There Is No Grooming and Abusers Don't Exist

What the early stages of abuse reveal about what makes us most human. Part two on sexual abuse.

While walking out of our local grocery store awhile back, I ran into a neighbor. I gave him the customary wave and head tip, but it was clear he wanted to talk. I pulled my cart over and we chatted awhile, but I kept wondering if he had something else he wanted to talk about. “Hey, I just got all my moose meat back from my hunt this fall. Ever had a moose steak? You’ve gotta come try one.” He sweetened the deal (back before I gave up alcohol) by offering me some rare fandangled beer. I thought how nice it felt to be pursued. Who doesn’t want friends as neighbors?

Of course I said yes.

A few days later, as I made my way across the street, I could already smell the steaks going. He welcomed me into his home with music playing, his family gone, and a whole spread of food. We popped our beers and caught up on his deck while he manned the grill. I heard the story of his moose kill—a rare tag here in Colorado. And conversation flowed into life and work while we devoured his wild game.

Moose meat is delicious by the way. And about the time we both leaned back with full bellies, he piped up. “Did you hear there’s supposed to be another housing market collapse?” Hm, I thought, I had not heard that. He continued. “Yeah, they say it’s supposed to trigger a real bad recession. Scary Stuff.” A wave of fear washed over me. This is turning ominous, I thought. Which is when he said, “Man, I’m so glad I have my side business to keep my income stable.”

And suddenly the whole scene spun on its head. I realized I’d been lured into a set up. This was a multi level marketing sign-up meeting. My gut dropped. I chugged the rest of my beer, thanked him for the meat, and within mere minutes, I was out the door.

I walked back feeling gross and slimed. What had appeared as a genuine offer of friendship turned into a sales pitch. He had been plotting it the whole time. I felt like the biggest fool. Am I that needy for friendship that I fell for his trap?

What Actually is Grooming?

This whole experience played out for me in a snapshot way what grooming is like for an abuse victim. Grooming is what we call the first stage of abuse. No, my neighbor was not abusing me but he did have financial gain in mind at my expense and its what drove his pursuit of me. And he worked the the craft of manipulation to do it.

This early stage of sexual abuse is madness for one big reason: Grooming mimics care. Grooming is indistinguishable from real care. Grooming in fact is care. It’s not just a mind game. There is no special technique called grooming. The only difference is the heart behind the care—the plotted selfishness instead of selfless love. But that heart is almost totally hidden at this stage.

Victims of abuse often feel that their abuser really saw them at first and read their needs—sometimes better than anyone else in their lives. They noticed that shy insecurity or recognized that lonely downcast quiet or saw that father hunger. And feeling seen is exactly what being loved feels like to us—to be noticed, appreciated, comforted, celebrated, heard. That attention alone is caring.

The second early step of abuse is equally crazy making: What begins as attention and empathy moves to an offer of help. The person abusing offers themselves not simply as a listening ear now, but as the source of the solution. They pitch themselves as the hero, the rescuer, the educator, the provider. They do not simply listen to the story anymore. They insert themselves into the story as a rescuer. They seek to create a special relationship in which the victim depends on them.

So the coach offers himself as the surrogate father figure and spends special time with you. The youth pastor speaks affirming words about your beauty as “the voice of God’s love” in your life. The grandfather offers to pay for your college and be the hero. Attention from that popular classmate rescues your social standing. The boyfriend becomes your alternate home. The mother promises to leave the deadbeat dad and save you from your shared villain. The babysitter becomes your source of fun and information about the world your parents never tell you about.

That special relationship can often be cloaked as our little secret. “Let’s keep this just between you and me.” Since it’s a special favor, it makes one feel indebted and abundantly grateful. We will have more on this later.

I cannot overstate how much this pulls on the very thing we were created for.

We all need love and crave love. We all want to feel special to someone, to have people who are heroes in our lives. We need this. And here is the not-so-wild part: there are people who offer these things from a good heart and genuinely give us this without any underlying plan to use us. They truly just want to give love. I have known mentors and family and therapists and pastors and professors and friends who did this in genuine love for me. And it changed my life! But I have also known the twist of harm too. And the only difference is what was held secretly in their heart.

My neighbor read my loneliness so well (empathy) and he offered friendship in it (rescue). Can you see how to that point he is no different from simply being a caring person? I took him up on it. He never acted on his hidden plot because I called his bluff. To be fair, he showed his cards really fast. And like most Americans, this was far from my first rodeo with an MLM pitch. So thank God I could walk before I was too deep in the rabbit hole.

But walking across that street, I still felt like a fool. And this was only about an offer of friendship turned into a silly pyramid scheme. Now imagine a child, with little familiarity or training or adult awareness around manipulation, in the sights of a person abusing, where the stakes are wildly higher because it’s sexual abuse. That trauma can haunt the lives of victims in far deeper ways and for much longer than just a walk back home.

Are You a Fool?

Eventually a victim finds out there is a deeply hidden ulterior motive behind the care. One day the care vaporizes before their eyes and the hidden agenda to abuse gets revealed. This is pure betrayal. But that may not feel obvious at first. Most victims describe feeling shock and confusion and a seasick disorientation. It’s hard to know what is even happening. Its madness. But even without words yet to name it, their bodies know a truth that something shifted in a deep and painful way.

This is so important to recognize because very quickly the crazy-making disorientation congeals into a belief that you are crazy. You got it wrong or missed the clues or maybe even invited it. Something is wrong with you and your radar. You are the problem. Because how else could you fall for it? How could you not recognize an abuser?

And here’s the answer I believe you must give yourself: There are no abusers. Only humans. You risked on a fellow human and he or she turned on you. Before you rage quit this article and call me a fool, let me explain because it’s the only way we find freedom from shame.

So What is an Abuser?

Naming someone an abuser can be a very helpful way to tell your story and label their role in your harm. As a character in certain plots, they absolutely exist. But despite how grotesque some people act in a story, an abuser is not some genetic mutation or a distinct breed of human. God made only one form of people—those that bear his image, primarily express in love. Some invest their glory to learn the art of loving well. “Abusers” are simply humans who use their God-given glory to learn the craft of evil.

CS Lewis told us, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal…immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” But I’ve yet to see someone sprout horns or angel wings. People just look like people—the good, the bad, the ugly. I feel this every time I see a police mugshot after a horrible crime. They just look like ordinary people. It’s in the heart we become more or less given over to evil, more or less surrendered to God.

Why in the world does this matter? Because by categorizing abusive people into a separate sub-breed of humans, we subtly blame victims for not spotting them.

Again, shame and contempt pounce on victims almost instantly after abuse, finding anyway to blame them for the whole deal. And a big one is: How did you not see it? How could you fall for it? How did you ever let yourself trust an abuser? We think abuse plays out like “Little Red Riding Hood,” where victims should spot grandma’s pointy ears and beady eyes and sharp teeth and turn to run. But abusers just look like humans, not wolves. They don’t smell or talk and present any different. Yes, there are red flags and gut checks, which we will talk about. But even those are not fail safe and can be counter-acted by the best of actors.

God spoke the most scandalous sentence at creation when he said the “very good” (Genesis 1:31) Garden of Eden had something “not good” (Genesis 2:18). He was naming Adam’s human loneliness and in kind a fundamental human instinct wired in us all: to need and trust people. In your deepest and truest and most glorious human self you were made to be open to and risk on and depend on and live in relationship with other humans. You were created to trust and crave love. And even more, you were created to feel special and long for heroes in your life. Those are not faults inside you.

Trust is your most fundamental and glorious instinct. Your first nature.

Never let that be taken from you. Never let an expert or anyone in your life convince you that “you fell for abuse.” Nope. You risked on a human. You followed your heart in your original glorious instinct. You trusted a human. And that person betrayed you. You cannot live your life believing you missed your abusers sharp teeth and pointy ears peaking out behind a grandmother’s bonnet. The sin of abuse is squarely on that person who betrayed your trust and turned their own glory to shame. Shame on them, not you.

Gut Training Second

There is a fine line here. Obviously, I am writing an article that describers common tactics of people who abuse. And I do that to educate you and help you learn to spot these red flags. But this is not my main goal. Because if you believe you can get so educated that you’ll never fall prey to abuse, you risk harming yourself. You risk locking yourself in a hypervigilant state and override your original first nature to risk and trust. Education is good but it’s second nature stuff. And it is not fail safe. And then what?

Maybe the most agonizing part of life is this: We all must accept a world in which love is uncertain. And so we must bless our risk to trust no matter the outcome. Sure, the outcome may compel us to take action to create safety for ourselves and others. But beware of the shame that follows. Everything in your defense system as a victim will want to accept that you could have stopped it. That you did something wrong.

Educating your gut must never, ever, ever be a replacement for the kindness you need for trusting in the first place. In fact, if you do not learn to bless your courage to trust, you keep yourself stuck in self hatred, which only sets you up to be manipulated again. Our pain needs care and curiosity not correction and critique. And the more we fight that care, the more we reject your own humanness. You trusted. And someone broke your trust to harm you. And I am actually inviting you to love that you trusted. It is your bravery. You risked outside of Eden. Well done!

Seeing Humans

I know in making the example of my neighbor I’ve risked making too much of him. Bless him. I see the human in him now. I am sure he learned his tactics from his multi level marketing organization and got five stars for his performance. And I’m not the first to acknowledge that MLM businesses function in cultish ways, often abusing the people like my neighbor the most. I hope it doesn’t cost him more of his humanness. He certainly gave me a chance to bless the friend-loving hungry human heart of my own.

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