The Triangle

When control isn’t loud—it’s strategic.

This essay reflects my personal experience and interpretation of events as I lived them. It is not intended to serve as a legal accusation or psychological diagnosis but as a reflection on patterns I have come to understand through experience and study. I’ve spent two years quietly processing what happened before ever speaking about it publicly. What follows is the result of that long, careful reflection.

“Control doesn’t always look like a clenched fist.
Sometimes, it sounds like someone else’s voice in your ear.”

In the shadows of every manipulation, there is a triangle. At the center, someone is controlling the truth.

What Is Triangulation?

Triangulation is a psychological manipulation tactic in which one person controls the relationship between two others by limiting direct communication, managing perception, or distorting information. It's a dynamic often found in dysfunctional families, narcissistic relationships, and controlling institutional cultures.

The term originates from family systems theory, especially the work of Murray Bowen, who identified triangulation as a common way to relieve anxiety in emotionally volatile relationships. Instead of addressing conflict directly, a third party is pulled in to stabilize the tension, but this creates imbalance and distortion, not resolution.

In more abusive or manipulative dynamics, triangulation becomes a tool of power and control.

“Triangulation is one of the oldest manipulation tools in the book,” writes Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a clinical psychologist who specializes in narcissistic abuse. “It’s how people create confusion, competition, and chaos—all while staying at the center of attention and control.”

This strategy can take many forms:

• A boss subtly badmouths one employee to another to keep them from trusting each other.

• A parent creates tension between siblings to maintain influence.

• A romantic partner tells one person they’re planning to leave their spouse, while telling the spouse the affair was a misunderstanding or one-sided, ensuring that both remain emotionally hooked, confused, and unlikely to speak to each other directly.

In narcissistic relationships, triangulation often appears as splitting: one person is idealized while another is devalued. It’s not just about lying—it’s about making sure no one talks to each other long enough to compare notes.

Why does it work so well? Because it appeals to emotion, identity, and fear. The triangulator controls not just information, but access. They become the filter through which everyone else must see the situation—and that filter is always distorted in their favor.

“The triangulator sets the stage in which all roads of communication must go through them,” writes Dr. George Simon, author of In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People. “In this way, they orchestrate misunderstanding and reinforce dependence.”

In institutions, especially religious or hierarchical ones, triangulation is often disguised as confidentiality, spiritual guidance, or “protecting reputations.” It thrives in environments where appearances matter more than accountability.

How Triangulation Hid in Plain Sight

I didn’t have the word triangulation when I was living inside it. I only knew I was being drawn in, then discarded when the truth became inconvenient.

For six months, I was involved in an affair with Erik Herrmann, a former professor at Concordia Seminary and former pastor on the LCMS pastoral roster. During that time, he shared a particular view of his marriage that made it seem practical and emotionally distant. He described his wife as someone who “did everything for the family,” whose love language was acts of service, and who would stay content as long as he did the dishes and kept up appearances. He said she didn’t ask many questions about his daily whereabouts. He had also disconnected his Apple AirTag and stopped sharing his location with her.

He told me that if it weren’t for his children, especially his youngest, “the dream” would be to pursue me until I said “yes.” At one point, he said he wanted to stay with her because they were in the middle of remodeling a room in their home. Another time, he said she had saved his life during a difficult period years ago, and that he felt he owed her for that. He also mentioned other women he had gotten too close to—one at a church in Nevada, another at the seminary—and framed his wife as someone who helped him learn to be cautious around women, as if his emotional entanglements were due to naïveté rather than intention.

Looking back, it felt like a carefully constructed narrative. One that made him sound stuck, misunderstood, self-aware, and noble in his restraint. And I believed him.

When the Story Began to Crack

When the affair came to light, everything changed fast. One hour, Erik was telling me he loved me. He said he would be by soon to pick me up so we could spend the day together at his home. We were planning a day of intimacy, celebration, and time together.

Less than an hour later, my husband confronted him.

And Erik flipped.

The same man who had just told me he loved me immediately threw me under the bus. He told my husband that he never wanted to be with me. That I was needy. That I would “bust his balls” if he had a nice weekend with his family. That he had tried to pull away but felt trapped. He used phrases like “you know how she is,” and “I felt like she needed me,” and “we were just playing house.”

It was a complete reversal—and every word was a lie. His messages, voice, and plans with me from just moments earlier made that clear. He had even purchased condoms that weekend in preparation for our time together. There was no sign that he wrestled with what we were about to do. No visible conflict between what he had just said to me and what he was now saying to my husband. Just a swift and strategic shift into self-preservation.

From that point forward, he treated me like a liability. He severed all contact—but not before offering a final explanation. And that explanation told me everything I needed to know:

“What am I supposed to do? Give up everything for THIS?”

His resignation from the seminary came a month later. But the real story cracked open that day.

That was when I stopped seeing confusion and started seeing strategy.

When the Triangle Tightened

Last week, two years after Erik cut contact, his wife called my husband after seeing some Reddit posts I had written. These posts were about Erik’s resignation from Concordia Seminary and the lack of transparency regarding the misconduct that led to it. In those posts, I raised awareness and called for accountability from the new seminary that had recently hired him, urging them to consider his past actions before placing him in a position of influence again.

In the voicemails she left, Erik’s wife quoted Scripture about liars, said I was involved in a dangerous and libelous Internet campaign, and warned that my salvation was in danger.

It was Erik’s script. She called me a liar—not because she’s seen the full story, but because Erik has worked hard to ensure she never would.

That moment told me something crucial: Erik is still controlling the narrative.

He is highly skilled and practiced when it comes to positioning himself as the misunderstood and righteous victim. And for that role to work, he needs a dangerous enemy. That’s the part I’m being cast in now.

It was also a textbook example of triangulation: Erik had his wife call my husband about me. Two people removed from each other, relaying a message he scripted—so he could pull the strings without ever stepping onstage.

What Truth Requires

Truth doesn’t collapse under scrutiny. Lies do. If Erik’s wife and I were ever in the same room, looking at the same timeline, the same words, and the same evidence, I believe the picture would shift significantly. And I believe Erik knows that.

He’s worked hard to keep that from happening.

He’s framed me as a liar, a danger, and a spiritual threat—not because it’s true, but because that version of the story protects him.

So, what does truth require?

It requires courage. It requires directness. It requires refusing to let someone else define your story for you. It requires breaking the triangle.

When Triangulation Becomes Institutional

What Erik engineered in his marriage—keeping me and his wife apart, controlling what each of us knew, and maintaining two incompatible narratives—is a microcosm of something much larger.

The institutions around him did the same thing.

They quietly held fragments of the truth—privately, selectively, and behind closed doors—while allowing entire communities to believe that he left the seminary for personal reasons, theological disagreements, or burnout. His resignation went unspoken. His new platform, largely unexamined. The harm he caused, effectively hidden.

This is triangulation at the organizational level. And it works for the same reasons it worked at home: silence, separation, and the absence of context.

But at some point, the silence gets too crowded—too many people holding too many pieces, each one hoping no one puts them together.

If Erik’s wife ever wanted to seek the truth for herself, to hold the version she’s been told against the one I lived, I would share the evidence. Not to persuade her, but to allow her to discern the truth for herself.

When I listened to her voicemails, what struck me most was how frozen in time they sounded—like she was still living in the version of events Erik shaped two years ago. I’ve felt compassion for her all along, but in that moment, it deepened. She’s still inside a story he controls. If that’s true, she hasn’t yet been given the full truth or the freedom to choose what to do with it.

The only way to dismantle a triangle is to bring all the points together.

When I finally did that for myself, I found something I had been praying for and working toward from the moment Erik disappeared: healing, closure, and clarity. I’m wildly grateful for all of it!

The truth belongs to everyone who’s been affected by it.