is a shapeshifter. They put self-regulation on a pedestal so we can keep calling it desire.

This is not a person.
It's a construct.
The False God of 'choice'.