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If you are speaking from personal experience, I'd be curious to know more. Of course, I don't want to pry to the point of encouraging doxxing.
Ha I wish (almost!)
I'm mostly speaking secondhand, years of noticing recurring patterns in real life and fictional relationships that appeared healthy but looking back, really wasn't. Typically, there is some level of mutual initial attraction and maybe even care. But the femme fatale operates on her own internal logic. She's deliberately ambiguous, discloses very little, presses all the right buttons to disarm him, encourages him to do her bidding, and withdraws... but not completely! She enjoys her power in the dynamic. On the other hand, the guy is reorganising everything around her rhythms. Waiting for reply texts and reading meaning into every small gesture and before you know it, he's lost his confidence and initiative around her. She gaslights him at every moment she can, threatens him, constantly reminds him of all the things she's done for him, refuses to acknowledge his qualities unless it is calculated and given precisely when needed to drive in another command, or jab at his intellect. He becomes almost childlike, and that dependency leaves him vulnerable. He begins subconsciously seeking her permission to have an opinion or even think for himself. He might tell himself it's a challenge and not slow poisoning. He pretends he's emotionally detached when really he's over-tolerating. He'll see the door yet feel obligated to choose her over and over again. He refuses to see the trauma building up from the mismatched levels of attachment and when he does, he's reorganised his entire personality so thoroughly that no one (including himself) can recognise him anymore, nor who he used to be.
But because none of the signs are immediately evident to an outsider, they'll simply think she's wearing the pants and he's laidback.
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