When the Fox Enters the Henhouse: On Emotional Predators in Empath’s Clothing
How men weaponise emotional literacy, obscure intent, and quietly devastate the women they orbit
I. Introduction: The Predator Behind the Performance
Many an article has been written documenting the archetype of the Softboy. Most of us have been unfortunate enough to know one or hear secondhand accounts of someone who’s had dealings with one. Myself? Took for granted the near blissful ignorance of being in the second camp before one of these loathsome specimens ended up worming his way into my Instagram DMs.
But this article’s not about that story.
It’s not about an individual man at all. Rather, it’s a dissection, a cultural autopsy, a psychological profile, if you will. By the end of this article, I hope you will come away with an in-depth understanding of the Softboy: his patterns of behaviour, his modus operandi, his weapons of psychological warfare.
The aim is simple in its altruism—I seek to arm the next woman with the necessary toolkit to outmanoeuvre his covert attacks.
So without further delay, let’s begin.
II. The Softboy Archetype: A New Era of Dangerous Men
To properly be able to dissect the Softboy we must first be able to identify him.
Here are a few observable tenets that indicate you may be dealing with one in your space:
Performative left-leaning politics
The Softboy is well-read on matters such as structural oppression, privilege, and social justice… just enough to present as an ally while being evasive about how he himself fits into this hierarchy. If he spends a lot of time critiquing other groups such as men, white people, or the wealthy, without ever turning that introspection inward (or worse yet, weaponises his marginalisation for his own advantage), you’re probably dealing with a Softboy.
Emotionally literate, but never emotionally accountable
The Softboy prides himself on being sensitive and in tune with his emotions, unlike other men. He’s dealt with his shit in therapy, he’s “interrogated his toxic masculinity”, he thinks other men who posture too much are embarrassing and cringe. Don’t ever come to him with a grievance about his own behaviour, however, because then the claws come out—gaslighting, deflection, sexist microaggressions:
“You’re just emotional/aggressive/hysterical/trying to start a fight!”
Intellectual superiority complex
The Softboy will often read… a lot. What he cannot attain in physical dominance he will overcompensate for in the cerebral arena. He likes to think of himself as the smartest man in the room and will often be drawn to women who match his level of intellect—until they surpass it. Then what starts as appreciation quickly curdles into resentment, negging, undermining, covert sabotage. This turn can be insidious and emotionally confusing if your relationship blossomed out of shared intellectual interests. You might find yourself wondering when your collaboration turned into a competition.
But the Softboy never wanted an equal, he wanted an admirer.
Words as weaponry
The Softboy has enough self-awareness to distinguish himself from the violence of an overt misogynist. He sees himself as the flattering alternative to the abusive bad boy who subjugates women and uses them sexually. Not because he doesn’t have the same intentions, but because he coats it in softness. He will never raise a hand to you but he will document your weaknesses, exploit your traumas, gaslight you out of your misgivings, and defame your reputation if you try to escape him.
He wounds with ambiguity, not with fists—always giving enough plausible deniability for his intentions to escape guilt, always puppeteering the strings to make you feel in control while he exploits you.
Some popular phrases include: “I was just joking,” “You imagined that,” “I’m just like this with everyone.”
Targeted profiling and “harem” dynamics
The Softboy will often curate a selection of women around him—a non-sexualised “harem” of sorts with similar interpersonal dynamics. These women will act as his enforcers: keeping his secrets, mopping up his reputation, and participating (knowingly or unknowingly) in his victimisation of women through triangulation, ostracism, and quiet smear campaigns. They will probably be emotionally vulnerable, socially isolated, marginalised, or have a history of abuse and mental health struggles. This allows him to engage in heavily imbalanced dynamics, exploiting their need to overfunction, overidentify, and overinvest to attain male favour.
He will also have a notable type he gravitates towards—women who are articulate, empathetic, trauma-aware and unusually perceptive. But it’s not for compatibility, it’s for utility. These women lay down the framework for him to build his well-adjusted persona. They boost his reputational standing among other women, lend credibility to his voice in group chats or social spaces, and buff his illusion as someone who’s done the inner work.
Most disturbingly of all? He profiles them. He seeks out weak points for entry—trauma, self-doubt, recent heartbreak—and uses that to push his way in so that he can parasitise their traits to reinvent himself.
Submission as a trojan horse
A common variant of the Softboy—particularly the ones who orbit around traumatised women—is the one who performs submissiveness. He encourages female strength and power, champions fitness, praises professional and intellectual accomplishments, and positions himself as the rare man who is unthreatened by it.
Unlike those men.
He seems happy to take on a subservient role—leaning into passivity, playing up his awkwardness or ignorance, and marketing himself as the “non-threatening” alternative. But this isn’t authentic—it’s strategic. He knows that subservience makes him seem safe, especially to women who’ve been hurt by overt aggression. What looks like deference is actually a disguise to get you to lower your guard. And once he’s in? He manipulates from below. Through guilt, emotional withholding, and weaponised helplessness.
He doesn’t dominate you. He erodes you.
This “submissive alpha in disguise” trick is especially seductive for intelligent, ambitious, overachieving women—it makes us feel seen, like we might have discovered an exception to male domination. But really, it’s just the same playbook in cursive script.
Now that we’ve documented the genus, let’s dive into his hunting methods.
III. The Lie of Platonic Affection: How They Keep You Hooked
The Softboy respects women—or so he thinks. He’s not a playboy looking to run through as many women as he can, using and discarding them for his wanton lust. He’s a romantic. He believes in long, drawn-out, slow burn connections that blossom from friendship, emotional depth, and mutual growth.
Or, at least, that’s the flattering lie he tells himself.
The truth is murkier: envy disguised as virtue. He denigrates the sexual immorality of other men not because he disapproves, but because he knows it will not work for him. He lacks the confidence to be direct with what he wants and the vulnerability to admit he might not get it.
When a predator cannot succeed through open pursuit, he will resort to stealth—friendship, emotional breadcrumbing, playful flirtation and vague compliments become his way of slow-dripping intimacy to ensure access. Without accountability.
The trick is always maintaining plausible deniability.
He wants to say, “I never did anything inappropriate.”
Even if his behaviour was laced with suggestion, tension, and manipulation. He starts by baiting you emotionally and sexually just enough to make you feel emboldened to take the risk.
To initiate.
To escalate.
Then he gets to play passive, misunderstood, and entirely blameless if the interaction goes south. This is how he tests boundaries. Not through forcing his way in—but by pressing lightly, seeing what gives, and never owning the press.
Proximity is his sword and humour is his shield.
In the initial stages of the relationship, he will lovebomb you with hyper-responsiveness, false flattery, and social mirroring—all to create a sense of safety and investment on your side. Once he feels you’re sufficiently hooked, he turns up the temperature.
Then the sexual innuendo begins.
The suggestive compliments.
All in good humour, of course, so that if you respond negatively he has an escape route:
“I didn’t mean it like that!”
But if you respond positively? He logs it as permission to take it a step further next time.
Physically, he might start with ambiguous intimacy:
finger-brushing,
an arm around the waist
a hand on the shoulder—
It’s low-risk, high-reward. If you respond with warmth or reciprocation, he’d know you were open to closeness. If you flinched, he’d pretend it was accidental. That ambiguity is the point—he’s not clueless, he’s calculating.
He will ensure that the relationship you have is never clearly defined. If you probe him for clarity he will deflect with hollow platitudes:
“We’re just friends messing around.”
“I don’t see you that way.”
“I wasn’t being serious.”
The moment you try to connect with him emotionally?
He shuts down.
He withdraws.
He shifts the subject.
And the whiplash will leave you reeling.
If you start to pull away, he will reel you back in—not by offering the emotional nourishment he deliberately withheld, but by breadcrumbing you just enough to trick your brain back into famine mode. He will feed you scraps and make you think it’s a feast.
This cycle will continue on repeat for months, weeks, years.
What’s insidious about it is he keeps his intentions unclear. Don’t assume because he never extracts sexual favours from you that he is not using you—attention, validation, ego flattery, emotional labour, a sounding board.
The uses men have for women run into the multitudes.
The only response to this kind of parasite is to cut off his access.
IV. False Empathy: Emotional Literacy as Camouflage
We’ve now mapped out the patterns of behaviour, so let’s move onto the next point—his primary prey.
Because the Softboy’s method relies primarily on tactics of emotional manipulation, it makes logical sense that he would target women who are already weakened and vulnerable in some form.
His meal of choice will likely hold most or all of these primary traits:
Ethnically ambiguous or marginalised
Which often comes with a lifetime of navigating coded disrespect and internalised conflict—making you more vulnerable to praise, flattery, or being “seen” by someone who presents as enlightened or subversive.
That is not to say that white women will not be targeted, but that racially marginalised women make more attractive prospects to predators due to our social abjection. This is especially the case for Black women.
Neurodivergent and/or mentally ill
These women will be isolated, misunderstood, and seeking companionship or community. Their common struggle with reading social cues will also make them more susceptible to manipulation and quicker to trust, especially if they’ve been starved of male attention.
The tragedy is that even neurodivergent/mentally ill men will weaponise this vulnerability, using their familiarity with our conditions for exploitative ends.
Emotionally attuned
He needs someone primed for emotional labour, who will see his emotional ineptitude as a project or a case study instead of a nuisance, who can articulate their needs to him, and to introduce the emotional language he will add to his repertoire to impress other women.
Intellectually rich, creatively gifted or career-aspiring
Because it allows him to cosplay depth by association. He will bathe in the light your brilliance casts—soaking it up through osmosis. He uses smart women to accessorise his persona and to pilfer ideas, concepts, and insights from to improve his social capital.
These women become muses he can also mine.
Trauma survivors
Because they’ve already been primed to expect male mistreatment, because there’s a split second in which he can insert himself as a saviour figure, and because he banks on your tendency to empathise first and doubt yourself later.
Public-facing yet privately insecure
Women who appear charismatic, witty, well-loved, or socially respected—but who are quietly yearning for true emotional reciprocity. He sees this dissonance and exploits it, offering emotional validation in private while reaping clout for the association in public.
Boundary-strugglers with a strong moral compass
Women with an investment in fairness and well-measured judgements, who are slow to cut people off and give others the benefit of the doubt. He can disrespect you incrementally, knowing you’ll try to “understand his perspective” or “see the good in him” before walking.
“Strong, independent women”
He loves women who’ve carried emotional weight in past relationships—because he knows you’ll do it again. He’ll weaponise his emotional negligence as social incompetence and expect you to overperform to make up for his lack.
He gravitates towards these traits not only because they signal vulnerability, but because they signal value. He markets himself as gentle, unassuming and “not like other men” to lower defenses and extract valuable data. He will absorb your vocabulary, your emotional intelligence, and your insights, using you as a test audience to rehearse his act—so he can perform better for the next woman. He knows that if he appears harmless, women will hesitate to call him dangerous.
And the worst part?
The moment you see through the costume, when you stop feeding the ego or questioning the narrative—he discards or discredits you. Not because you’re wrong, but because you’re too right.
V. When Rejection Isn’t Rejection: The Real Danger of the Noncommittal Yes
The Softboy doesn’t say no. He says maybe, forever.
He’s not stupid—he knows, like all men know, that women are highly valuable commodities. If he’s granted access to one, he’s not going to squander the opportunity, whether or not he truly wants her. Instead, he’ll hover. He’ll send her enough mixed signals to keep her guessing. Tying her down through unreciprocated romantic investment is how he ensures he keeps her in his orbit and away from the poaching hands of other men who might claim her.
The scheme with men is the same across all party lines—left to right, Softboy to Fuckboy—to gain the most from women while investing the least.
If he knows he has a coterie of women he can rely on to tend to his needs—emotionally, sexually, creatively, or otherwise—then he can be nice and refreshed when he chases the woman he was truly after. The hypocritical bind of the Softboy is that he can’t be honest with himself, or others, that he was doing this. It hurts his self-image. So he softens it with justifications:
“She was too intense.”
“She got overly attached.”
“She wanted more from me than I can give.”
This way he can offload the culpability of his actions onto the woman for responding in a reasonable, human way to being treated as a placeholder.
Meanwhile, he’s weaving these spineless excuses into a flattering narrative—portraying himself as a victim, a misunderstood romantic hero—while enacting emotional terrorism on an innocent woman whose only crime was caring too deeply. He thinks his intent not to cause harm outweighs the impact.
Because he did harm someone.
And, in doing so, he leaves lasting damage—psychological scars, chronic self-doubt, trust issues. This is particularly dehumanising treatment to Black women, who are often seen as disposable and subaltern in the sexual marketplace, used as emotional labourers while he privately covets someone more “aesthetically desirable” by white-centric standards.
Because it isn’t just time they steal from us, it’s safety. Safety in the knowledge that we could ever be truly loved, desired, valued.
That affection can be sincere.
That interest can be authentic.
That when a man expresses admiration for you the first response isn’t to wonder what he’s after.
Women can be haunted by this treatment, even in the event we do find healthy, loving relationships, because we’re left with the dreaded question: Is this real?
It’s this, above all other offences, that makes the Softboy worthy of contempt.
VI. Projection, Resentment, and the Illusion of Moral Superiority
The unvarnished truth is this: the Softboy has never truly interrogated the entitlement he feels to women, he’s just learned to conceal it. He seeks the same unattainably beautiful trophy as any other man, but recognises he cannot have it. So he performs indifference, repackages his insecurity as aloofness, (or worse yet, philosophical insight)—while simmering with self-hatred that inevitably gets externalised onto women who are unlucky enough to draw close.
Make no mistake: he is not kind to women out of respect. He is kind to them out of resentment. It burns him up inside that he cannot be the violent, hypermasculine oaf that mistreats women and still gets rewarded—with love, with praise, with success. His rage against “toxic masculinity” is not because he cares about the injustice enacted against women and girls worldwide, but because he cannot play the game. He was never even a contender. Because he recognises he can’t win fairly, he cheats—with lies, misdirection, and subterfuge—and calls it emotional intelligence.
All the while claiming moral superiority to other men.
It’s not that he cannot have love, desire, or true connection. It’s that he doesn’t want to accept what’s actually available to him. That would force him to reckon with his inflated self-importance—a kind of ego-death that is lethal to most men. The women within reach have flaws, standards, emotional needs he must attend to. They would demand he show up, be accountable, grow. But the Softboy doesn’t seek equal partnership, he seeks idolisation. He wants to be adored simply for appearing “different from other men” rather than actually being different.
We’re facing a generation of men rife with the mentality that they’ve been swindled out of a life they were never entitled to. Who chase after women who don’t want them and discard women who do—and then, when all else fails, turn around to complain about a “loneliness epidemic.”
It’s not tragic, it’s pathetic.
They claim victimhood to stagnate in mediocrity and listlessness. Rather than put stock in improving themselves in an imperfect society, making the best of what they have, they retreat online to indulge in nihilistic doomer fantasies. Because if the world burns then they don’t have to confront their failures. They can just be a casualty of chaos. They can finally have hope of a level playing field.
VII. What Happens When You Walk Away
Perhaps the most audacious aspect of the Softboy is that once he has his claws in you, he will not want to let go. Even if he doesn’t truly care for you or respect you, he recognises the utility you have to him as a woman. He knows what he stands to lose if he cannot suck you dry to fill the empty void inside himself. Having the initiative to cut him off before he is ready to discard you will trigger his defensiveness.
There are a few ways that women can choose to handle this, followed by his counter-attacks:
Phase 1: Subtle Withdrawal
You might start by trying to fade—longer response times, fewer interactions, declining invitations. This would feel “safer” than confrontation. But he wouldn’t miss it. He’d clock the distance immediately and likely respond with subtle re-insertion: continuous messaging, surveillance, reaching out through mutual friends. If this didn’t work then it would escalate to guilt-tripping (“I miss talking like we used to”), performative vulnerability (“You’re one of the only people who understands me”), or even escalating flattery (“You’re the strongest person I know”).
He won’t lash out yet—he’ll reel you back in.
Phase 2: Emotional Pressure
If you keep pulling back, he’ll switch tactics. Expect:
Sudden trauma dumps (to make you feel obligated),
Imploring, parasocial flattery (“I can’t imagine getting through this year without you”), or
False humility (“I know I’m messed up, but you’re the only one who gets that”).
At this point, if there’s still lingering emotional investment, you’ll feel selfish or cruel for withdrawing. The temporary vulnerability will last as long as it needs to for him to be sure you won’t leave, then he will drop the act. Instantly.
Phase 3: Punitive Turn
If you resist anyway, he might get nasty. Cold. Withholding. Possibly even condescending or sarcastic to punish you emotionally. This is where he turns from “woe is me” to “you were never that important anyway.”
He may:
Talk about you to mutuals, subtly undermining you,
Try to triangulate by bonding with others to provoke jealousy or fear of being replaced,
Weaponise past secrets or emotional disclosures.
Tread carefully here. If you react to him, however justifiable it may be, he will use this to twist the narrative to cast you as the aggressor. Expect to receive a lot of sexist microaggressions:
“You’re emotional/combative/difficult!”
Attempts to bait you into acting out of anger, or for him to badmouth you in the presence of friends and associates.
Phase 4: The Collapse
If you push through all of this and cut him off entirely, one of three things happens:
He goes silent but seethes—stalks your socials, lurks, waits for an opening.
He tries to come back later, rebranded—perhaps with a new apology arc, claiming growth, using another woman as proof that he’s changed.
He will defame you—destroy your reputation among your social circle, get you excommunicated, and ensure you are perceived as unhinged, crazy or malicious.
If it’s the second option, do not buy what he is selling. Any apology he gives is not authentic, only strategic. He is hoping with enough time and distance you will have let go of past ills and hurt feelings, giving him a prime opportunity to worm his way back into your vicinity. Do not engage.
If it’s the third option, he has likely gone nuclear because you have challenged or confronted him on his manipulative tactics. The Softboy is the most dangerous when he recognises he’s lost control of the narrative. He cannot bear to confront losing his reputation as the kind, sensitive man—not only because it messes with his relative position in society compared to other men, but because it threatens his entire self-concept. He needs to demonise you as an alternative to self-soothe his own delusions of innocence. With cases like this, make sure you have your story straight, screenshot everything, and be careful who you speak to and what you reveal.
VIII. Why the Internet Terrifies Them
Part of the Softboy’s intellectual pantomime is a performative hatred of technology and its supposed “social ills”. They have a vested interest in laying the blame of modern cultural rot at its feet— not realising (or admitting) that the internet did not create it. It revealed it. And that? That is what the Softboy fears the most—exposure, transparency, truth.
He doesn’t hate the internet because it “ruined human connection”—he hates it because it tipped the scales. It used to be that men like him could operate in silence, in secrecy. They could be emotionally manipulative, ambiguous, self-pitying little emperors in their enclosed echo chambers and never get called out because women didn’t have the language, the reach, or the tools to name what was happening.
Social media changed the game.
Now you can receive sharp, incisive dissertations on his very archetype at the click of a button—in any format. You can document patterns, share receipts, trace timelines, connect the dots. You don’t have to just “move on” anymore—you can warn the next one.
That’s what makes the internet terrifying to men like the Softboy. It’s not social decay—it’s social accountability. And it moves faster than his ability to lie. He can’t control the narrative forever because now we can post screenshots, check timestamps, and quote his contradictions.
You can tear off the mask he hid behind and archive the carnage.
The internet used to be his playground—where he could roleplay empathy, soak up admiration, and hide behind ironic detachment. Now it’s a mirror, and you’re holding it up to his face saying, “I see you.”
He doesn’t hate the internet.
He hates that it gives you a voice he can’t mute.
IX. Conclusion: You Were Never Broken, Just Seeing Clearly
The poetic irony of the Softboy is that he often ends up sharpening the very weapon that leads to his downfall. He seeks out women who are insightful, perceptive and articulate to dominate and control—because he’s allured by us, while also threatened by us. He dims our gaze because he fears what will happen if we see him too clearly. If we name him. If we outsmart him.
Men know the best way to contain women is to keep us confused, isolated, and silent. So I have decided to defy all three tenets:
I choose awareness over ignorance.
I choose authentic connection over false companionship.
Last of all, I choose to take the knowledge I have attained and pay it forward to the next woman.
If you’re reading this to the end, that’s all I request: take this knowledge, and pay it forward. Make sure it never happens again.
Not to me.
Not to you.
Not to any of us.
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If you’d like to discuss further any of the points I’ve made, feel free to leave a comment!
I’d love to hear your thoughts.