Where Has He Gone?
The relationship had hit a rocky patch, albeit describing it as such would actually understate the manner in which our relationship has progressed as of late. It would be more accurate to describe it as a series of peaks and troughs. The devaluation began and the unpleasant behaviour has worsened. There have been peaks when we granted you respite from the denigration and abuse, the brief reinstatement of the golden period, before you were plunged once again into another trough of bewildering and upsetting treatment.
Each descent seemed steeper and harsher than the preceding one. You hung in there, clinging on to the prospect of another glimpse of the golden period. Perhaps this time you would be able to hold onto it? After all, you must be doing something correctly mustn’t you if you can get the golden period to return? If only you could work out what was necessary to cause it to return and then for it to remain, then everything would be wonderful again. It is this eternal hope, which we rely on and that we stoke, which causes you to hold on even whilst you are being spun around, pushed and pulled and driven to despair.
This tumultuous period has persisted and then suddenly we have gone. We did not return when you expected us. The repeated telephone calls you have made have resulted in a ringtone but nobody answers. You have left repeated voicemail messages and you have sent numerous text messages, each with mounting desperation, begging and pleading for us to get in touch. You have called friends who have not been unable to assist in locating us.
You even called the local police and hospital to ascertain if we had been arrested or we were being treated following a fall or a road accident, but those enquiries have drawn a blank as well. You have checked our online presence and there is nothing that shows any activity there since we disappeared. Messages do not even show as read. There is no indicator of us being online for over twenty hours now. It is as if we have vanished from the face of the earth.
People may regard this as the discard. This moment when we just cease all contact with you and disappear. It certainly feels like you have been discarded. As the hours turn into days and you still have heard nothing, you feel like we have just gone elsewhere without caring about telling you, providing you with some kind of explanation or even being concerned about the effect this disappearing act has had on you. Although this sudden cessation by our kind has gained popular description as the discard, a more accurate way of describing it would be to call it the pause.
This is because although we have vanished and we give the appearance of having ended the relationship, in our minds it has not ended. I have mentioned before that from the moment you are engaged by us, you have accepted an unwritten contract that you will be bound to us, in some way, until one of us dies. The nature of this binding, this connection will vary dependent on the various stages of the relationship. During seduction we will have many tendrils wrapped around you as we bind you tight to us and this continues during the golden period.
The tendrils will unravel and then tighten again during the devaluation stage and then nearly all will release you when the “discard” occurs. You may not see us, you may not hear from us, you may have no contact at all with us, but in our mind there still remains some tendrils between us. A handful may still remain for the purpose of gathering fuel. Even though we cannot see your desperation and your despair, we know that this is what you will be experiencing and this provides us with fuel. Accordingly, there remains an intangible connection between us still. Even when those fuel tendrils loosen, it remains the case that there will be at least one left which will remain for however long is necessary before more tendrils come looking for you again as we unpause the hiatus and hoover you.
Accordingly, it may appear that we have discarded you but that is not actually the case. We have pressed pause so that we can halt that relationship. At some point we will return and press play again. You may have moved on in terms of your life, trying to heal and to piece things together again. We regard the relationship just as it was before we disappeared.
That is why we often behave like nothing has happened. When we do re-appear we display an astonishing tendency to carry on as normal, as if the hiatus of months, maybe even years, did not actual happen. This is because from our perspective there has been no hiatus. We paused our dealings with you and now they can continue. Whatever else has gone on in between is irrelevant and does not need to be discussed. This capacity to behave in such a manner leaves you bewildered and amazed but this is entirely how we regard matters when we do such a disappearing act. All we have done is press pause and you are expected to be ready and waiting for when we come back and press play again.
So where do we go when this happens? The simple answer is that something shinier, brighter and more interesting has gained our attention. Just like how a child can be playing with building bricks and then when a toy with noises and flashing lights is waved under his or her nose, the child wants the new toy and immediately forgets about the reliable building bricks, we are the same.
We will have been cultivating and courting this new toy and when we deem that it is superior to you we want to play with it all the time. We do not want to play with you anymore. When we seduced you, we made you feel like nothing else in the world mattered and you were the centre of our universe. This is now happening with your replacement. This more effective appliance has been chosen over you and in order to ensure that the seduction is totally effective and the fuel is obtained in huge amounts all attention must be focused on the new arrival. We will have moved between the two of you for a period of time (although you may not know this was happening) as we evaluated the prospects of the positive fuel from them against the continuing negative fuel from you. We enjoy receiving both but then the decision is made that the positive is going to be in copious amounts and therefore we switch to wanting this all the time and you are forgotten about, although not forever.
When this pause happens we will be concentrating on the new primary source of fuel that we have selected. The seduction had already begun. This is now the golden period for us and her. Just like the one you had. For this to continue the binding and the fuel provision all our efforts must be concentrated on her and not you. All resources are shifted to this front and you are forgotten about. It seems as if you never existed but we have not pressed stop. You do not get away that easily. We pressed pause so that you were shunted to one side so we could ensure that nothing got in the way of the coupling up with the new appliance. We will be taking them to places, whisking them away, spending lots of time at their house, just as we once did with you. That is where we have gone to. We have gone to someone else and have done it with the intensity and totality as we once did with you.
Do not despair however. We will be back to press play again. When might that be? You will be given no clue but the temptation of fresh hoover fuel will mean that pause becomes play, although it is more likely to feel like rewind to you as it all starts again.
18 thoughts on “Where Has He Gone?”
Vent Your Spleen! (Please see the Rules in Formal Info)
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Learning of my ex’s narcissism I have been doing a bit of looking back on that relationship. One of the things that now makes so much sense is the time that he “needed some space” and was still in bed with my replacement the following morning when I called him to discuss what had happened. Three months later he started what I now know was a hoover and a month later we were right back where we’d been. Now I understand that he’d probably had that relationship brewing prior to detaching from me and the three months was exactly how long my initial “GP/seduction” had been. Why this just hit in these terms, after the time spent here already, I have no idea. It is hard coming to terms with the fact that I took him back.
Those are hard moments to confront, AV, and I think we all have those “I could kick myself” moments when we realize what we have done by letting the narcissist find their way back into our lives, our homes and our beds. It all comes back to the not knowng – not knowing what narcissism is, not knowing we have been impacted by it all our lives sometimes making us even more vulnerable, not knowing our true value and worth. There are so many ways we were unaware, and there were so many ways our empathic natures came to the fore with love and forgiveness, and hope and a desire to heal. We did what we did for the right reasons, and because that is who we are as people. Thankfully, now we know even more about who we are and putting the pieces together helps us to know more about the narcissist, too. I took both my narcs back time and again, believing water under the bridge, along with their false contrition and future faking promises was somehow going to make things right. I can’t imagine a way we will get caught again. Not after all we have been through and how we have now been able to make sense of it all. Part of my path for 2021 will be to leave that past behind. I can finally jettison it, knowing what it was and how I wasn’t to blame x
LET, you are correct. Thank you for your uplifting words, sadly for most here, we are not alone in these realizations or experiences. I am feeling very much to blame at the moment and will have to find a way to sort that out, thank you for understanding. Literally moments ago I used the phrase “kick myself” in reply to Leigh on another thread. And tonight I am very angry with him also, forgiveness set aside until it’s sorted. I thought it would be cathartic to know, in time it may be, but right now it’s just not.
Dear HG, guess what? My boyfriend from when I was 14 (we only ever kissed… for hours) has hoovered me. He said he saw me at the hospital in 2018 and I looked at him for 2 seconds right before his for surgery. And he said I must have been there for one of my parents and he hopes they are alright. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t at the hospital. I’m quite sure he would be a narc or psychopath.
He has now told me he hated my best friend when I was 14…she was an Upper Lesser type A Somatic. I think he’s very stuck in this distant era.
I am unsurprised.
It was flattering and it gave me a hit for my addiction
Let’s hope it doesn’t lead to more cravings, Whitney.
Thank you Lickemtomorrow!
My addiction is always in full force because I follow my feelings rather than HG’s advice.
OK, Whitney <3
I love your little quips and see you are determined to get high on life.
Perhaps one day you will decide to follow HGs advice and until that day I look forward to seeing you around xox
Aw thank you Lickemtomorrow you are the best! Such a wise and brilliant lady. I love reading all your comments.
Oh now 1 week following our first conversation he has simply messaged “Miss you”. That put me into shock, HG and Lickemtomorrow.
Maybe I am special in his memories.
Awww, thank you Whitney <3 I am very humbled by your lovely comment x
I know that feeling of shock when the narc comes back to hoover you. It's so tempting to respond. That's what the narc wants us to do and what our addiction encourages us to do. It is very confrontational in some ways and our addiction leads us to believe it is complimentary. We want our narc to miss us. That makes us feel special as you said. What we need to remember is how we experienced that relationship with the narcissist and why we needed to step away from them. They are bad for us. No matter how much we wish that wasn't the case. And how much they want us to believe that isn't the case.
I know you've got this, Whitney. You're here for a reason. Stay strong.
Believe me, I know how you are feeling. Let HG and his work be your guide xox
Thank you for your help Lickemtomorrow, you are absolutely right 💖
It is exciting and tempting to respond to Narcs. My fantasy mind goes haywire imagining how they love me. I can take the simplest thing and place such meaning into it.
This particular narc never really ensnared me because we were 14. He’s not my type. Seems like an alcoholic and has tattoos. I like more sophisticated abusive men.
My response to him was “that’s nice, thank you” or something like that. I can’t ignore someone who’s expressing their feelings. Maybe he’s not a Narc and it’s of great significance to him.
By the way he looks exactly like Mark Wahlberg. I like the round face but I don’t like the squinty eyes.
Hey Whitney, I see you’ve added some more thoughts and they’re all very interesting. Sounds like you’re attracted to the ‘bad boy’ types and no doubt looking like Mark Wahlberg could be a bit of a drawcard. It’s good you are untangling some of your thoughts around it here.
We all need to know what attracts us to the narcs in the first place and part of that is our addiction. Another part is who we are as empaths and I know my co-dependency would draw me to a narc who would take charge. Even though I’m very independent in some respects I’ll let my guard down around this type. It is very much an addiction in that sense and almost a craving. An automatic response built into me which I understand now I need to check.
I don’t know if you’ve read Chained but that gave me more insight.
You are very open about being drawn to abusive men, even if you prefer them to be more sophisticated, and what I’ve described above might be the reason why. The sense of them taking charge may make you feel secure, even if it’s the most insecure situation you may ever find yourself in. And that’s because they are dangerous. Their enjoyment comes from having control over you and on our part we enjoy handing them that control. Never realizing what is at the bottom of that.
Your lovely empathic nature (plus your addiction) may cause you to respond to the likes of the hoover you received. And I can understand the imagination taking over and generating further thoughts of what it all means. I have a vivid imagination myself x That can generate higher levels of emotional thinking which then becomes its own feedback loop. Been there, done that. If we leave that aside, the truth is it is hard to ignore people, especially if we imagine they have a need and we as empaths can fulfill that. If he is a narc, and that was a hoover, then as HG explains the best thing to do is not respond and, even better, block them so the temptation isn’t there in the first place. Hard to do, but necessary to break the cycle.
While we can be flattered by the compliment to know someone is thinking of us, ultimately we want the right people to be thinking about us. The only way you’d know for sure about this guy is if you did the narc detector, but it sounds like he’s in your more distant past and for the most part not your type. Hopefully that will keep some of the thoughts at bay and any emotional thinking around that will reduce.
You’ve got a lot going for you, Whitney <3 And I love the fact you're so open and expressive of your feelings. Finding a way to channel a lot of that so it works in your favour is what I would wish for you. I would not want some badass guy – especially a narcissist – to destroy that lovely sense of openness and joie de vivre you express.
You have a lot to give. I appreciate you sharing more. Don't sell yourself short x
‘…..that something shinier, brighter and more interesting has gained our attention.’ So all of those absences make sense – the pause. I wasn’t good enough for the narcissist any longer so he was sourcing out others the entire time I realize now. However, the narcs can attempt to come back and press play all they want, they will get nowhere with me.
Q: ‘Where Has He Gone?’
A: Hoovering around the house, the garden, the hedges, the fence, the biscuit crumbs from the bed…….