Manipulation Is Not True Consent

Seven years later, I see it all with clarity.

The manipulation, the conditioning, the slow unraveling of my sense of self. You see, I was in an open relationship — by my own choice.

We entered into our dynamic with full consent, believing it to be liberating, expansive, and unshackled from conventional constraints. In the beginning, it felt like freedom. It felt like love. It felt like control over my own autonomy.

But then, we had our first child, and the foundation of our relationship shifted. Looking back, I now see that everything up to that point had been about laying the groundwork for weaponization. It wasn’t overt; it wasn’t dramatic. It was slow, subtle, a quiet corrosion of my reality. There were phrases that became mantras — things I can still hear now, ringing in my memory like echoes of a spell I once believed in. Sexual encounters that seemed playful at the time but were, in hindsight, orchestrated to reinforce submission.

I see my part in it.

In my lack of boundaries.

In my naïve, unconditional, and reckless love.

Love that I had convinced myself was strong because it could endure anything. Love that I mistook for depth, when really, it was just self-abandonment.

A few years later, I found myself drowning in trauma I didn’t even recognize as trauma. And I — an educator, a coach, someone who had spent years helping others navigate their pain — couldn’t see my own. I couldn’t recognize my own PTSD, how complex it was, how it was dismantling me from the inside out. Because I had bought into the bullshit of the manipulator.

Now, sitting here, I understand that my experience of feeling like just a body — something to be used, taken, and discarded — wasn’t just from one source. It was reinforced within the container of the open relationship. I became the warm, fun toy that always smiled, always orgasmed perfectly, always performed. I played my part flawlessly, not realizing that each time I did, I was erasing myself. And when my lovers were done with me, I was cast aside. Much like the relationship with this man. When he was done, he broke the toy and threw it away.

I remember those first few weeks after the breakup. I was broken — literally. My body was battered, encased in braces on my leg and arms, unable to do much of anything. My thumbs were the only things that still functioned properly. I was in excruciating pain, physically and emotionally, and my best friend had to tend to my every need. I had no home, no car. He had taken everything, including our children. And now he was telling the world that I had abandoned them.

Even in that state, even after all of that, the roots he had planted were still strong. I remember looking at my friend, a therapist, and saying, “I really messed up. This is my fault. I should have kept my mouth shut.” I remember thinking of ways to convince him to let me come back, to undo whatever I had done wrong, to make him love me again.

My friend shook her head. “No,” she said. “No.”

Thank God she did. Because she was right.

I had been abused with my own consent for years. I just didn’t see it. And coming to terms with the fact that I had consented — willingly, repeatedly — was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to face.

This is why emotional manipulation is so insidious.

It doesn’t look like abuse.

It looks like love.

It disguises itself in compromise, in loyalty, in passion, in devotion. It convinces you that you are making choices when, in reality, you are being led. It teaches you to blame yourself. And when you finally break free, you are left not only with the trauma of what was done to you but with the weight of your own participation in it.

But here’s what I’ve learned: healing is not about blaming yourself for the past. It’s about reclaiming your agency in the present. It’s about forgiving yourself for what you didn’t know, for what you thought was love, for what you endured to survive. It’s about recognizing that consent given under manipulation is not true consent.

And it’s about understanding that walking away — finally, fully — is not just an act of escape but an act of self-resurrection.

Looking back, I can see the patterns so clearly — the gradual erosion of my boundaries, the way love was twisted into something transactional, the subtle conditioning that made me believe I had to earn affection, safety, even my own worth. What I once thought was freedom had become a carefully constructed cage, one I willingly stepped into because I believed it was love.

But love should never be a weapon. It should never be used to control, manipulate, or break someone down. And yet, this is what so many experience — where intimacy becomes leverage, forgiveness is demanded but never given, and connection is stripped of its depth until all that remains is power and control.

This is the reality of emotional manipulation, and it’s time we start calling it what it is.

If this piece resonated with you, if you’ve seen yourself in these words or felt echoes of your own experiences, I invite you to share. Your voice matters. Comment your thoughts, your feelings, or your story — if you feel called to.

And if you have questions or want to dive deeper into trauma healing beyond just talk therapy — into the ways trauma embeds itself in the body, in the tissues, in the very cells we carry — reach out. There are ways to release it, to free yourself not just mentally, but physically, emotionally, and energetically.

You don’t have to navigate this alone. Healing is possible, and you are worthy of it.

As always loving you from here,

Rene Schooler

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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