The Ties That Bind
One of our central aims when we have targeted you is to bind you to us. During our seduction we create this magical place and invite you and only you to inhabit it with us. We build a fantastic place and place you on a pedestal in the centre of this artifice. It is very difficult for you to realise this is a fallacy and even harder to do something about it. Every day, every hour that you remain close to our influence allows us to create more ties, more connections and increase the extent that you are bound to us. We make you feel fabulous, worshipped and loved. The dizzying, whirlwind nature of our passion is unlike anything else you have known and you readily accept it. It is of course not informed consent. You have no idea what we are, but nevertheless you accept all of this wonderful treatment. You allow us to permeate every aspect of your life. We draw you into ours and make you feel special and privileged for being allowed to do so. Consider how we penetrated your every network so everywhere you turned we were there.
We knew all your friends, we ingratiated ourselves with your family and got to meet your colleagues. We knew all the places you liked to go to and introduced you to some additional ones. We made sure we knew every favourite thing of yours, from books to plays to food. Your wine rack became stocked with the types of wine you preferred, your wear the jewellery that was bought for you after careful solicitation of what you deem pretty and I occasionally arrive bearing a new book from the stable of authors that you enjoy to read. Bit by bit I invade your life and as our relationship progresses at light speed, the gradual, creeping advance of my influence has actually gained more than a toehold. It has spread across your territory like some formidable weed that cannot be held back, covering and smothering. My clothes hang in the wardrobe, I have my favourite chair at your house, you now buy the cereal that I prefer to eat in the morning even though you think it is just a mouthful of sugar. You now wash my socks, my songs populate the iTunes playlist and the bathroom is testament to my occupation with the bottles, razors and accoutrements mingled amongst yours. You cannot fail to see my influence all around you, but you welcome this and from it you gain a great happiness. From dating, to staying over, to co-habiting and on to marriage, this inexorable march of sudden and frantic seduction, although this is only ever apparent with hindsight as at the time it was the right thing to do, results in our lives entwining as I wrap my tendrils around your life and drag you tight against me. So many links, connections, lines and ties between you and I.
These ties keep you in place despite the abuse that is to come. It is sudden and bewildering but you will not give up easily. Not only did you say those vows, you meant every word and we know this. You will not let what we have built up crumble to dust. Admirable as your fortitude may be, you may as well stand on a beach and command the tide to halt its own unceasing advance for all the good you will do. This will not stop you trying though. We know this. The ties are many and they are tight so you will not run for cover at the first administration of a silent treatment. You will not down tools and walk away when the shouting continues long into the night. You do not pack a bag and leave it in the hallway, sitting on the stairs as you wait for us to return, late at night, from whatever tryst we have been engaged in. You keep going, bound to the hope that everything will be good once more, that the golden period will return. You hang in there, you battle, you demonstrate misguided resolve as we lash out time and time again, drawing the negative fuel from your distress, dismay and disarray. You will not let go. The connections are too many. Our behaviour is reprehensible as we open up front after front after front against you, leaving you confused and crushed. We twist, blame, push and pull yet you will not waver. No matter how many times we knock you to the floor you keep coming back for more, dragged back onto your feet by the ties that bind you to us.
Then one day you remove yourself from our toxic influence or in some instances you are removed. Those ties remain but there is an elasticity which allow you to escape us. To be taken away from the acidic words and vicious schemes. The insults, the violent rages, the isolation and the denigration may have been halted. You may no longer be subjected to being spat at, your hair pulled, your money withheld, your social interactions curtailed and your self-esteem trampled underfoot. You may have escaped the daily devaluations which came at you in so many different and unedifying ways but your ordeal is far from over.
You may not have our furious face shouting into yours anymore. You may not be sat cowering behind a locked bathroom door as we pound on it demanding you come out. You may not lie crying in a bed made to feel empty by our absence. You may not stand outside the study seeing the glow of the monitor within, under the door and wonder who we are engaging with online, that knotted sensation in your stomach inducing sickness. You may have escaped many of these manipulations but the ties that bind remain.
The bond we have created with you is so strong, so deep and so far-reaching that every day you will feel a vast void at being parted from us. You will excuse the abuse as you hanker for those golden days. You will feel like something has been ripped from you by our absence. Even though you know how terrible we have acted towards you, you will still suffer that sense of illogical loss. Every day feels empty. You wonder what we are doing, who we are with and whether we are thinking about you. You see our presence all around you still, people still ask about us, you collapse on to your bed burying your face in that t-shirt we kept under our pillow and you still smell us on it. You drink deep of the scent, hoping the nagging pain will recede, that somehow you will be magically restored to where we once both were, when we were happy. Your run your fingers over the tub of hair wax which we left and you remember watching us as we carefully applied it. You cannot bring yourself to discard it, clinging on to these reminders of the joy that once abounded in these walls. You pass the bookcase, touching the spines of the volumes we bought for you, the words and letters all further reminders of our presence here in this house. You miss us you miss us so much, you shouldn’t do, not after what we have done. Not after the vile treatments you have suffered. It makes no sense that you should feel this way but you do. You ache for us, the ties that remain are still being pulled and yanked, even though we are not there with you. The searing pain rises as another reminder appears, the tie still strong. Unlike an umbilical cord which provides life, your cord to us continues to pain you. When will this end? When will this agony recede and be replaced by something else? Would it now not even be better to feel nothing? To be numbed and anaesthetised so you do not have to endure this ongoing pain.
The bond we create with you is so powerful, so deep and so long lasting that it is often the aftermath of the ties that bind that hurts more than the abuse itself. That is how dangerous we are.
44 thoughts on “The Ties That Bind”
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Sorry to disappoint you, HG Tudor. I am cutting all the bands the Narc in my life has tied me down with. I have figured him out and his power over me is no more. Narcs are parasites that need to be expunged. They are pure evil as you have written. Once the divorce paper is finalized, he is finished. If I have a gun, I’d shoot him.
This is so on point. Over and over I would go back ,still not completely severed ties. A few sweet words would suck me back in ( hoover). 4 years of life not just wasted but so much damage done. Now the task of therapy . Thanks you for the article.
Pleasure
Done reading for the night!! This is all bullshit and i need to get in my jeep drive to his hotel and beat the shit outta him for all of the shit i have allowed him to put me through bcuz of his gaslighting..manipulation..games. Hoovers..silent treatments and whatever else the beast has up his sleeves that he will use to play on my sympathetic…empathic heart and soul!! But HG there is a light at the end of this tunnel if i can reach it bfore i unleash the devil side of myself thanks to YOU. You have given me the knowledge i have needed and your followers have given me some hope!!! Now its up to me…
Thank you for our phone consultations (will still be plenty more) and for your articles!! Me love you long time!!
Thank you HG! Bought one of your books today and I will start my Exorcism endeavor.
No more of your kind and I will be ready for any hoovers. Now very silent but I need the time to prepare.
One trigger today! Got some of the things he had delivered to a friends house today! Was the bag the stuff was in (from one of our favorite stores where we have good memories from during a trip) and the receipt of a very large purchase planned or just coincidence? It was delivered last year but did not pick it up until today. Damn those triggers and for one second I wanted to write a mail to ask if he needed the receipt?! But I didn’t.. instead ripped the receipt and continued reading your book.
C
It is part of the ever presence.
Lying on the balcony this morning with migraines (fxxxx weather & spring & time change), I was wondering: don’t you need the illusion for yourself, too? Aren’t you addicted, too, to the picture of the perfect relationship which is reflected back to you? What would happen, if YOU didn’t have that? What if a victim of yours created her own illusion for you? Hope. I’m making sense, as I said, my head is not so good today. 😉
But they don’t do they because they do not know what they are dealing with.
And the illusion you create, don’t you need it yourself?
I disagree there HG. Admittedly we don’t know what we are dealing with at the love bombing stage, but I think that, deep down, we know it’s too good to be true. We go along with it and deceive both you and ourselves because we don’t want to lose it. It just feels so bloody wonderful that we ignore the inner voice telling us we’re about to come a cropper. That’s how it now feels to me anyway.
If they did and understood your needs things could be very different or would this feel like a threat to your need to control?
Potentially.
If they understood your needs they would understand your need for control, work with you not against you. Awareness is the key
Ava I do hope you get some relief from your migraine and feel better soon.
Thank you!!! 🙂
Ava! So happy you mentioned the change of season and time change!
I think a lot of empaths are psychically affected by this. Hope you feel better.
Thank you, Love! Yes, I was wondering about that, too, my narc-mother said, that she didn’t feel it at all. And like HG, she is ALWAYS healthy and fine …
Love I would have to agree with that thought, dealt with the time change two weeks ago, now nature.
We do have something to look forward to thou, long days of daydreaming under the sky not bundled up and ready for the next ice age.
Yes Twilight! It seems our emotions and physiology are so connected to others and nature!
Yes we are to some degree, some more, some less. Depends on what gifts we were born with.
Twilight, what methods do you use? Meditation?
Meditation, I have started doing yoga, to which I am finding I enjoy, listening to music, spending time in nature are some of the things I do.
✂👍🛡
I closed FB, deleted Instagram, untagged all links, deleted all photos, cut all ties, burned all memories (except the most expensive gifts). I just wish I could delete him from my mind.
I’m working on it now. Tried for way too long for closure and answers. I now stopped chasing the illusion and will look forward.
No Hoover will be executed since he is exposed by me. I called in out on all his harmful shit and have devalued his ass in emails and letters. Once this fall he wrote that I had injured him greatly and was hoping to sit down once and for all to talk. He apologized for everything but can not point out what he is apologizing for! “What I have done to is inexcusable”
And then he did it again (don’t get me wrong.. I never went back but the lines of communication opened up after the silent treatment).
He is still linked to me .. or my feeling that we are strongly linked does not go away.
I hate him and love him. I know who he is and need to stop.
Will he hover? I don’t want to be him “block phones etc since I consider that being very childish).
I want him to hover to get closure but from reading here there will be no closure.
The last items I did not burn are hidden away .. one day I Will sell them and go on a long holiday… but not there yet!
Thank you for this site! Mind blowing truths to find here. The games, the lies .. laughed out loud when I read somewhere that he is keeping my most valuable possession to have a crack in the door. Damn that was good to hear. I already told him to forget about it .. don’t want it back. Will he eventually give it to me?
As I wrote in another comment.. I will book a audio session in two weeks .. just need to write down and the things I want to talk about!
He will hoover in accordance with the Hoover Trigger and the Hoover Execution Criteria. We can discuss this in detail when we have a consultation together.
I outed mine two times in eight years and he still hoovered me.
Those ties are too constricting. Even when i was with him. I understand what you are saying. So tight and controlling.
These hooks, HG, they hurrrrt.
HG,
Quick question: is it true that if you see someone yawn, your kind won’t have the subsequent reflex to yawn as well? (As “normal” people react).
Maybe you can put this to this to the test?
…Another beautifully written piece as always…
I do not yawn when somebody else yawns because yawning in this manner is an expression of empathy. I was not aware of this until it was recently pointed out to me.
If you didn’t know… quite a gold nugget for us then. I’ve never liked this reflex until now!
“Empaths 1- Narcs 1000”
Are you mimicking a yawn now in order to avoid detection? Wouldn’t want Kim to google “why he doesn’t yawn when I do”.
Much appreciated.
Ha ha, no I am not, she has no idea.
Ooh la la, I’ve triggered a laugh 😊
Well, don’t yawn at your own risks…
Empaths have a brand new weapon. A truth serum of some sort, that is instant, requires no energy and had remained undetected, even by our own Illustrious Leader…(well until recently)….
Our own “silencer”.🔫
Surely you appreciate the irony.😆
I’m getting so sleepy trying to remember if my ex-narc ever yawned … he just managed to fall asleep during group meetings. Hm.
But you do yawn when you’re tired?
What is this tired of which you speak?
Haha!
When you spent the night locked in your dungeon shaking the dating site cyber tree, to see which ripen fruits will fall at your feet. That one.
So, Handsome Genius (got that right?), do you yawn when tired? Or you rarely do, and it could be another tell, similar to your ability to stare without blinking, longer than empaths can?
Just trying to fill the Empath’s Handbag with Narc Detector accessories. 💄🔫
Very good. I am not often tired but fatigue can appear from time to time.
I rarely yawn but it does happen and I agree, that cold be seen as a tell especially when we do not yawn in reaction to someone else.
The Empath’s Handbag – sounds like a moody bar!
We need this Empath’s Handbag to compete with your Devil’s Toolkit!
Enlighten me further Master, what’s a moody bar?
Good response. Moody as in a little after hours, off the beaten track.
It’s not exactly the way you think it is. There are things that happen with our emotions that bind us to you, if only you knew… if you knew how love works, you would be surprised that you didn’t have to do much love bombing at all to bind us to you. Our own emotions do much of the work, without you having to do anything special. They are also the culprits that bind us to you after and during the abuse.
Your role is equal to that of any man on earth. Your only advantage is the fairy tale courtship, and mirroring.
im just giving you our side on this, that is understandably missing entirely from your post.
Ouch my heart. 🗡💙We never got our chance to play with rope. You would have suspended me and left me. I just know it. 🙃
Same. My heart wouldn’t care.
The last sentence says it all, some bonds go deeper, what do you say to those?