We avail ourselves of the use of technology through all the various stages of the narcissistic cycle and the period of devaluation is no exception. We will use the sending of messages, be they of the text, messenger or e-mail variety, to roll out our devaluation against you. These poisonous messages are sent because it is so easy for us to do so. It is a simple task of typing that message, whether we happen to be at home, in the office, sat waiting for a plane or in a queue of traffic. We can unleash a poisoned arrow from anywhere and have it winging its way to pierce your heart. We can do it at any time and reap the reward from the provision of fuel. Sometimes the fuel arises as consequence of your response, by messaging us back or ringing us. Other times it is gathered through Thought Fuel as we envisage your reaction based on what we know of your emotional responses and sometimes we even get the combination of both Proximate and Thought Fuel. There is little energy expenditure for us and the prospects of fuel and exerting control over you are invariably very good. Here are ten ways in which we send you poisonous messages during devaluation.

1. The Barren Periods

We have, through the extensive and exciting messaging we engaged in during the golden period created an expectancy on your part to receive messages from first thing in the morning until last thing at night and at regular and repeated intervals. You have become used to this and then all of a sudden it dries up. You send a message to us in the hope of generating a response but there is nothing. You send another, just in case the first did not somehow get through. There is nothing but silence. You wait and try to do something else but you cannot concentrate because you keep looking to your ‘phone hoping for that message to appear but it does not. Many hours may pass, perhaps a day until you either happen to bump into us or we deign to finally respond. You can expect the replies to be along the lines of:

“There was no signal where I was.”

“There must be a fault with my ‘phone as I never received any messages.”

“I did reply, did you not get it?”

“All your messages have just come through now, that’s why I messaged when I did.”

“I ran out of credit.”

“I ran out of battery.”

Do not accept these explanations. These are rolled out to pull the wool over your eyes. The failure to reply was deliberate and calculated and more often than not it was because we were busy with somebody else.

2. The Raised Hopes

We will make an arrangement with you, suggesting we go out to dinner tomorrow evening or attend that new play you were excited to see. You look forward to spending time with us, alter your other arrangements, put yourself to time and expense in preparation for whatever event is and then at the last minute we cancel with either no excuse or half an excuse and then we fall silent.

3. The Wrong Recipient

You receive a message which is clearly meant for someone else. It might be using a nickname that is unfamiliar to you, confirming an arrangement when you knew of none to be confirmed, thanking you for a wonderful evening when we did not see one another that evening or any number of combinations where the content of the message is at odds with what you know. It is rarely a mistake when this happens. It is done deliberately.

4. The Vitriolic Volley

A straight forward nasty barrage of insults sent in the form of text messages. The content will be savage and hurtful and you will have no or little idea why the messages are being sent or what they actually relate to. You will be accused of being a slut, when you have always been faithful, or wasting money when you are careful with it, or not caring about us when you have just done something especially loving. The words will be barbed, picking on your weaknesses and vulnerabilities and is often done when you have gone out without us or you have friends around without us being invited. It is a short and sharp method of upsetting you in a quick as possible manner.

5. The Afterthought

We tell you what we are doing and happen to mention that you might like it as well even though now, given the late notice you have been given, that it is nigh on impossible for you to join in. Typical messages will read

“Great party at Harry’s you would love the music here.”

“I am at Portofino’s with Hannah, the food is just your type of thing.” (Plus, who is Hannah by the way?)

“I am watching U2, they are awesome, you like them don’t you?” (When we know full well that U2 is your favourite band.)

You are left upset as you are missing out on something you would enjoy and also hurt because we have done it without you, knowing that you would have wanted to attend as well.

6. The Mirror

This does not appear as though it is actually a poisonous message because its content is pleasant and it is WHEN it is sent that is of relevance. If you are going through a period of devaluation and you then receive messages which appear to provide a Respite Period from the nastiness, be warned; you and somebody else are getting the same messages. Thus if we have been unpleasant to you for a number of weeks and you then get a message stating

“I miss you.”

“I love you.”

“I wish you were with me.”

It will lift your heart but understand that its generic quality, lack of personalisation and out-of-the blue quality denotes that you and your prospective replacement are both receiving this message from us. Double fuel.

7. The Backhander

It may seem like a pleasant message but it is not. This is usually sent to emphasise our importance and demote the apparent pleasantry in our message to you by causing it to appear second-best to the rest of what we have written. Examples would include

“I miss you but I am so busy closing this massive deal at the moment.”

“I hope you are well but I am focused on beating my time for the half marathon so lots of training at present.”

“I was thinking about you as I was polishing my new car.”

8. The False Hope

You receive a blank message from us following a period of silence and this causes you to respond, pleased to have received even this crumb of apparent comfort and thus you respond to it. We deny messaging you or suggest it must have been done by accident. The text equivalent of the butt dial. It was done on purpose and we noted just how quickly you replied to us as well.

9. The Forewarned Silent Treatment

You are told we will not be available to contact. The reason given is not because we are travelling or engaged in meetings or such like, but rather it will be explanations such as

“Don’t message me for 48 hours, I need to do some thinking.”

“I need some space, so I won’t be in touch for a few days.”

“I am feeling pressured so just need some breathing space. Don’t contact me until I contact you.”

Aside from gaining Thought Fuel at your disappointed and concerned reaction, this is being done to exert control over you and most of all to ensure that you do not get in the way and interfere as we are seducing someone else.

10. The False Emergency

We send a message asking for your help with something and you feel pleased to be involved as matters have been decidedly icy between us for a few days. You respond straight away but you are then told that it does not matter since Joe or Helen or Angela has already come to our aid/lent us the onion/changed the tyre etc. There was no incident which required your help or help from anybody. We wanted to see how quickly you would respond to our control and then we garner fuel from both your perceived and witnessed responses.

We repeatedly provoke. The act of provocation is one which is designed to cause a strong and often unwelcome emotion in the recipient. On one level, it can be said that everything we do is provocative because we are always looking to cause you to be emotional, to react in an emotional fashion to what we do and as a consequence give us the fuel that we need. Thus when we tell you that we have finally found our soul mate, we are provoking you into generating an intense feeling of being loved (or at least thinking that you are being loved) which causes you to exhibit your love towards us and thus we gain our fuel. We pay a friend a compliment in order to provoke that person into at least thanking us, thus a small dollop of positive fuel or more hopefully (and indeed more likely because this empathic secondary source is well-mannered, honest and decent) we pay them a compliment so they will pay one to us and thus more fuel is garnered. There is no unconditional giving with our kind. We only give to receive.

Thus all of the things that we say and do, the manipulations, the chicanery, the machinations and the mind games are all designed to provoke you into giving us fuel. However, in its strictest sense, we provoke you in order to generate that intense response and one which is negative in nature. We provoke you so that you will explode in anger, erupt in a stream of profane insults and vent your frustration through a slap to the face or a mug hurled towards us.

We will push and push and push. Yes, many of you have a remarkable capacity to absorb these pointy sticks which jab you. Your kind are well-versed and skilled in the turning of the cheek, the adoption of the high ground and the making of allowances. You will bury the hatchet and we will dig it up again in order to give you a dig from the sharp point. You will let bygones be bygones and we will resurrect the memory of an age-old issue in order to rankle you.

Nothing is off limits in terms of provoking you. It might be focusing on a vulnerability of yours that we know about (having acquired this information when we seduced you) so that we remind you of a frightening episode from your childhood or capitalise on your terror of spiders. It might be homing in on your sensitivity about the size of your nose, the shape of your head, the bright red of your embarrassment. If you owe us money, we shall remind you of it and comment on your poor financial position. We may flirt because we know how much you hate the notion of us being unfaithful. We may repeatedly turn up late because you are an advocate of punctuality. We may criticise your parents, your choice of film, your culinary skills, your attempts to loser weight; whatever we have identified as a means for causing you to erupt at us we will do it.

We know which buttons to press. We have a knack and an instinct for doing so. This is because we are able to gather information about you when we seduce you which will be stored away and used against you at a later stage. This is also because empathic individuals are more likely to respond in an emotional fashion. Yes, you will soak it up at first by making allowances for our behaviour and indeed making excuses, exhibiting this selfless understanding for which you are famed. This will not dissuade us. We know that everybody has a limit of what they can take before they snap. Sometimes it is bursting into tears, running from the room or screaming. Other times it is exploding with a volley of curses, coming at us with flailing arms or shouting and screaming at the top of your voice about how awful we are.

Push, prod, niggle. Aggravate, rile, irritate. Ruffle, vex, bug. Irk incense and annoy. We will chip away at your defences, jabbing and poking as we look to make your blood boil, get on your nerves, get under your skin,  work you into lather and try your patience until you can take no more. We can sense the emotion rising in you. We notice the slight tells, the narrowing of the eyes, the rolling of the eyes, the sighs, the shake of the head, the hands on the hips, the raised palm, the jutting jaw and so on. The more you try to tell us that we are not getting to you, the more we are encouraged. We know that your emotion is building up inside of you. We know that it is increasing and no matter how much you are trying to maintain that cool exterior, we understand what is building up.

We not only have a medley of ways by which we provoke you, but we are experts in choosing precisely the best (worst) time to engage in this behaviour. Do any of these instances seem familiar?

When you are trying to get ready to go out.

When you are trying to have a telephone conversation with somebody else.

When you are trying to cook.

When you are trying to perform some chore.

When you are trying to get to sleep.

When you first come through the door after a long day.

When sat next to us in the car on a long journey.

When sat across from us in a restaurant.

When at some event of your choosing.

We will pick an inopportune time to commence our provocation so that you are caught off guard, when you are tired, when you are hungry, when you are anxious or stressed. The moment must be right for us and wholly inappropriate for you and then we can unleash the relevant form of provocation. We know what really gets to you. It may be the subject matter. It might be the way of conveying it, for instance patronising you or acting in a condescending fashion. It could be jabbing you with a finger on the shoulder to punctuate or words or giving you a dig in the back as you lie on your side in bed, after each savage sentence.

Eventually comes the eruption. You can only take so much and invariably when this provocation comes allied with an emotional state which makes you more susceptible to our provocations the explosion is all the more satisfying. Copious amounts of negative fuel fountain from you as you shout, scream, bang doors, slam your hand on the work top, swear and so forth. Inside we are soaring with the power that comes from the provision of this most excellent fuel. You, the paragon of virtue, the most patient of saints has been brought to boiling point and we achieved it. You have responded to our control. Our superiority is once again affirmed, we are the puppetmasters, we are omnipotent in our actions and you have responded as we wanted. Such marvellous fuel that sprays from you and we relish every drop.

Of course as it fountains and flows from you we will not want it to stop and the provocation will continue. Not only are we ensuring that we get to bathe in your overflowing fuel, we are using this eruption as evidence of how unhinged you are. Do not be surprised if this niggling, poking provocation occurs where others will see it. You can expect the whispered and insidious provocations to be used, the acts which are open to interpretation (although we both full well know exactly what was meant by our remark, our look or our gesture) and our good friend plausible deniability will be given an airing.

“Who me officer? I did nothing. She just exploded. I get this all the time, she has an anger management problem. John here will confirm she just went mental and started hitting me.” (Cue obliging Lieutenant).

“I don’t know what gets into her dad, she just erupts. You saw what she was like at mum’s birthday party. That is what I have to live with.”

“I feel sorry for you Mrs Johnson, having a daughter with a temper like that.”

We will provoke you. We will draw the delicious fuel that you will provide to us and then we will use your eruption against you as evidence of your unhinged mind, nasty temperament and unbalanced mental state.

Provocation is a mainstay of our behaviour. It comes in many forms, it is used in many different ways and on a range of occasions but its effects are always the same.

1. The provision of a massive dose of negative fuel from a primary source;
2. The exertion of control over you;
3. The reinforcement of our image of superiority, lack of accountability and omnipotence;
4. The creation of an emotional state in you which hampers your ability to think clearly and logically;
5. The creation of a situation where you can later be made to feel guilty for erupting in the way you have at us;
6. The manufacturing of a scenario which is used to reinforce our façade – we were calm and bewildered by this outburst.
7. The manufacturing of a scenario which is used to smear you to third parties.

Provocation is a very useful tool to us. It is used extensively and repeatedly. Know why it is being used. Do not try to outlast it and exert your capability for patience, tolerance and understanding. You are just goading us to try harder. Remove yourself before your threshold is reached to avoid giving us points 1-7 above.

Provocation will always be used against you.

Anyway, who do you think you are looking at?

You are a magnet. You attract our kind. You have done so at least once and you will continue to do so. Again and again. There is no hope for anything else. As an empath, super empath or co-dependent you radiate with the traits which draw us to you. Hitherto you had no awareness that this was the case. You would enter a room and be oblivious to the heads that turned your way as our kind detected your presence. You would have noticed that you were receiving the attention of people, but back then you had no knowledge of who was engaging with you or why that was the case. You have several sets of traits which appeal to us. These are the empathic traits, the class traits and the special traits. It is your empathic traits which stand out most of all.

These are evident in the way that you behave, the words you say, the gestures you use and the expressions that form on your face. The way your interact with people, the way you look about a room, the way you walk, the way you sit, the place you decide to sit and so many other things indicate to us your empathic nature. In the same way that everything we do is marked with the taint of our narcissism, everything that you do is stamped with the essence of your empathic traits.

When you walk into the hunting ground of our kind, you are identified promptly as exhibiting potential. It as if you give off a fuel signature, like some kind of scent which our kind smells and recognises as soon as you come near. You once did not see the Lesser as he leant against the bar and noticed you as soon as you entered the premises, his eyes fixed on you as he observed your entrance. The Mid-Ranger would look up from where was sat and find himself drawn to you, that unmistakable essence which you give off, being picked up and identified. Both Lesser and Mid-Range would not know why they wanted to engage with you save that they felt a compulsion to do so.

This need arises in the same way that a lion knows that it is hungry and therefore it must find some prey. The Lesser and the Mid-Ranger’s antennae twitch as you the empath walk through the bar. They are alerted to your presence and then they will watch and pick up on the other indicators which tell them what you are.

The Greater sees you and knows what you are. His lascivious grin indicative of the thoughts which are running through his mind as he begins to assess your suitability. You are signalling to him who you are, that you are empathic, that fuel is passing him by and an opportunity has presented itself.

Once upon a time you were oblivious. You walked through this den of narcissistic intent, unaware of the parasitic creatures that waited to climb down from their waiting perches so that they could engage with you, coil about you and draw you into their web with their silver-tongues and charm. You just thought they were being pleasant, polite and taking an interest. You had no idea how much danger you were in as you allowed your empathic traits to shine like a beacon. Each and every day you radiated these traits, issuing a sub-conscious “come and get me” to our kind. How good it felt to receive this attention. How pleasant it was to be courted in this manner.

As our kind picked up on your empathic scent and were drawn to you, they sought additional confirmations, assessing your class traits and hopefully special traits too, through a combination of instinct and design, dependent on which school of narcissist you had engaged with.

You do this as as easily as you inhale and exhale. Your traits are imprinted on you and they are indelible. They are part of your core and you cannot remove them. You cannot flick a switch and turn off these empathic traits. They are you. Imagine you will if some kind of glasses were created which allowed a physical representation of your empathic traits as hues of red light. If one donned those glasses and looked into this hunting ground as above, a bar perhaps, then one would see several things.

First there would be the normals who would have a slight red glow about them, indicating some empathic traits but limited in number and extent. There would be the dark and empty spaces which are where our kind lurk, the empathic traits completely devoid. Next one would see the dancing trails of scarlet and rose that signify the empath. The roaring flames of riotous red which blaze and indicate the presence of the super empath and then the supernova of bright red which is the signature of the co-dependent. As your gaze swept the room, one would see these differing hues and varying intensity, all indicative of the ever present empathic traits.

It is impossible for you to become incognito. You are unable to remove your empathic traits. You cannot switch them off and pass undetected. Accordingly, you will always stand out to our kind. You will always be identifiable, you will be seen and therefore if our kind is in the vicinity, whether physically proximate or through the accessibility of technology, we will be drawn to you. Like sharks which scent blood, like the hungry dog which smells meat, we pick you out and converge on you in anticipation of the fuel that will flow from you.

You will aways be a magnet for our kind. You have been created with empathic traits and you will always keep them. You will remain that beacon which we see and flock to. You will always attract us.

Of course you may learn to dampen down the manifestation of your empathic traits by altering some of your behaviours. Certain actions, words and gestures might be reduced, lessened and altered to reduce the extent of the empathic traits which you exhibit, but your traits always shine through and you cannot maintain this cloaking for long. It is contrary to who you are how you conduct yourself. Your empathic traits are so extensive that even when you have suffered the beasting at our hands and mouths, that when you have been drained, numbed and exhausted, the empathic traits will remain.

The empath will not shine with them as brightly and following the full horror of the devaluation and discard,t he empath will not function with such an obvious display of empathic traits because the brutality of the treatment will cause some diminution in function and display.

The super empath will continue to display these empathic traits because this person has the capacity to endure so much and then still have sufficient function to escape what has happened, once there is the eventual realisation as to what has happened. Once the super empath has had enough, they will seek their escape and their empathic traits continue to shine brightly.

The co-dependent, no matter how brow-beaten, how ground into the dirt he or she is, will continue to exhibit those empathic traits because the co-dependent would rather give you his or her last breath rather than take it for themselves. They continue to give, even when there seems there is nothing more that can be taken and thus their empathic traits remain on display.

This is why it is so often the case that you are almost passed from one of our kind to another. You are discarded but your empathic traits remain evident and thus another of our kind flocks to you, ready to gorge on the fuel which is generated by your empathic traits. Even if you escape, you continue to signal your suitability to us. You are unable to do anything other than stand out in this way.

It is only when you have gained the insight and understanding into knowing who it is that you keep attracting and why, that you finally learn what to watch out for. You cannot change what you are, indeed, why should you? What you can alter is your ability to identify us when we make that bee-line for you. As you radiate empathic traits, we also exhibit the narcissistic traits which once understood and once recognised in the behaviour of the everyday, mean you finally see and take notice of the red flags, flashing lights and blaring klaxons which herald this danger.

You will always be destined to be a magnet for us. That will never change. We will flock to you, be attracted to you and seek you out, our instincts seeking that scent of the empath which tells us that our needs will be met and fuel will be provided.

You will draw our interest and attention because the empathic traits flow from you. You will, once you gain the knowledge and understanding, know who it is who has joined you at the bar and flashed you that winning smile and then you can the seize the power.

Fear comes in many forms. It has the capacity to cause dread, anxiety and nervousness. Fear is one of the most powerful tools that exists to facilitate control over somebody. Think back to when you were a small child and the things that frightened you. Many of them have a universal applicability. How many times did you cry out to your mother and father in the night because you were frightened of the “monsters under the bed” and you were terrified that once the bedroom door was closed that something would come creeping out of the wardrobe and induce utter fear throughout you? Perhaps it was the strange shapes that formed once the light was turned off with only moonlight streaming through the crack in the curtains so that the shadow thrown across the room appeared like some old crone waiting to come and take you away and eat you. How many times were you warned as a child never to speak to strangers, never to get into a car with somebody you did not know and never to accept sweets from a stranger? Do you recall how this conjured up images of smelly old men in stained raincoats who waited to abduct you and spirit you away to be locked up who knows where? Perhaps there was that house on your walk back from school which had attracted a certain reputation. It was run-down, the garden overgrown, with bushes spilling onto the path, the windows grimy and paint peeling. You were never sure whether anybody actually lived there. Some said that a witch resided there and she waited for children passing on their own before grabbing them and stuffing them in her cellar to starve to death. Others told tales on stormy afternoons which made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, about the spirits that haunted the old house. A friend would swear that he had walked past, one wet and windy evening, just as it was going dark and he saw the face of a ghostly child staring at him from an upstairs window, the child’s spectral hands knocking against the window as if requesting help. After hearing that tale you took a different route home from school so you did not have to pass this particular house anymore. If that was not possible, you would run past, head down, shouting at the top of your voice to drown out any strange sounds that might come from the trapped ghost child, as you dared not even look towards the house. Fear often stalked your childhood and resulted in sleepless nights, nightmares and a reluctance to go to bed. Do you remember being sent to bed and staring up the stairs towards the darkness wondering what was waiting for you? How you did not want to appear scared in front of your parents (especially since they had let you stay up a while longer because you were a “big boy/girl” now). You wanted to hand those words back as you hovered at the base of the stairs, the hallway colder than the living room from which you had ventured. How many times did the noise of the house settling, resulting in strange groans and creaks convince you that somebody was waiting out of sight in a doorway, their heavy booted foot resting on the squeaky floorboard, rusty axe clutched in greasy, long-nailed fingers?  Did the sight of a clown have you running to hide in the folds of your mother’s dress, that strange leering and accentuated mouth creating panic in your tiny mind? What did that eerie clown have in mind for you?

It might have been a reluctance to paddle barefooted in the sea or a river because you could not see where you were putting your feet. You felt something brush your foot, most likely seaweed, but in your mind some razor-toothed fish was about to take a bite from your ankle or a crab was about to affix a pincer to your big toe. You turned and ran hollering from the edge of the sea back to the safety of the sandy beach. There may have been a murderer’s alleyway in your town, a badly-lit passageway between two roads which was a convenient and easy short cut during the day but a night the purported preserve of lurking knife merchants and yellow-toothed stranglers who were just waiting to pounce and take your life. You stood staring down the alleyway trying to drive the rising fear from you but it just would not go and instead you opted to walk the long way around. It took twenty extra minutes but at least you got home safely.

Fear continued to stalk your life as you grew older. You might not be worried about the bogeyman anymore but he has shapeshifted into the fear that comes with finding a lump about your body and not knowing what it is. Uncertainty about the business for whom you work has you tossing and turning at night. Wondering where the next pay check will come from has you similarly fearing for the future. Walking alone along a road at night and hearing footsteps behind you still causes your heart rate to increase. A glance over your shoulder as you cross the road to the over pavement only serves to heighten your worry as a hooded figure also crosses the road. Your step quickens as your fear increases and your mind floods with images of robbery, rape or murder. When alone in the house at night the sound of a bang from downstairs has you sat bolt upright in bed. What was that noise? Did you dream it? Was it somebody breaking in? Was it something not of this world, a poltergeist perhaps hurling a book against a wall. You cannot see what caused the noise and immediately the fear forms in the pit of your stomach, your racing mind conjuring up a score of unpleasant scenarios as you debate creeping to the top of the stairs and peering down to see if you can ascertain what it was.

Fear takes hold of you and makes your reasoning faulty. It tightens around your throat stopping you from calling out and turns your legs into stone so you are figuratively petrified and unable to escape that unseen tormentor. Fear withers you, paralyses you and you will do anything at all to escape that sensation of fear. It is pervasive, damaging and controlling.

Your greatest fears always stem from the unknown. It is that which you cannot see which causes you the greatest terror. When you cannot see something you are plunged into fear, its icy grip takes hold and you crumble. The unknown and the unseen create the fear. That is why we are so devastatingly effective in our control of you. That is why we create such numbing fear in you.

The hoover. A tried and trusted method of gaining fuel and exerting control over a victim once again. Whether they are benign or malign the hoover is an integral part of our repertoire. They are often part of a concerted action which is designed to break down your defences and suck you back in so we are able to exert control over you once again. Sometimes it is to con you into resuming the relationship again, sometimes it is purely to hurt you further and draw negative fuel. We may devise a particular scenario, use other people to effect the hoover by proxy and plan an effective way of establishing contact and then unleashing the hoover. For the hoover to be effective it must have two constituent parts: –

1. A method of contact;
2. A method of causing a reaction (positive or negative)

We may have devised a delightful scenario which will cause you to come running back to us oozing sympathy-based fuel but if we cannot establish contact with you it is pointless. This is why I often mention how it may seem that we have left you alone but all it is, is that we are waiting for a moment to establish contact so we can then cause the reaction. We are of course mindful that if you escaped us you have no doubt instigated no contact and that your defences remain high, you are on a state of alert and wary about what we are doing. Sometimes sheer force of the hoover and our magnetic personalities prove enough to surmount these defences but this can take time and in particular energy and as you know we prefer to conserve our energy. There is a particular hoover which I call the Seduction Shuffle. It is invariably a benign hoover and relies on you thinking we will do something and you are wrong-footed when we do not, only for us to then make our move.

The circumstances are such that we allow you to know that we are in the vicinity. This may be through somebody else. It might be by walking past where you live or work. We do not make any approach to you. We do not look towards where you might be watching us from, we do not reach out. All we do is want you to know that we are nearby and then we do nothing.

You have been expecting us to get in touch. When we first re-appear or you get news of us being nearby you will raise your defences again expecting an approach but then when it does not happen you are taken aback and confused. Why has he not tried to get in touch? He walked past your window the other day but did not even look towards you? He passed the office but acted as if he did not realise? Perhaps he is not interested in me anymore? Why would that be the case? You almost feel insulted by the fact that we are back in town and have not looked you up. You wonder what is wrong and in that usual way of yours you start to question yourself. This failure to act when we show up leaves you somewhat bewildered, possibly relieved and your defences come down. Maybe we have moved on, perhaps we are no longer interested in you although you cannot help but want to know why this is. Your curiosity is piqued and you are torn between knowing you should stay away but also wanting to find out why we have not approached you. Is it the case that we are no longer interested? Could this really be true? You need to know. Part of you wants the confirmation that it is over, part of you wants to know why you are not good enough for us to approach again and your desire to know proves difficult to control. Word reaches you from a third party that they were talking to us, but no, we did not mention you or ask about you. This troubles you although you know you should not care, but you do. Admittedly, there may be some of you who will not react to this method but they are in the minority. The desire to achieve some kind of understanding as to what happened, some kind of closure, perhaps the chance to get a few things off your chest still churns inside of you. The fact we looked well has drawn your interest again, rekindling thoughts and feelings from that first seduction, but overall you want to know why the shark is swimming nearby again but has not come hunting for you. We know these thoughts will be going through your head. We know you saw us. We know that you showed disappointment when a member of our coterie said they had spoken to us and not mentioned you. Already you have begun to provide fuel to us and we are content to wait for that delicious hoover fuel. Hoover fuel is always enjoyable, whether relief, joy, loving or upset, it all empowers us but it is especially rewarding when you come into our sphere of influence again. With defences lowered as you think that you are abler to handle our machinations and manipulations now you decide that you want to find out what we are doing back, who we are with and most of all the reason why we have not been in touch with you. The temptation proves too great and after all, one text message or a telephone conversation cannot do any harm can it? Once we see that message from you or your name appears on the mobile ‘phone screen, or we don’t recognise the number but recognise your voice when we answer we can scent even more fuel. You have made the contact and this tells us that you have opened yourself up to provide us with the sought after reaction and this waiting game has once again proven successful. We can now strike and finish the hoover.