The chime of my ‘phone alerted me to the arrival of a text. There was nothing unusual in that. Scores arrive daily and this rises to beyond a hundred and more when the glorious seduction has commenced of a fresh, prime target. I looked over with half-interest to my ‘phone and see a name which attracted a greater level of interest. It is from Jane. An ex. One of the many exes. I stopped what I was doing and reached for my ‘phone and opened up the message.

“It would be 2 years today x”

A flame rose inside of me at this sudden provision of fuel. Even better it was unsolicited. Goodness me, would it have been two years? How time flies. The power flowed, generated by this welcome dollop of fuel. Dear Jane, always the one for remembering dates. She sent me a card and a gift to mark 1 month together. She pole-danced for me to commemorate one month since we first had sex (no the pole-dance and the card and gift were on different dates, just in case you were wondering. I am a gentleman after all). She sent a card to remind me that is was three months since our first kiss, a month since I first stayed overnight at her house, six months since we first set eyes on another. I used to call her the Chronicler for her ability to remember the anniversary of certain key moments in our relationship. At first I was suitable impressed by her memory and power of recall but then I realised that she had assistance. On one particular occasion I was having a good look around her house whilst she was out, opening draws, cupboards and so on in order to learn more about this enticing individual who I had seduced and in the process of this trawl I found a diary. At the rear she had a list of key moments in our relationship with the date written next to it. First date, first kiss, first time we had sex, first time pet name was used, first weekend away, first “I love you” and so on. Each milestone, from the trivial to the fundamental had been carefully written in her neat hand-writing (she always wrote with a Mont Blanc fountain pen – something which I liked until I decided to bend the nib one day after she accused me of forgetting her mother’s birthday. I didn’t forget. I deliberately did not remember). Each moment, each occasion had been carefully committed to the rear of this diary and beside it the date inserted as well. I was impressed and as I sat reading it, I felt the fuel of her dedication and admiration pouring over me. She was not there to do it but I knew from reading those neat entries just how much we meant to her, just how important I was and the fuel flowed. I remember sitting on her bed clasping the leather bound diary and realising that Jane was meeting my expectations and that I had such high hopes for her. The reminders and commemorations kept coming. She never forgot anything. Naturally the more traditional anniversaries – birthdays, Christmas and so forth were addressed and not only for me, but close friends, family and even Matrinarc.

Of course this slavish devotion to the recollection of events could not go unused by me. When she fell from grace and her denigration and devaluation began I would always send her a reminder written in black ink (using a superior Mont Blanc fountain pen) on a crisp piece of thick white paper inserted into a stylish small envelope. I would leave these reminders on her pillow, on her car seat, under her windscreen wiper, in her bag, on her laptop and so forth.

–         1 week since I last spoke to you –

–         2 months since our first argument –

–         5 days since I rang you –

–         A month since we last made love –

–         A week since the last silent treatment –

–         Three months since I took you anywhere

I have no idea if the timing was entirely correct with some of them, it was the effects I was after. Sometimes she would telephone me and question why I had done this. If it was during a silent treatment I said nothing but listened, allowing her strained tones to fuel me. Other times I would just stare at her and then snarl an insult, causing her to jump and her fearful look would naturally provide me with further fuel. On other occasions she did not manage to contact me but it did not matter because I knew how she would be responding as I used the very thing she liked to engage as an endearing gesture from her to me in our relationship, against her. We like to take the wonderful and then batter it, rust it, twist it and warp it so it resembles something else entirely and this act of defiling is powerful indeed in its effect.

Soon I accelerated their use at one stage having them delivered through her door on a daily basis.

–         One day since I realised I hate you –

–         Two days since I realised I hate you –

–         Three days since I realised I hate you –

–         Four days since I realised I hate you –

–         Five days since I realised I hate you

–         Six days since I realised I hate you –

–         Seven days since I realised I hate you –

–         Eight days since I realised I hate you –

–         Nine days since I realised I hate you –

–         Ten days since I realised I hate you –

–         I don’t hate you. I love you –

That last note was a highly effective respite hoover which had her call me straight away and I answered straight away and her sobbed relief poured over me with such potency, marvellous fuel that it was. Once again by using the very tool she deployed in our relationship I was able to bend it and her to my will.

Eventually she was cast aside, the new prospect of Andrea having come into my sights and dear Jane was removed, not even afforded the courtesy of being a memory. That is until that text message arrived.

A foolish move on her part to reach out to me in this way but having received the text, I knew that it was inevitable she would have done it and indeed I know that when it is 3 years, 5 years or 10 years she will keep sending these reminders. Her memory had been conditioned this way. Notwithstanding the pain it will invariably cause her she wanted me to know that she remembered still. The addition of a single ‘x’ was the green light which told me that my follow-up hoover (of course there would be one) will succeed and she would respond to it. Dangerous to apply those kisses. She had entered my sphere of influence. I did not want her back, I was busy with Andrea and that seduction, but this reminder told me that there was fuel just waiting to be collected. All I had to decide was how I was going to go about. There was no need to be malign about it, a benign follow-up hoover would work but in what form and for how long? That was what then occupied my mind as once again I remembered dear Jane and her delicious fuel. So good of her to remind me.

The Geyser Empath is an individual who is empathic in nature with the additional tendency to fountain with emotion. All empaths are emotional, it goes with the territory but some empaths are far more emotional than others.

This type of empathic tendency is marked by high energy levels. One might even go so far as to say that shades of hyper activity start to appear with the Geyser Empath. He or she is always on the go, heading here and travelling there, seeking out people to see how they are and to exhibit their significant caring side with plenty of suitable expressions of concern, empathy and understanding. The Geyser Empath is very useful for our kind because of how expressive they are with regard to their emotions. Their responses are exaggerated. This does not mean that they are false, far from it, the exaggeration appears as a heightened response which is very useful for us to witness and then allows us to mimic it.There is no subtlety involved. When the Geyser Empath is happy it is shown as a torrent of joy, their concern is grave and focussed and their hurt is not of a silent tear but the wail and tears of the tortured. Such displays may seem melodramatic to some, but they are not, they are exactly how the Geyser Empath feels.

The Geyser Empath, owing to the high energy levels talks often about how he or she feels but this is not a case of them explaining that because it must be all about them, but rather they will convey those feelings in order to help others by causing them to better understand. When someone talks about being in despair, the Geyser Empath will relate how they know despair only too well and will articulate that feeling in order to demonstrate that they understand how the listener feels.

This person has a tissue thin skin and is highly sensitive. They are very easily hurt and when we lash out against them, they respond with a fountain of emotion. If they are praised, their thanks will gush from them with greater intensity than a Gwyneth Paltrow Oscar acceptance speech. If they are denigrated, the tears will not flow but they will cascade along with that trembling bottom lip and a near histrionic response to the pain caused by wounding words. The Geyser Empath is unable to put on a brave face. Whilst the Carrier Empath is dogged and stoic in the face of adversity, focussing their empathy on resolving the situation in  a practical fashion, the Geyser Empath will dissolve in a bubbling mess of tears. They are completely unable to conceal their emotions, even for a short time. A Carrier Empath can do so because they shift their feelings on to solving a problem. The Geyser Empath does not have that function. They are excellent at tea and sympathy, kind and comforting words flowing, but of little use practically.

Unlike the Magnet Empath, the Geyser Empath is better dealing with intimate and one-on-one situations rather than handling a crowd. The Geyser Empath loves nothing more than finding an individual as their project and wanting to use their biggest asset in order to resolve issues; their utter devotion to love. They are the greatest love devotees of all empaths, they truly believe that with love everything can be solved. Love conquers everything, all you need is love, love will save the day. If you were to ask them just how this happens, they could not answer, but explain that love works in mysterious ways and by being loving, showing love and acting with love in each and everything they do, this will resolve problems, heal hurt and bring happiness to all.

This devotion to love means that the Geyser Empath is big on romance and will readily fall prey to overt exhibitions of passion, love and romance from our kind. Any narcissist which presents as the knight in shining armour will have the Geyser Empath’s attention from the beginning as he or she believes they have found a kindred spirit. The Geyser Empath’s overt displays of emotion make our task of mirroring so much easier. He or she will wear his or her heart on their sleeve and they will suffer repeated heartbreak. Notwithstanding this outcome, the Geyser Empath is undeterred. They will suffer misery and pain from this broken heart and they will then affirm their belief in love and bounce back. No matter how devastated they are following the shattering of their heart, they will piece it back together and will do so with greater speed amongst the empathic types. They may suffer considerable pain and they will exhibit the effect more greatly than other empathic types but they also re-charge with a greater speed as a consequence of their devotion to love. Their belief is unshakeable. No matter how many times they are let down, hurt, cheated on and so forth, they will soon bounce back. They are not naïve but rather have an undimmed and undented belief in the power of love. This capacity for returning to the arena of love so promptly after heartache means that they are ideal candidates for post discard and post escape hoovers as they ‘refuel’ so quickly.

The Geyser Empath is highly sensitive and will be moved to tears regularly be they tears of joy or tears of pain. There will often be a need for a tissue when this person is around. One might be moved to consider them as someone pathetic but that would be an inappropriate label. Yes the Geyser Empath is very easy to manipulate into spurting out fuel and because of their beliefs they will suffer repeated hurts but their strength lies in their unwavering belief in love and how they soon bounce back following their set backs. They will do Misery 2.0 when they are wounded and hurt, the sobbing, the wailing and the tears will be extensive but it will not last. They do not wallow, but wipe away the tears, reapply the mascara, smooth down the rumpled clothes and climb right back on to their Unicorn of Love and Hope and gallop into the fray once again. The Geyser Empath can exhibit unpredictability of response. There will always be emotion, which suits our kind, but the extent and intensity of it may at times be so startling that it actually affects the standing of the narcissist with third parties who look on and witness what appears to them to be histrionics and melodrama. Exerting control over this emotional output can at times prove difficult for all save the Greater Narcissist.

The Geyser Empath lacks the serenity of the Magnet Empath and there is no cool deliberation of the Carrier. The Geyser will erupt with emotion with squeals of delight at the good news of a friend who is to be a parent, the triumphant praise for a colleague who has secured a promotion and the devastated collapse following the death of a loved one. The Geyser Empath believes that everyone has the capacity to love and that once they do, all their ills will be solved.

This person appeals to all schools of narcissist because of the high fuel content that is provided and the ease by which it can be provoked. They are easy to seduce but tend to suffer swifter devaluations than other empaths because they shine brighter and thus run the risk of our kind becoming familiar with their fuel in a quicker time so that the potency loses its lustre sooner. As explained above however, they are prime candidates for hoovers and often the hoover bar is lower for them as a consequence of the narcissist knowing that so much delicious fuel will become available with the added bonus of it being hoover fuel and furthermore because the devotion to love means that the Geyser Empath has a greater susceptibility to giving second, third and fourth chances.

The Geyser Empathic tendency is evident in all of the classes of empathic individuals. This tendency is often seen amongst the Co-Dependent class when this tendency manifests in an extreme form. Its presence will exist in Empaths but tends to be mixed with other empathic tendencies as well so the effect will be slightly diluted but not muted. With regard to the Super Empath it is unusual to see the Geyser Empathic tendency because of the Super Empath’s inherent resilience to both a sudden devaluation and being hoovered, however it will be seen amongst those who are borderline personality disorder as their displays of emotion and tissue thin emotional skin exhibit when their empathic side is unleashed and the resilience of the Super Empath is demonstrated when they lash out and withdraw.

The Lesser is drawn to those with this tendency because the effort required is so minimal to prompt a response and thus accords with the Lesser narcissist’s lower energy levels and reduced cognitive function for manipulation and machinations. The Mid-Ranger will also be attracted because of the fuel on offer and the ease by which it can be harvested but the emotional volatility can become wearing to the Mid-Ranger because he will struggle to assert control to achieve some of his aims. The Greater revels in those with Geyser Empathic tendencies finding the sudden eruptions amusing and playing straight into his portrayal of the individual as unbalanced and unhinged. He or she will take a perverse pleasure in provoking the Geyser into giving more and more fuel.

 

No is a familiar word from our lips and I have explained its extensive use and important value to our kind on a previous occasion. We use now to exert our hold over you. It is not only used in that sense but also as a reminder that you have lost the use of no because we steal that from you and then, when saying “no” to you on a repeated basis we are flaunting what we have taken from you.

We steal your ability to say no very soon into the entanglement. We pluck it away from you with ease and subterfuge so that it seems as if you have placed the use of the word “no” into retirement when actually it has been carefully and quietly spirited away from you. During devaluation, the theft is far more apparent. It has been a brazen burglary, a smash and grab as each time we metaphorically hit you over the head (and in some cases also do so literally) and make off with your use of the word “no”. It is removed from you forcibly and then waved around in front of you on a daily basis, a vicious reminder that we can use it and you cannot. Therein this underlines our superiority over you. The acquisition of the word “no” is an early and key aim of when we ensnare you. We set out to take it from you, acquire it for our own extensive use and deny you the opportunity of using it ever again. Inevitably the questions of how and why we do this manifest. First of all, how do we achieve this pilfering? What forms does it take?

1. You lose the capacity to say no to our advances during seduction.
2. You cannot say not to spending time with us.
3. You cannot say not to the suggestions we make.
4. You cannot say no to the places we take you.
5. You cannot say no to the gifts we shower you with.
6. You cannot say no the first time we take your hand.
7. You cannot say not the first time we move closer to kiss you.
8. You cannot say no when we take you to bed.
9. You cannot say no when we keep staying at your place.
10. You cannot say no when we invite you to stay with us.
11. You cannot say no when we turn up unexpectedly and invite you out for lunch or coffee.

Think back to your seduction (or if you are still inside this period consider the ongoing situation) and how readily you accede to all these requests. It is easy because there is always an upside. You cannot say no, because you do not want to say no, because you do not want to miss out on the experience of being with us and being bound closer to us. You do not realise this but we have already stolen your ability to say no. Just in the way that a totalitarian state tells you what to think, say and do, we do the same but it is all wonderful, golden and benign. This is because when we take away your capacity to say no during the seduction of the golden period we are governing you through love. This regime is as controlling as any other but is uses love to achieve governance.

What then of devaluation? How then does the theft of “no” occur?

1. You do not say no to our demands that you run around after us.
2. You do not say no to our command that you stay in and do not go out with your friends.
3. You are forbidden from saying no to our demands in the bedroom, no matter how degrading and humiliating they may be.
4. You do not say no to our sudden explosions of rage but rather you must deal with them and ride you out.
5. You do not say not to the repeated crossing of your boundaries through our invasion of your personal space, the occupation of your accommodation, the use of your resources such as time and money.
6. You do not say no to our coming and going as we please. We are entitled and we remove your ability to say no in order to further this sense of absolute entitlement.
7. You do not say no to our erosion of your self-confidence, self-worth and self-esteem as we whittle them away through the repeated applications of our manipulations.
8. You do not say not to our isolation of you, as we ensure you spend time with us and do not socialise with friends and family.
9. You do not say no to the frequent manipulations that are applied to you, but rather you suck them up and deal with them as best as you can.

The totalitarian regime that we implement is no longer one which used love in order to govern. That has been replaced with fear. Fear of repercussions, of responses, reactions and consequences has the word no evaporate from your vocabulary. Even if you try and say it, it will not come naturally, but rather sticks in your throat until we seize it and pull it away from you once again leaving you with no option other than to say “yes”.

The theft of “no” continues even after you are discarded as well.

1. You do not say no to our smearing of you to third parties, since you are bewildered and do not have the energy or coping mechanisms to fight back;
2. You do not say no to our hoovering of you by saying no to our home visits, no to our telephone calls or no to our messages;
3. You do not say no to the memories of us but rather allow them to fill your mind and continue our infection of you;
4. You do no say no to wondering what we are doing and who with
5. You do not say no to spying on us, trawling our social media profile and asking others about us.
6. You do not say no to the reinstatement of the golden period.

No is denied to you repeatedly. It is taken from your lexicon of words and if you ever try to take it back, it is soon whipped away from you once again. We own your use of the word “no”. We understand the power that comes with its use and that is why we take it by any means possible. At first through the false love and then through the imposition of fear, intimidation and threat.

Why do we do this? Why do we make it our aim to remove your capacity to resist, refuse and thus say no?

1. The word “no” is powerful. More so than “yes”. It is harder to say but when used it is powerful. We want to remove that power from you and have it ourselves.
2. By preventing you from saying no to us we can control you and have you do what we want.
3. Only the great have the ability to say no. We have it. Therefore, we are superior. You do not. You are therefore inferior.
4. You know you should say it but you cannot. This damages your self-worth even further.
5. Watching you try to say the word we have taken causes you pain, frustration, upset and anger, all of which lead to the provision of fuel.

The removal of “no” from you to us is a lynchpin in our manipulation of you. How ought you to deal with this theft? It is simple enough. Always remember where you have placed the word “no”, take it out, use it, practise with it, say it to yourself in the mirror and remember that the more you use it the harder it is for us to steal it from you and keep it from you.

Know the signs so it does not happen again.

Know the signs so others are not ensnared.

Know the signs before it is too late.

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The silent treatment is a well-known and highly effective manipulation that we deploy against our victims. Easy to do, low in energy expenditure, a passive aggressive measure which is the mainstay manipulation of the Mid-Range Narcissist although it will be used by all of our kind. It comes in two varieties; the Present Silent Treatment (we remain physical proximate but ignore you or stay silent and glare at you) or the Absent Silent Treatment where we vanish. The former is excellent at drawing fuel and asserting control whilst the latter achieves both those aims and allows us to take effectively a time out and use that time to court an alternative source, invariably unbeknown to you.

The primary purpose of a silent treatment, like most of our manipulations, is the drawing of fuel from you. You become concerned that we will not speak to you, upset that we are not responding, angry that we remain sat there ignoring you. You are worried that you have not heard from us, distraught at our absence, fuming at our disappearance and whether you are talking to us directly, sending messages, leaving voicemails or turning up at some place where you hope to find us, you are invariably frothing with Proximate Fuel which we lap up. We also benefit from doses of Thought Fuel too.

Whilst that is the instinctive aim of the silent treatment in its many forms from Icy Glare, Cold Shoulder, Incredible Sulk, Invisible Person through to The Ghost, what is actually going through our mind when it is deployed? What is behind the statement above that the use of the silent treatment is our way of killing you?

A silent treatment appears most often as an instinctive manifestation of cold fury as a consequence of you wounding our kind. It may also be used by the higher functioning of our kind as a stand alone measure when there is no wounding and is part of a calculated response designed to further our aims.

Thus the Lesser, whilst far more prone to applying heated fury, is wounded by a perceived criticism and sits silently, staring at the television as his ignited cold fury manifests and you keep providing fuel as you ask him what is wrong. Eventually, the provision of your fuel will heal the wound you have caused and the fury abates and he will just turn and talk to you acting as if nothing has happened. Whilst he is sat there ignoring you his Present Silent Treatment arises because he wishes you dead as a consequence of your traitorous behaviour in criticising him. However, if you are dead then you will not provide fuel and as a consequence this instinctive response is a further example of the contradictory behaviour we engage in, purely to fulfil our needs.

The Lesser wishes you dead. However he also needs your fuel. If you are dead, there is no fuel. Of course, there are occasions where the Lesser loses control and lashes out and actually will kill as a consequence. Where that does not happen, your figurative death is still desired but your fuel must also be gathered. Accordingly, a silent treatment satisfies both of these diametrically opposed consequences. You are treated as dead because you are being ignored but the fuel is still provided.

The Mid-Ranger has a similar instinctive response. He also wishes you dead for your disgraceful and disloyal criticism of him. Of course, he also needs your fuel and given his passive aggressive nature, he is far removed from actually doing something that would kill you. Thus, the silent treatment appeals to him especially. He is not bold enough to drive a knife into you to kill you, so instead he slinks away, coward that he is and slays you through an Absent Silent Treatment. In his mind he satisfies the need to punish you through this ‘death’ yet at the same time he garners fuel from your desperate voicemail messages asking him where he is.

Both the Lesser and especially the Mid-Ranger will use various forms of the Silent Treatment as a means to achieve this killing and it is an instinctive response. The Greater rarely uses the Silent Treatment in an instinctive way. Instead, the Greater recognises its effectiveness from the perspective of using it in a calculated method by which manipulation can be achieved. He will use a brief silent period for the purposes of testing someone, even though he is not wounded. He will decide that somebody needs to learn a lesson in terms of who is in control and whilst he is not wounded, he deems it appropriate to deploy the silent treatment so the victim is subjected to further control. The Greater’s response is not one of wanting you dead; that is the knee-jerk reaction of the Lesser and the Mid-Ranger, that hatred and fury rising as they rail at your audacity in wounding them, their disgust for your craven ways after all they do for you and such is the vitriol towards you that is pumping around their bodies, they wish you dead and the silent treatment is an instinctive way of achieving that whilst catering to the need to exert control and draw fuel. The Greater sees the silent treatment as a way of slaying those elements of your character which you hold dear.

You want to help people. If that person evades you, you cannot help.

You want the truth. If that person has vanished, you can gain no answers to establish why they have done what they have done.

You wish to give them love, but you cannot because they have ghosted you and left you feeling pain instead.

You want to listen and ascertain what the problem is, yet if we will not talk to you, how can you do that?

It is also extremely effective against empathic people. It absolutely gets under the skin of most empathic people. True, there will be some, who, after a time, realise what it is and in turn embrace the respite that comes with such a silence and do not react to it. However, most empathic individuals hate it. They cannot stand the response, the imposition of guilt that it generates, the confusion, the uncertainty caused by a failure to respond (is he just busy or is he ignoring me – a frequent dilemma that causes considerable consternation to the empathic individual ( see Should I Get in Touch )) Accordingly, the Greater knowing just how effective a manipulation this is, will use it as part of his or her ongoing campaign of control as opposed to an instinctive reaction. We Greaters see it as a way to kill your resistance to our control.

The Greater’s approach is one where your various good and empathic traits are denied, frustrated and in effected ‘killed’.

Killing somebody is the ultimate expression of power and control. Life has been taken away. Whilst it cannot be denied that our kind do kill, it is, in the scheme of our numbers, rare. It is also a counter-productive act because if we kill our primary source we lose an excellent provider of fuel and bring about a potential fuel crisis as we have to find a new primary source and usually this must occur quickly. Furthermore, there are of course the potential ramifications arising from the commission of murder, albeit, those considerations are often far from our minds when the act of murder occurs.

We want you dead for your treachery. We want you dead because it is the ultimate expression of power and control. Yet we need you very much alive. The silent treatment satisfies both desires and that is why it is our way of killing you.

Listen to ‘The Expanded Narcissistic Truths – No.4’

 

 

The first battle that takes places post disengagement or escape is the battle of the Emotional Sea. That is a battle that you are always destined to lose. You will always fight at least one Emotional Sea Battle because you do not know any other way. In all likelihood, you will face several of these battles because you will keep being hoovered back into our grasp until such time as you learn to recognise what you are dealing with and understand what you must do. Eventually and this may take several Emotional Sea Battles before you realise this and are capable of achieving the appropriate response, you either evade the Emotional Sea Battle by escaping as opposed to being discarded, or you prepare yourself for the eventual discard in a manner which means you no longer have to ensure the Emotional Battle. Instead, you move on to the next post disengagement or post escape  battle, that of Head versus Heart (“the HvH Battle”).

The HvH Battle (also known as the Logic v Emotion Battle) is a battleground where you stand some chance of victory. This battleground is one where you have gained understanding. It might be through your repeated exposure to our kind so that eventually something has “clicked” into place or more often than not it is as a consequence of an external agent who has explained matters to you. It might by a therapist, a friend, the content of a book, something you saw on YouTube or even something that I have written. Whatever has caused this understanding to increase, it is this which provides you with the fighting chance to win this HvH Battle.

You have been discarded and run the gamut of emotional fall-out thereafter. You may understand what we are. You may understand some of the things that we have done. You may be familiar with the fact that we will try to hoover you back into our grip. You may even be starting to comprehend that what has happened was all predicated on an illusion. The degree of understanding will vary but what is important for you is that you are allowing logical thought to be heard above the raw heat of your emotions. You once again will not just be battling against us but also yourself. We will be looking to hoover you in order to draw you back into our grip or perhaps we will be unleashing a malign hoover since we are unable to draw you back into our false reality and therefore we opt to keep extracting negative fuel by way of punishment for your treachery. You have us as an opponent, but you will also be fighting yourself as your emerging logic grapples with the still churning emotion. You have learned many things and you know you should apply what you have learned but still there is the emotional pull that you experience. You are not removed or detached from your emotions, they have not dimmed either, they are still there, raging away. The hurt, the love, the longing, the passion, the fear and the upset. An ocean of emotion which you once tried to cross but that was the Emotional Battle and you had barely taken four strokes as you began to swim before you were engulfed by the emotion and sank to the bottom of this sea, drowned by your own emotion. Now you have built a vessel. It is made from cool, hard logic. Critical thinking, once a stranger to you during your savage devaluation, has re-appeared. You can analyse and assess. It is unlikely you are able to do so at the level you once enjoyed before we came along but it is there. Whether this vessel is a tiny raft, a dinghy, a boat or a hulking great liner depends very much on the extent of your understanding. The choppy emotional seas will smash against your vessel of logic. A wave of sorrow will buffet you, a tsunami of longing will threaten to swamp you once again. Wave after wave of emotion will try and capsize your vessel as you try to navigate this emotional ocean. Chances are your life raft will be smashed to match wood and you will be tipped into the sea to drown once again as emotion subsumes you and you find yourself back in our hold. Your clipper may be holed beneath the waterline and you start to take on board more and more emotion as steadily you sink beneath the emotional waves once again. It is during this HvH Battle as you try to cross the emotional ocean, because what you must do is reach the dry land beyond and in effect put an ocean but you and us, you will be subjected to the push and pull of your emotions trying to guide you, to control your decision-making, your head will tell you one thing as your heart screams something else at you. This is probably the harder battle for you to fight. In the Emotional Battle, you do not stand a chance and your defeat is swift and total. During the HvH Battle you will make gains, suffer losses, seem to making a breakthrough and then out of nowhere a tidal wave will flip you from your boat and into the churning ocean and you drown once again. All the while we will be whipping up the waves, firing our torpedoes at you as we endeavour to cause you to sink into this emotional ocean yet again and you fail to cross it and win this battle. How might this HvH Battle manifest in the real world?

1. You will know you ought not to contact us but you need to send a message to see if we respond.
2. You will keep checking our social media profiles to ascertain if you are mentioned, if we are with somebody else and/or to find out what we are doing.
3. You will ask about us to our coterie and lieutenants, often unwittingly doing so, so this is fed back to us.
4. You will go on dates but find you are always comparing this new person to us and they are always found to be wanting.
5. You know what the outcome will be but you just want one more night with us.
6. You realise that we are unlikely to change but if you do not try you will never know, so it is worth one more attempt to talk isn’t it?
7. You understand much of what we did and said was a lie, but surely it could not all have been an illusion? There must have been times where we really did love you and you need to ask us about this.
8. You know we are bad for you, but you cannot help what you feel. Surely it would be better to stop this pain from being there all the time and just have it occasionally?
9. You know you should not reply to our messages but it feels so good to have a conversation with us again. It has been too long.
10. You know we are using you, but it feels so damn good.
11. One kiss cannot hurt can it?
12. You know better now, so going back will be different because you know what to expect. Armed with this new knowledge you can enter the lion’s den again but be better prepared.
13. You know we are bad for you but you cannot bear the thought of someone else being with us and perhaps being the one to work.
14. What if this time the apology is sincere and the desire to change is real? If you walked away from that, you would only be denying yourself happiness wouldn’t you?
15. You understand engaging with us is dangerous but there are things you really need to tell us.

These and others besides are all examples of the inherent tension that arises in this tug-of-war between your cool intellect and your burning emotions.

Can you win this battle that rages post disengagement or post escape? Unlike the first battle, the Emotional SeaBattle which you can never win, you can be victorious. You may have to fight this HvH Battle many times before securing the win. In the beginning you may be clinging to little more than a log as you desperately try to sail the emotional ocean and you are swept from it. However, by reading and understanding, by disciplining yourself to apply logic, to prevent your emotions from engulfing you, by reading more and increasing your knowledge you will begin to increase your logic vessel. From log to raft to dinghy. Still you may be swamped and drowned again. But then it becomes a small boat, a yacht, a clipper, a steamer, a passenger liner, a frigate, a destroyer and a super tanker. Each time you rebuild, better, bigger and stronger as you learn more, making the vessel more seaworthy. You begin to chart routes so you avoid the most tumultuous emotional areas, finally beginning to steer through calmer waters until there it is, on the horizon, the sight of land and the final battle that occurs with our kind post discard.

The HvH Battle is not an easy battle. You will fight it several times, but each time you should be better prepared to cross the emotional ocean and improve your prospects of success. Sometimes you are taken unawares by some of our provocative tactics and dumped unceremoniously into the water once again, but it is a battle you can win through the dedicated application of knowledge and understanding.

Everything we do is regarding as a battle. It is a zero sum game. What you lose, we gain. There may appear to be a “win/win” scenario during seduction but it is not the case. Believe me, we are getting what we want, positive fuel in huge quantities and the repeated binding as we draw you closer and closer to us. You are made to feel like a queen but you will be deposed and beheaded or defenestrated in due course. You always pay for the golden period we shower you with. We draw up our battle plans when we ready ourselves to seduce you. The greater of us adopt the approach of every battle is won before it is fought. The lesser of our kind remain effective but they rely on being a blunt weapon, not possessing the intellectual finesse of us greaters. The lesser plans less and relies on the visceral (unknown) need for fuel to drive his battle strategy. His is all about reaction and immediate response, an automatic adjustment, which is invariably successful because he has been blessed with those tools, blunt as they may be.

Our engagement with you is not love. It is war. We conquer, overrun and blitzkrieg you into submission. We occupy you so that your heart and mind fall to us within moments. This army of occupation does not stop there as it raids the land it now resides in. Your resources become our resources and we ensure that our supply lines are fed from your assets. The occupation eventually takes a savage turn through devaluation as we slash and burn, looking to grind you into the dirt before leaving you a stripped, bomb-blasted shell and setting off for a new campaign against some unsuspecting target. The theme of battle and your entanglement with our kind being a battleground, is one which is repeated throughout your engagement with us.

This is especially so once the callous disengagement (discard) has taken place. It is then that you find yourself confronted with three battles which take place one after the other. Not only do you have us as our foe but in an especially unappealing turn of events you find that in fact you are actually fighting against yourself. The first battle following discard is the emotional one. You have been left with no explanation. If one was tendered it made no sense. You cannot reconcile where you are with what has been. The descent from gilded pillar into the dust has been swift and merciless. Every day you have run the gauntlet of scores of emotions, which has drained you, eroded you and taken a significant toll on your well-being. Your emotions are red raw, heightened and easy to trigger. Your pain is extensive, agonising and brutal and it is during this emotional battle that your ally of cool, detached thinking has not fled the battlefield, it never turned up to begin with. Your ability to assess, rationalise and consider your position with the necessary critical analysis evades you. All you are left with is a cauldron of emotion, which serves only to heighten your distress and your confusion. Nothing makes sense and you have not been left in a position to make any sense of what has happened. This is entirely deliberate. I know so many of you use the phrase “hot mess”. This is entirely apt. You are a mess. Your life is a mess. The heat comes from your raging emotions as you veer between hysteria and anger.

Of the three battles that you fight post discard, the emotional battle, the first, is the one which you invariably end up losing. This is because you are utterly ill-equipped. If you were an army your troops would be sharing guns, you would not know which way to face, your supply lines have been overstretched and in some places broken and the enemy seems to appear at will. The fog of war obscures your vision. Is that us advancing or just the silhouette of a tree? You cannot tell. Once you could, but no longer. It is a tortuous place and one which has been created through our design in order to ensure that when return (and we will) you will be in no position to resist. Weakened, governed by emotion rather than intellect you will be overrun easily. This is when the hoover operates. This battle, where all you have is emotion, means that you want the pain to stop. You want the golden period again. You give no consideration or thought to what might be the price of such desires, or whether it really is the golden period once more. You are ruled by emotion and this proves to be your downfall. We know this and this is why we ensure you are a churning, broiling scorching crucible of emotion. We create it, we want that. This is why your first attempt at no contact (without the benefit of specialist input) nearly always falls. You are not equipped to prolong it because in this emotional battle all it takes is for us to come galloping over the hill once again, offering terms of the golden period and you surrender in an instant allowing us to occupy your territory once more in the understandable but ultimately forlorn hope of a peaceful co-existence.

How do you win this emotional battle? You cannot. You are in such a position that we always win this battle. The key however is not to participate in this battle but rather avoid it altogether. If you know there is a battle you cannot win, why would you ever fight it? You would not. You would evade your foe, take steps to bolster your defences and seek to avoid this emotional battle. This is what you must do. Once you have gained awareness of the foe you are engaged with, possibly during seduction or more likely through the period of devaluation, you must then take those steps to prepare yourself. You either avoid the emotional battle altogether by escaping rather than being discarded. Alternatively, you steel yourself for the inevitable discard so that the emotional fallout is massively reduced and instead you find yourself transported to the second battle that takes places post discard which I shall expand on in a further article.

If you have been discarded, then you face the emotional battle and you will lose. You must avoid the emotional battle in its entirety or engage on terms in the second battle which follows post discard.

How many times have you declared that you have had enough? How many times have you vowed that you are no longer putting up with this behaviour and making a fresh start? How often have you put in place steps to depart and leave this confusing and twisted reality behind? We hear these assertive comments from time to time. We have subjected you to a sustained devaluation, provoked so many heightened emotional responses from you which has given us fuel. At times you did not know whether you were coming or going, your head swam and that dull ache in the centre of your forehead never seemed to diminish. You wondered who you could trust as you fought to establish what you believed was right against a backdrop of contradictions. From somewhere you mustered some strength, a bolt of fortitude sprang from the maelstrom and in that moment of clarity you knew it was time to go. This situation is not right surely? Nobody should be treated in this manner. Yes, it was the moment to depart.

Of course you could not do so without your parting speech. It was not borne out of spite or venom. Those are not watchwords that apply to you. Notwithstanding the horrendous treatment meted out against you, the repeated abuse and the incessant put downs, you still behaved with dignity and grace. There was little doubt that you wanted to lash out. You wanted to flail us with stinging words and some home truths, just in the same way we had used our acidic tongues and savage words to berate you, yet despite how much you wanted to speak to us in this manner you did not do so. Instead, demonstrating the empathy which attracted us to you all that time ago you explained how you still loved us. You fought back the tears as you explained that you loved us more than you did when we first became a couple and despite everything that has happened you still love us. You ought to have torn strips of us, levelling a lengthy charge sheet against us but you did not behave in this way. That is not who you are. You talked about all the wonderful traits we have and how you miss them, you continued to praise us even after everything that we had done to you. You stood there bearing the emotional and physical bruises and rather than lambast us for putting you in such a state you preferred to talk about the magical times we had together. You clearly had committed each of those occasions to your memory as you brought up each event and occurrence as the tears trickled down your cheeks. You explained how wonderful we made you feel, how you had never experienced anything like that before and you consequently truly believed you had found the one. You work through the golden period, talking about the trips we took, the days we spent together and the glittering and scintillating moments we created. We can see this is hurting you all the more yet still your selflessness continues. You are exhausted after the tortuous time you have been put through and yet still you only try to remember the good and thank us for those wonderful times. You tell us that although they lasted a few months, the memories of that time are seared into your mind and you will always treasure them. You explain that you will reflect on those memories and not what came to pass afterwards as you still prefer to think the best of us, despite everything we have subjected you to. Your nobility in behaving in this manner is most impressive and your admirable words continue to fuel us. You explain between sobs that you do not want to go but you have to. You do not want to leave everything that we have built up behind but if you do not do so then you will be destroyed. You apologise, yes you actually apologise that you have not been able to help us, to steer us away from the destructive and malevolent behaviour that has marred the latter months together. You explain how hard you have tried but admit you have been defeated. You express your desire for us to change and to seek help because you truly believe that we are a good person who just needs to seize on that goodness and allow it to shine. You tell us you have seen what we can do and achieve and you still want what is best for us. You stand there staring at us; some of your possessions already packed in the two suitcases which are waiting in the hallway. You tell us you will make arrangements with us to collect the remainder of your belongings once you have had a chance to think and breathe.

We rise from our seat and walk towards you. You are quietly sobbing and we take your hands in our hands and hold them in that tender manner you recall so well. The vicious squeezing that one day arrived out of nowhere is not in existence. Instead, we hold your hands and look you straight in the eye as we summon up a look we have practised before with others in the situation. The look begins as sorrow and then morphs into hope as we search your eyes looking for that flicker of flame once again through the tears. You hold our gaze as we keep searching and then we speak, our words soft and gentle, just as they were when we whispered into your ear as we lay next to you holding you late at night.

“I am sorry, I know this time I have to change. Please help me be the good person I know I can be, that I want to be. Something is wrong with me and I do not know what it is, but you can save me, you are the only one. Please do not leave me. I cannot survive without you. I need you. I want to make you happy again because someone as wonderful and as loving as you deserves it. I will get help but I know I can only do it with you at my side. Please, please stay.”

The short speech is delivered with true brilliance as I gather the right inflection in tone coupled with suitable contrite looks and mannerisms. I continue to look into your eyes as you let my words sink in. The moments pass and then the light flickers, that flame of hope sparks into life and I know your next words before you have even spoken them and I begin to give you that enticing and winning smile again.

I know that you will stay. Again.

You end up stuck. Again.

This is a form of Preventative Hoover and when you roll out that supposed parting speech, you are leaving yourself exposed to such a hoover.

They often work as they target your empathic traits of guilt, sympathy, not wanting to give up, hoping for the best and wanting us to heal.

Tip us off as to your intentions and you will face such a hoover.

You can have our kind but you cannot hold on to us. We will not permit it. We are the archetypal individuals who you can experience, you can love, enjoy, cherish and so many other things but the one thing you may not do is hold on to us.

We allow you to have us because what we give you is constructed and comes at no great cost to us. Instead it allows us to gain. By being generous with our supposed love, passionate with our words, highly desirable with our sexual prowess, charming, flattering and everything else which you associate with out love bombing of you, we want you to have it all. We want you to have all of our charm, our magnetism, our illusion. We want you to drown in it, become engulfed by the blazoning lights and soothing sounds, swamped by the seductive desire that we sweep across you like a tsunami. You can have it all because the more we give you, the more likely you will be carried away by this tidal wave of false love. The more sugar we pour over you, the sweeter the golden period and the greater your addiction to us becomes. Naturally,the extent of how much you can have of us is governed by our energy levels and our capacity for control, so that the experience is all the more fuller should you be ensnared by a Mid Ranger than a Lesser and many times more intense should you fall prey to a Greater.

You can have all of our time because it serves our purposes. All of our focus is yours, you get our near undivided attention as we pull out all the stops to seduce and conquer. You can have our financial resources as we spend money on you (even when we may not have the money to spend on you – incurring debt or using someone else’s resources) , take you to places, book interesting days out, tempting nights out and utilise financial muscle, whether ours or borrowed from  bank or devalued victim, in order to let you have the full on magical experience that is being seduced by us.

We will grant you access to our friends, which of course is just allowing the façade to wrap around you and convince you of our bona fides, our supportive and attractive coterie all so giving of their time to you, praising us and welcoming you.

We will allow you to have a route to all of our favourite things, although of course this is manufactured in order to actually allow you to attach to your favourite things as we mirror your likes, your desires and your hopes back at you, but it is still giving of us.

The Somatic and Elite cadres will allow you to have us physically as the weapon of mass seduction that is sex, is rolled our to delight you. You are apparently given access to our most intimate of levels, in a series of steamy and orgasmic encounters as we utilise our well-practised sexual skills in conjunction with the whole orchestrated seduction of you to create an intense and mesmerising experience.

We may move you in, a supposedly generous act as we allow you to have closeness and regular time with us, all engineered of course to maintain our façade of pleasantry and reliability as you are bound closer to us. In some instances we perhaps allow you to have what could be considered the ultimate act of ‘having’ as we give you our seed or our womb for the purposes of the creation of new life.

Yes, by allowing you to have so much of us, we create the image of someone who gives, someone who sacrifices, who thinks of you before we think of ourselves and thus you, understandably, fall for this and truly believe you have us. You do have us but it is for, in the scheme of things, a fleeting instance. A mere moment in vastness of time and for all of its wonder and brilliance, you are allowed to have us but you cannot hold us.

We cannot allow this to happen because we will turn matters around, in order to ensure that our hunger for fuel is addressed, in order to cater for our slavish devotion to the maintenance of superiority and in order to assert our right to do as we please, when we please, how we please and with whom we please.

You cannot hold us. You cannot keep us. We regard ourselves as that omnipotent force that is not beholden to boundaries, constraints and bondage. You have no say over what we do. You are not there to impose your rules on us, keep us in check or prevent us from seeking out what we need in order to maintain our existence. Indeed, the prevention of you keeping us is material in ensuring that the threat of our departure is something that keeps you working hard to please us,to provide that fuel, be it positive or negative and to allow us to keep you just where we want you. We can keep a hold of you of course, that is the nature of the narcissistic covenant, but as usual, what applies to you will not apply to us and vice versa.

We make the decisions. We choose. We execute and operate. We are not there to be bound to one person and especially one which will invariably fail us. We consider ourselves as beyond such things and therefore the notions of faithfulness, fidelity and monogamy are cast out as evicted tenants from the House of Narc.

We want you to try to hold on to us, that is part of our game playing. We want you to strive to keep us, to exert your every waking moment to clinging on to us but it can never happen. We are programmed to reject that desire to keep us as you want us to be. There is no hope for it to happen, but we will give you that false hope, through the respite periods and the periodic resumption of the golden period. You are led to believe that you have managed to keep us, that you can continue to have us and to hold us, but it will not last and it cannot last because the concept of being beholden to you and just you will ultimately run contrary to our needs and as you are well-acquainted with the idea now, our needs must always come first.

We decide when we come back, we decide when the false love is shown to you again, we decide when you get to see us, get to speak to us and receive our attention, seduction, fury or disdain. We must behave this way to shore up our idea of being the one who calls the shots, who makes the decisions and pulls the strings because we dare not contemplate for too long what would happen if we allowed you to take hold of matters.

We will always let you have us, but you will never be allowed to hold us.