When Power Wears a Heart-Shaped Mask
Why love, survival, and manipulation are more connected than we think
Valentine’s Day hits different this year.
For those of us who work in anti-trafficking spaces, or who carry a history of complex trauma, the release of the Epstein files didn’t reveal anything new. It just confirmed what we’ve always known:
The world’s most powerful prey on the world’s most vulnerable.
What we don’t often talk about is that the language they most often use… is love. It often comes with promises of protection, connection, and belonging.
When people imagine trafficking or abuse, they often picture force. But coercion doesn’t always look like a threat. It tends to look more like an opportunity.
It sounds like:
“I’ll take care of you.”
“No one else understands you or loves you like I do.”
“This is your only shot.”
“You’re part of the family now.”
Whether it’s a romantic partner, a trafficker, a boss, a church, or a government agency: coercion often starts by meeting a need. That’s why it works so well.
Most survivors have a history of unmet needs: safety (after a childhood of instability), belonging (after years of rejection), opportunity (after being told you’d never have one) and most of all Love (after a lifetime of earning it).
Unmet Needs Are Not Weakness. But They Are Vulnerabilities.
Exploiters don’t need to invent your longings.
They just need to recognize them and offer the illusion of meeting them.
According to Oxford Academic, grooming is defined as the targeting of individuals in a systematic effort to lead them into relationships in which they are vulnerable to exploitation. Some describe it as the slow distortion of care into control. We often see it in trafficking cases and in domestic violence, where survivors return not because they “like it,” but because leaving means losing housing, safety, identity, or community. (It takes an average of 7–14 attempts to leave an abusive relationship. And more often than not: survivors carry the burden of responsibility.)
We see coercive strategies within American systems, from child welfare (a practice originally designed to whitewash indigenous families and make brown people more compliant). It's reflected in our criminal justice system (with its origins in slave patrols and the ways it contributes to reduced corporate labor cost). We see it in ICE raids and policy violence that separate families, claiming to “rescue” children and "remove criminals" while driving thousands of brown bodies and families deeper into the grips of exploitation, through forced invisibility. We see it in influencer marketing, multi-level marketing “opportunities,” and online relationships that promise empowerment but monetize desperation.
And we see it in the Valentine’s Day machine:
A holiday that tells us that love is something to earn and that the more you received the more worthy you become. With gifts, performance and silence.
Love, But Make It Capitalist
February sells a story:
That you are lovable only if someone chooses you. And if no one does? You must not be enough yet.
So we perform. We buy. We chase. We conform. All in the name of connection.
But what many people are chasing isn’t romance.
It’s co- regulation and emotional relief.
And capitalism knows that.
So it builds industries on our longing.
Who Gets Targeted?
Those with fewer resources and relational wounds.
Those looking for love, safety, or belonging.
Exploitation doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
It follows the fault lines created by inequality, and then reinforces them.
That’s why the same communities are targeted again and again:
That’s why the same communities are targeted again and again:
Black and Brown Communities
LGBTQ+ people
Immigrants and undocumented individuals
Adults with cognitive or developmental differences
Youth (who are still mentally developing) navigating identity, autonomy, and incomplete brain development
Children in child welfare and those with early attachment wounds
Survivors of abuse, poverty, or chronic instability.
They’re not vulnerable because they're naive or broken.
They’re vulnerable because the systems meant to protect them were never built for their survival.
If This Season Feels Heavy
If you’ve ever fallen for someone who promised safety,
Stayed with someone who called control “love,”
Or found yourself longing for a connection that costs you your freedom…
You’re not alone.
You’re not broken.
And you’re not to blame.
You were looking for something real.
Someone else weaponized it.
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Gentle Questions for This Month
Instead of asking, “Why did I stay?”
Try asking:
“What need was I hoping they’d meet?”
“What did they offer me that I didn’t have access to anywhere else?”
“What parts of myself did I have to give up to stay connected to them?”
“Whose definition of love am I still trying to live up to?”
Works Cited
Oregon Health & Science University. (n.d.). Domestic violence is more common than you might think. https://www.ohsu.edu/womens-health/domestic-violence-more-common-you-might-think
Author(s) unknown. (n.d.). Indigenous women's resistance of colonial policies. PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9251744/
Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. (n.d.). Racialized surveillance and worker control in Amazon. https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Militarization_Employment_Relations_Report.pdf
