I Spy A Private Eye
I have often mentioned the empath’s need to know. Initially this is borne out of your desire to know and to understand for the purpose of enabling you to discharge your caring and nurturing abilities. Only by understanding and knowing what is wrong, what is going through someone’s mind or understanding their situation are you able to assist and help. Some people like to know because they are inquisitive. Some people like to know because they are downright nosey. We like to know so we can use it against you or to further our own schemes. You like to know so you can help. This is a core trait of the empathic individual and it is not something that you are ever able to let go. Even when we are subjecting you to the devaluation you are unable to accept that it is happening without being able to understand why. You need to know. We know you need to know and we exploit this. This is why we engage in denial, deflection and circular arguments because we are entirely aware this inability to allow you to know and to understand draws fuel from you but also keeps you doing this. Even when we discard you, you still want to make sense of what has happened. You need and want to know why did we treat in the way we did, why did we do all those awful things to you and why were you not enough? By tapping into this trait of yours we also ensure that you have to know what we are doing once we have flung you to one side.
You will ask our friends what we are doing and pose similar questions to our family in a bid to ascertain what we are now doing without you. You ask your friends to spy on your behalf, gathering information about the places that we have been to and the people we have fraternised with. You see, if you try to escape from us then you cannot get rid of us as we appear with Hoover in hand ready to suck you back. However, if we have decided that we have extracted as much fuel as we possibly can from you (at least for now) we will do our utmost to remain invisible and keep you guessing. We want you wondering what we are doing? We want you to be sat contemplating where we are and who we are with? Are we happy? Are we thinking of you?
This need to know becomes overwhelming and you then embark on your role as private eye. You will stalk our Facebook page in order to gather information. We will block you in order to increase the work for you but you will use a friend’s profile to look or create a false one. You will drive past the places you know we might be, home, work and recreational and social places hoping to catch a glimpse of what we are doing so you can satiate that need to know. You will create a new profile and follow us on Twitter, checking each day to see what we have written. Is there a new girlfriend? What is she like? Are we taking her to the places we took you? Who are these people in the photographs and where are they taken? We know you will be spying and the more you try and learn the more questions will arise. We use obsessing as a method of manipulation and this continues in this mould.
Our everpresence will keep reminding you and you do not help yourself as you repeatedly reinforce our presence in your mind by searching, checking and spying. You will search our name on Google, examine our work website for any changes, check on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Like a detective hunting for clues you will keep at it each day. You create a habit in order to feed the addiction which is the need to know. We know you will do this, we engineer and we encourage this behaviour in you. The knowledge that you are engaged in these practices gives us fuel. We cannot see you or hear you yet we know you are spying on us. We know what you are like and we can picture you earnestly hunched over your keyboard as you stare at your monitor. Don’t deny it because when we do Hoover you it is one of the first things we tease from you. How many times a day did you check our Facebook profile? You will admit you did it at least three times a day and tell us how much you missed us. You will ask about the new person we were with and who you saw posts referring to and all the photographs that we displayed. Did we miss you too? You always ask this as well. Why? Because you always need to know.
8 thoughts on “I Spy A Private Eye”
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Well said A Victor, I don’t cry very often, but this brought a tear to my eye. Virtual hug.🤗
Thank you for the hug Eternity.
Awww A Victor you are so welcome hun !
It’s true, from the very beginning I have had a need to know WHY? Why did he have to do this in such an awful abusive way? What is wrong with him? Because if I had a diagnosis or something then I could either fix it like you said or I could at least understand that it wasn’t all my fault. This is still why I started reading all these blogs, listen to all your audios. I’ve learned what he is because you are accurate to a T. But I don’t check his facebook. I don’t drive to his girlfriend’s house–never have. I don’t go to the places where I think he might be. I did that for about six months and then stopped. I blocked him on Facebook (which he just joined within the last year after never having one bit of interest in it.) I blocked him on Linked in and Instagram, blocked him on my cell phone. I don’t ask friends about him, as a matter of fact I don’t even speak with his flying monkey friends that used to be mine, anymore. The only avenue is email and I need to keep that until I can get this divorce over and a rental sold. It’s my mother that I have to stop from paying so much attention to his every move, speculating about his motives, telling me what he posts on Facebook, telling me when he’s at the pool across from my house. WTF? I’ve told her time and again I have him blocked because I don’t want to know. But then I converse with her when she tells me. Sometimes I even lash out at him after talking to her about it. What do I expect from someone who has not been able to let go of my father after over 30 years in her second marriage? Wondering if you have any blogs or audios on parents or friends who instigate contact and further emotional thinking? In a way this is sort of hoovering by proxy isn’t it? Or what is it? She listens to most of your audios too.
Hi Christa, I was so interested to read your comment and I think what you might have going on is an element of Cross Pollution. At least, I think that’s what HG calls it. I still haven’t done the full rundown on it myself, but HG has an item in the Knowledge Vault under that title which might help explain it. Basically I believe it’s where someone in contact with you is still having some level of contact with the narcissist which keeps bringing them on to your radar.
It’s an unfortunate fact that sometimes we have to distance ourselves from a lot of people in order for that not to happen. Some people inadvertently play flying monkey to the narcissist, or maybe in your case your mother somehow thinks she’s helping you by telling you what he is up to, the same as she might have liked to know what your father was up to (if I’m reading that right). Might be good for the two of you to listen to the Cross Pollution audio and it’s great she’s already listening to HGs work. That sounds like a real bonus!
When my ex left I did not do these things. I did not care anymore, it was as if he had died. Every once in a great while there was some interaction with one of his siblings, on one occasion his dad, but I stayed away from them as much as possible as I did not want to hear anything. Since coming here however I have learned that this “why did we do all those awful things to you and why were you not enough?” has held me hostage. I didn’t have any idea where to start asking questions though. I knew he wasn’t the one to ask and in reality I didn’t even know I needed to know anything or what the questions were. But, now I know not only what the questions are but also many of the answers.
Those times when there were evidences of indiscretions but no hard proof, I gave him way too much wiggle room, I doubted myself, my gut instinct, and instead opted to believe his lies. Why would a person do this? My gut says because I was an idiot. My head now knows it was the addiction and ET causing this. I hope these two join at some point. Now I understand why my daughter tolerated two years of emotional and physical abuse, she was telling herself the same things. I see how abuse is abuse is abuse now.
This process had taken over 8 months to get to the point where I could ask “What if I was wrong, what if he was actually good and honest and I threw it away?” This process has had to go at a pace I could handle with regard to really learning the truth. It has not been without pain, it has not been without pause at times but it has been necessary for me to be able to really put that relationship in a metal casket, nail it firmly shut, put it into a concrete lined grave deep underground and bury it. There have been many tears shed over the last 8 months, more than were shed in all the years since he left combined. But even with the grieving which seems to persist a bit, it feels really good to know, he did those awful things because he is a narcissist, I wasn’t enough because he is a narcissist. That’s it. I don’t need to know any more. Same with my dad. I will never be able to repay HG for giving me these truths and with them the freedom to live, to live narc free, to live abuse free, to live understanding my past and looking forward to my future. I can only hope others who come by the blog benefit in some way from reading my journey, we are all little pieces of HG’s legacy, may those pieces help others as he has helped us.
I really enjoyed reading your comment, AV, and appreciate you sharing those thoughts <3
Especially those you shared in the last paragraph.
It all comes down to them being a narcissist, pure and simple. In that sense we are blameless. What a relief. And what a great opportunity and insight to gain, knowing that we don't have to carry that for the rest of our lives, that it's their burden, not ours.
I, for one, have definitely benefited by reading your journey here x
And we are all little pieces of HGs legacy. Love that final thought on helping others <3
You’re welcome LET, I have enjoyed being here also. And I have benefited from your input! Yes, that burden from the past has been released now. Now it’s avoiding it happening again and I now think there is a chance for that. One thing in the interview HG just put on the blog was that a healthy relationship grows slowly because the people involved have lives. I am looking at getting my life going, what do I want to do now that I’ve grown up! It is exciting! Golfing, car shows, my kids and grandkids, getting my yard sorted out, maybe taking a class or two of some kind etc. What do I like now? How can I get those things going in my life?
I can’t take credit for the legacy comment, that was from HG somewhere along the way, a YT video I think. But I like thinking we’re a part of it, if it helps him. That’s small payback for what he has done for me. The irony that he doesn’t care about us yet the good he’s doing for us will live on to help people many years beyond us does not escape me, it’s phenomenal.