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“Dear Narcissist

I wish you’d acknowledged the various loans I’d made you and given me a plan I could work with. I would have protected you then.

It seems so ludicrous to have risked it all when I told you I would expose you and seek legal recourse if you didn’t reply with some sort of arrangement. You had more than fair warning beforehand. Instead, you chose to respond with brutality and aggression. Why? Did you really never have any intention of paying me back? Was this always the outcome I should have expected? All rhetorical questions by the way. I don’t need or want a response.

I’ll give you your due in that you really did put on a great act if your intention all along was to steal from me and use me for what you could manipulate out of me. You’re a lot of things, but I didn’t expect you to be a thief. Though perhaps I should have. The evidence really was staring me in the face all along. Anyone who can cheat and lie the way you did can’t lay claim to integrity in any area of life. I acknowledge now that I should have seen it coming.

I wish I’d never loaned you a cent. Clearly, I enabled you to my own detriment in more ways than trying to love you through all the shit you rained down on me. You’re an adult man for Christ’s sake. It’s your job and responsibility to provide for yourself at least. You sat on your arse and did nothing about your circumstances, literally living off me while you fucked me and shamefully lied so much my head is still spinning even today.

There’s such a thing as cognitive dissonance where two or more polar opposite emotions exist in the same moment. That describes our relationship and particularly where I find myself now. I don’t love easily, so when I do, it’s for life. I will always love you. I don’t hate easily either. I’m thoroughly traumatised by everything you put me through, I’m ashamed of the person you’ve shown yourself to be, and I hate you. I will always hate you. Those two emotions exist in parallel and I struggle every day trying to reconcile them.

You’re a bitter, miserable, lazy and entirely self-centred human being. You lash out at anyone who gets too close. You have no deep friendships because it’s impossible for people to sustain their relationship with you when they meet who you really are. They have to put you at arms length to stay in your life on the occasions where the wind blows and you think to call on them. You put on a great front initially, I’ll give you that. As soon as someone sees behind the mask though, you’re all shards of glass ready to rip and tear through anyone who dares get too close. 

I feel so sorry for your family. Your parents love and support you no matter what. They enable you too. You hurt them so deeply and so consistently that it must be hell on them. Your sister knows what you are I think, and manages to keep you at a distance because she lives in another city and you can’t take from her anymore. Your kids are destined to be either seriously fucked up themselves, attract people like you in their own lives as they get older, or they’ll eventually find they too need to shut you out as your eldest son has already done, or keep you at arms length as your sister does. What a sad indictment on you as a son, a brother and a father.

Obviously, I speak from experience as to what you’re like as a friend and a partner. Your wife once wrote to me after you cheated on me with her that your marriage was a very few intermittent highs, mostly in the beginning, followed by a series of extremely low lows. I wholeheartedly agree. In a relationship, your selfishness knows no bounds. You take and you use for your own ends, and you only give rare breadcrumbs in return. You project and you deflect, you blame everyone else for your problems, and take no accountability yourself – it’s always someone else’s fault. You criticise, denigrate and judge by some ridiculous ideal that doesn’t exist except in your own mind (and not one you ever live up to yourself). Your self-loathing is turned around on your lover, expressed through unbelievable verbal and emotional abuse, silent treatments and sulking, and a pure unadulterated victim mentality. 

You ARE a classic narcissist, and the worst part about that, is that it’s highly unlikely you will ever change. There’s almost no hope at all. It’s a personality disorder that is so resistant to change that it’s widely considered to be incurable. There’s no drug you can take, no mind or mood altering substance. There is psychoanalytic psychotherapy and cognitive psychotherapy that has seen limited results through psychiatrists who specialise in Cluster B Personality Disorders, but generally only when the bottom of the barrel has already been reached, and there’s nowhere to go but up (save death) by a committed patient willing to lay all of their cards on the table who desperately wants to change.

If you want further evidence, I can steer you in the right direction. In the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th Edition), known as DSM-5, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is diagnosed based on a set of 9 criteria. In my experience of you, you score off the charts in all 9 of the criteria. I’ve told you this before, and I’ve also said that I believe you are co-morbid (meaning you have a dual issue) because you also meet the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s not just me that believes this, Carole (our former Counsellor & Psychologist) and Emma (your own former Psychotherapist) believe it too as you already know. I no longer have a single doubt in my mind that you are a highly disordered, dysfunctional person. I don’t know what it would take for you to see and understand that and find the help you need to get on top of it, or whether that’s even possible for you. For everyone in your life’s sake, I hope one day you do get to the bottom of the barrel and seek real help so you don’t continue to ruin your own life, and the lives of people who love you. Maybe you’ll do it for your kids – probably not, but one can hope.

HG Tudor writes a blog called “Knowing the Narcissist” which I’ve told you about many times. He is a self-confessed narcissist and his blog is part of his therapeutic journey. If you don’t care enough to read the DSM-5, then maybe read a post (or 20) of HG’s. I think you’ll find it impossible not to relate. On his scale, you are a Lesser/Mid-Range Narcissist. You’re also known in other circles as a Covert- or Victim-Narcissist.

Whatever way you look at it, you have a personality disorder that mentally and emotionally controls you, just as much as you need to try to control everybody else in your life. I feel pity for you because, regardless of where it stems from, I know that the emptiness, inability to love other people, lack of real empathy, self-hatred and blackness within you won’t go away, and you’ll continue to inflict it on other people as long as they’re around to tolerate it.

I told you that I know you my Narcissist, better than I think you know yourself. I studied you and your behaviour as I would anything else previously unknown to me, that I needed to learn everything about as if my life depended on it. Unfortunately for me, it didn’t stop me from loving you or being shredded by you as a result of knowing what I know now. That’s my own cross to bear, and I have to learn how to trust not only men, but also myself again because I didn’t heed any of the red flags I saw waving right in my face almost from day one. Hindsight is useless after five years of crap, unless it serves to stop me from letting another disordered person close to me again.

The tough thing is that it’s not over for me yet. The addiction I had to you (and now at least understand why) is still alive and kicking. I know I’m still susceptible to you which is exactly why I wanted to cut off contact altogether. You prolonging this issue about the money you owe me is preventing me from being able to do that properly. I think you were angry at me for telling you I didn’t want to see you or have personal contact any longer. You felt as though you had lost your control over me, and so you lashed out and threw a mind-bending tantrum to inflict maximum pain so you felt better about your own conduct. It’s not working in the way you think though. I’m more determined than ever to hold you accountable and have every dollar I loaned you repaid. You don’t have my loyalty or respect any longer, and I have no regrets involving your wife and divulging the extent, timeline and nature of our relationship to her. If only I’d had that same benefit accorded to me. Maybe I’d not have believed it, but I’d have at least been forewarned and better able to watch for the signs I now know were there all along.

This legal action by me was a very deliberate, conscious last nail in the coffin on you and I, a demonstration that you no longer have any control over me at all, and my way of causing you to feel some consequences for refusing to acknowledge the loans and make a plan to repay them. If it costs you your marriage, that’s on you as I warned you it would be. If it makes access to your kids difficult or even impossible – again, that’s on your choices and behaviour. If she forgives you and all is fine, then more fool her – you’ve done a magnificent job of manipulating the hell out of her, and she’ll no doubt rue the day at some point in the future. 

How’s Chelsea, by the way? Celeste? Andrea? At least I was able to warn Alice who you were when you couldn’t avoid telling me the truth about her any longer. Remember the lie you tried to sell? You insisted she was your cousin for Christ’s sakes! She saved herself and her son, ditching you before she had to go through any of the shit I did. She was very thankful I sent her screenshots of your horrific messages about setting her up to fuck her, as well as fuck your wife (as if you weren’t already). Another fine example of you lashing out at me because I refused to come to you after you lost your August 2018 child access hearing against her and stormed out of court, abusing me by text as I tried to work. According to you, that was somehow my fault too. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen you for two weeks at that time. Apparently I was in control of the global #metoo campaign that caused you to lose your mind in Family Court. That’s some awesome power I wish I’d known I had there!

I’m sure there are others now too, I wonder what your wife suspects or knows of them? I wonder if she knows you told me regularly you would always cheat on her if I didn’t stay in your life? Who you follow on Facebook and who follows you should be more than enough to alert her, but I’m guessing she’s tried to connect with you on that platform and you haven’t accepted her invitation. Feel free to block me, I’ve enjoyed having that little perspective into your addiction to porn and your life, but it serves no purpose now. Regardless, it’s none of my business any longer, and I don’t want it touching my life. 

I will say that the smear campaign on your wife you kept up had me fooled for a long time. I definitely bought what you were selling right up until around the time she had your baby in February – that she was a scornful, manipulative, lying bitch. I believed you when you told me over and over that you would never go back to her after the pain she’d inflicted on you. I felt hate towards her for all that you’d told me she’d done to you. So many times you said you hated her and wished her dead, that you wished I was the mother of your children, that she used sexual coercion and control over you so you could spend time with your kids. You lied so convincingly that I was the love of your life, your soulmate, the person who knew you best, the woman you wanted to marry and spend the rest of your life with, and I bought it all. 

For the record, I don’t feel that way about her anymore. I have perspective now and I’m certain you are doing the same thing to her about me. I think she’s an ordinary woman who tried or is trying hard to keep her relationship together for your sake because you were in the background manipulating and lying to her as well. She has your children so she is bound to you, and for that I’m sorry for her too. If only she knew a tenth of what you told me about her, she’d run and hide as far away from you as she could get. I can guess how it’s playing out when you’re forced to talk about me with her because I named her as a co-Defendant, hence I’m running as far from you as I can get, and thank God I don’t have the misfortune of sharing children with you. 

I’ll do what needs to be done and take it to whatever extent is open to me from a legal standpoint to make sure I am repaid every dollar you owe me, regardless of how long that takes. In time, I’ll find a way to forgive you in my own mind. Rest assured, I’ll do that for me because that’s who I am, not for you. As much as I admit that I still and always will love you, and that I’m conflicted over how I feel, you are never welcome in my life again.

IGB

PS – Note to your wife: if you get to read this as I’ve addressed it to you also, and you want to get to the bottom of the pile of shit I’m sure you feel isn’t quite what it seems with him, you are welcome to contact me to talk. If not, then it might at least pay you to visit HG’s blog I mentioned in the letter or read more about Narcissistic Personality Disorder yourself. I used to think it was you who was the problem because he’s clever enough to have built a formidable case against you, but I know better now and, despite how you’ve also insulted me previously, I understand it to an extent and do feel for the position you’re in. You know how to reach me.”

Look out for future notifications.

KNOWING THE NARCISSIST — FREQUENTLY USED ACRONYMS

(These can be found in the blog menu for future reference)

(If you need to learn more about the information below, use the search bar)

Narcissist Cadres

S         Somatic

C        Cerebral

V        Victim

E         Elite (cerebral and somatic)

Narcissist Schools                                                   

THE LESSER NARCISSIST

LLN           Lower Lesser Narcissist

MLN          Middle Lesser Narcissist

ULN           Upper Lesser Narcissist

THE MIDRANGE NARCISSIST

LMRN        Lower Mid-Range Narcissist

MMRN       Middle Mid-Range Narcissist

UMRN        Upper Mid-Range Narcissist

Example of Combined School and Cadre:

EMMRN =  Elite Middle Mid-Range Narcissist (note some cadres apply to all schools, others do not)

THE GREATER NARCISSIST

LGN            Lower Greater Narcissist

MGN           Middle Greater Narcissist

UGN            Upper Greater Narcissist

THE ULTRA NARCISSIST

UN                Ultra Narcissist

Note that not all cadres apply to all schools.

Empath Schools                                                   

C            Contagion Empath

CoD       Co-Dependent Empath.

SE          Super Empath

E            Empath (aka Standard Empath)

Empath Cadres

G          Geyser

M         Magnet

Mt       Martyr

C          Carrier

S           Saviour

School and cadre combined, example:         MSE = Magnet Super Empath

Fuel Supply Type

IPPS                       Intimate Partner Primary Source

IPSS                       Intimate Partner Secondary Source

DLSIPSS               Dirty Little Secret Intimate Partner Secondary Source

SIPSS                   Shelf Intimate Partner Secondary Source

CIPSS                   Candidate Intimate Partner Secondary Source

NIPS                     Non Intimate Primary Source

NISS                    Non Intimate Secondary Source

TS                        Tertiary Source

ITS                      Intimate Tertiary Source

NITS                   Non-Intimate Tertiary Source

(please see the book ‘Fuel’ to understand more about this hierarchy and its tole with regard to the narcissist)

Additional Frequently Used Acronyms:

ET               Emotional Thinking

GOSO      Get Out Stay Out

LT               Logical Thinking

ACON     Adult Child of Narcissist

N                 Narcissist

GPD          Genetic Predisposition

NC              No Contact

LOCE        Lack of Control Environment

ST              Silent Treatment

PST            Present Silent Treatment

AST              Absent Silent Treatment

BH                Benign Hoover

SATN          Sex and the Narcissist (book)

MH               Malign Hoover

TTIF            Thank Tudor it’s Friday

TF                Thought Fuel

PF                Proximate Fuel

HT.              Hoover Trigger

HEC.            Hoover Execution Criteria

LDE.            Long Distance Empath (see the article the The Loneliness of the Long Distance Empath)

HGT            a god

 

Do you remember when you were at school and your friends all appeared to know something that you did not? They gave each other knowing looks, made sideways references to “this thing” and smiled and giggled. Unsettling wasn’t it? You asked them to tell you, you pleaded and you may even have become upset or angry, threatening your friends with some repercussion if they did not tell you what it was that they knew. Usually it was nothing. Just a device devised to play a game with you, to provoke a reaction, to cause you to react and it worked. Then you were in on the secret and you could join in and play it against the next unsuspecting individual. Nevertheless, you did not like that sensation of not knowing did you? Few people do. How many times when someone has gone missing, have anguished people declared,

“It’s the not knowing which really gets to you.”

The apprehension you experience when you wait to receive your examination results. You know you studied hard during the year, carried out the revision in the right way and you felt the examination went well, but you can never be sure can you, it is the lack of knowing which gnaws away at you until you receive the result.

Waiting for some test results concerning your health causes anxiety and concern. Even if it is bad news, once you have those results you can then take action, make plans and formulate a way forward but whilst you do not know, you are stuck, paralysed and frozen. It is an unpleasant sensation at best and an utterly debilitating one at worst.

You do not like secrets. We thrive on them.

So much of what we are is a secret. We are like a series of chests, compartments and vaults in which various secrets have been placed. Some have been placed there with the intention of never being revealed, either to you or even to ourselves. Others are those secrets about what we really are or what we actually do and we close the lid, slam the door shut and turn the key in the hope that you do not find them out and expose us for what we truly are. We do not want you to find out that the honey-coated façade is just that as you open a dark box and find the full horror of our true behaviour lurking inside. The past behaviours and historic actions are consigned into the depths of archive storage to prevent you from knowing what we really did to our ex-partner, what was said to our brother that has meant we have not spoken in ten years or the catalogue of infidelities that we engaged in. If you were ever allowed admission to those dark corridors you would pass the vaults, chests and caskets into which the secrets of our kind have been placed. Wife-beater, alcoholic, smack head, fraudster, closet homosexual, expenses fiddler, serial cheater, elder abuser, fence, conman, contemptor of court, distant parent, liar, convict, tax fraud, cross-dresser, sexual degenerate and so much more besides. Many secrets, some which you may eventually look upon, so many you may never know about. So many secrets hidden away, pushed into the recesses, concealed and secreted so that prying eyes do not learn the truth of what we say and do.

Yet, our secrecy goes further than that. We delight in letting you know that we have some kind of secret in order to exert control over you. We revel in giving you a glimpse of something but then pulling it from view. We engage in half-comments, low whispers and veiled comments in order to pique your interest but then we relish withholding the full tale. We take pleasure in these insignificant mysteries that cause you to question and probe. After all, we do know how you behaved when you were so much younger and how the sensation of not being able to know troubles you. It troubles you and your kind more than others. Like the older boy at school, we have snatched your lunch money and now hold it above your head, almost in reach as you hop and jump, frustration increasing as you attempt to recover it. You want to get hold of what it is that we know so you can satisfy your own need to know. We recognise this and therefore engage in the playing of games where we suggest, hint, partially reveal and allude to so that your interest is gained. We tease as we make oblique references to something in the expectation that you will bite. We will sit staring into space, cultivating the appearance of depth and intrigue as you observe us and wonder what we are thinking about. You will of course ask and we will give you some cryptic response which as you pondering and probing further. Whatever we told you is nothing to do with what we were actually thinking about. We may have been admiring the view from the window, we might have been wondering how the match would turn out and most likely we were considering which of the growing stable of prospects to message next. Instead we will trot out some comment or line which gives the appearance of us being pre-occupied with some weighty matter, something possibly beyond the wit of you, something which makes us appear mysterious and heavyweight. The intrigue adds to the allure but it also plays to your desire to need. The keeping back of information, the withholding of knowledge, the cloak and dagger routine is all part of the act. The true secrets will never be revealed to you. The secret we allude to is non-existent. It is just a device to control you. It is a means of keeping you bound to us, asking, wondering and probing. The half-answers and titbits are there to confuse, bewilder and cause your anxiety. The mysterious murmurs, the ponderous gaze and the comments to ourselves which you can only partially hear are mere ruses. They are to give us the appearance of depth when it is lacking. The creation of so many apparent secrets is to keep you away from the real secrets by leading you in a different direction and to make us appear deep and of substance. We look to snatch your consideration and scrutiny and make it belong to us instead.

The playing of secrecy continues after the cessation of our formal relationship. Always when you have been discarded and often even when you escape, how many times are your night bedfellows not some other person but the ghosting questions of how, what, why, when and where? You are given no answers as to what has happened and this is when the secrecy takes on the greatest significance as we have entered you into the maze where you try to find a way through it in order to understand how we could have done what we did, what on earth happened to you, why did we do those things, when will we come back and where did it all go wrong? We condition you throughout your dance with us to be intrigued by us, to wonder, to speculate, to pontificate and so forth so that it builds and builds until when we cast you to one side you can do nothing but keep wanting to learn our secrets, to open those doors, to slide back the bolts and open the portals, to raise the lids and lift the covers. This keeps you coming back to us, it keeps you hanging on in the hope that one day there will be a momentous reveal and it will all make sense. You wait in the expectation that all the secrets of this person that you still love will be revealed to you. But it never happens. Not by him or her. The unmasking comes from another place.

It is  no secret that you have the key to the narcissistic universe in your hands now.

I have explained previously that there are two guaranteed ways by which you will cause your no contact regime to be breached. The first method is as a consequence of you contacting us first, where we anticipate that you will make that contact with us, be it in person, by telephone call, text message or social media contact. The second method by which you commit no contact suicide arises where we contact you, but you, in effect left the door wide open. In a way, to describe it as no contact suicide is slightly misleading because for suicide to be committed, this presupposes that no contact was actually in place to begin with. Many people may well think that they have imposed no contact, but they have not done so and this second form of ‘suicide’ is very common indeed.

The second method of committing no contact suicide is where you leave open a route by which we may contact you of an electronic nature. Accordingly, this mistake includes :-

• Not blocking our telephone number
• Not blocking our e-mail address
• Not blocking us on every social media platform
• Not changing your telephone number(s)
• Not changing your e-mail address(es)
• Not removing yourself from every social media platform

You will notice that there are two parts to ensuring a robust no contact regime when it concerns electronic communications. The first is to prevent us from contacting you using our existing platform – we can call or text you from our existing number and it gets through, we can continue to e-mail you from our existing e-mail address, we are able to post messages to your social media and send direct messages from our relevant account or accounts.

You may be surprised to learn that many people do not block us when they are supposedly implementing no contact. For a smaller percentage this is because those individuals have misunderstood the concept of no contact. They think it is all about ensuring that the victim does not contact the narcissist and therefore believes, mistakenly, that numbers ought not to be blocked because the victim believes they will resist the urge to contact the narcissist (thus avoiding No Contact Suicide Part One). A further percentage do so either naively or arrogantly because they believe that the narcissist has gone. The victim believes that since the narcissist raged at them and told them it was over and that they never wanted to see the victim again, that must mean this was the ‘final discard’.

As I have stated many, many times, there is no such thing as a Final Discard

You may think that you have caused massive wounding to the narcissist, that you exposed the narcissist in such a way that there is no way on earth that the narcissist is going to hoover you. So many times I have read comments and questions from my readers where they state

‘There is no chance of him hoovering me, not after the way I made him go beserk.”

“She would not dare to hoover me, not since she knows that I know what she is really like and that I will tell everyone.”

“He has someone else and after the way he left me, he is not going to come back and hoover me.”

Such thinking is complacent and dangerous.

There is always a risk of a hoover.

Furthermore, if you think you have put in place a no contact regime but have left the door open by not blocking our access to you through any and all electronic means of contacting you, then you WILL be hoovered. It may not be straight away (especially if the narcissist has selected a new prospect who we are infatuated with) but it will happen. I see comments from people stating that they have not heard from the narcissist in three weeks. Three weeks? That is nothing. Others may say it has been silent for six months and therefore they know they are safe. Rubbish. I hoovered somebody after a gap of twelve years.

If you do not block us from ‘phone, e-mail and/or social media you are inviting a hoover. Why is this?

1. We are creatures of economy. If there is a simple, straight-forward and low energy method of contacting you, we will take it. Consider this, if we could not contact you through electronic communication, what are some of our alternative options? Write a pen and paper letter to you? Organise a lieutenant to hoover you in person or by telephone? Send you a gift? Attend on you in person? Those are all options but they require more effort (and sometimes considerably more) than the simple action of sending a text stating ‘Hi’.
2. It invites a swift response from you. As your emotional thinking surges on receipt of the message, it is so easy for you to type a reply and answer before you even grasp what you are doing and what you are inviting. You can pause before opening  a dgift, you may work out a Lieutenant is hoovering you on our behalf and therefore keep your emotional thinking under better control and therefore provide no information to this Lieutenant. You may recognise the hand-writing on an envelope and pause before opening it, your logic attempting to keep you from falling prey to the emotional thinking. Once that text has landed, showing our name and message, sometimes even on your locked screen, then you are much more likely to respond to it.
3. The electronic medium allows us to dip a toe in the water. This is especially important for Mid Range Narcissists. If we were to attend on you in person and you ignore us, this causes substantial wounding. In order to avoid this, our kind prefer to be in a position to test the water first. If you ignore a social media message, yes it will wound, but it will not be substantial and we will try at least one more time. If you respond, be it pleasantly or unpleasantly, you have still responded and this signals to us that you will do so again. If your response is pleasant, we instinctively know that we are pushing an open door so we shall text/message again. The messages become an exchange, become a conversation and then emboldened and encourage and also fuelled, we speak with you on the telephone, knowing that you will not reject us and then we meet and before you realise you are in our bed and in our grasp once again. The electronic medium enables us to create a landing point without too much risk and once established it becomes a bridge head for further messages as we hoover you hard.
4. Even if you do not respond (and we anticipate that you will) we know you will see the message and this will provide us with Thought Fuel. This may give way to feeling wounded when time passes and there is no response, but we still gathered some Thought Fuel beforehand.
5. Our need to exert control is so great that if you present us with an easy way of getting in touch with you, we will take it. You may as well send us the keys to your house and leave the front door open. Even if you have wounded us in the past, the impact of that fades over time (and indeed is often outweighed by our expectation of high quality hoover fuel, the need to assert our superiority, to get control over you again and in certain instances to punish you). We will not pass up the opportunity to hoover you if you have left an electronic gate open.

Accordingly, if you do not block us from all methods of electronic communication then you are committing no contact suicide. You will be hoovered and your attempt at no contact has failed. It is highly likely that our hoovering will prove successful and we will garner fuel from you as well as resurrecting the Formal Relationship (as and when we choose).

I know there are many of you who want to be hoovered because you want that contact from us once again. You have not got your emotional thinking under control at all. If you leave that electronic gateway open you will be hoovered but do understand this will happen when we decide, not when you want it to happen. Accordingly, if you are the disengaged former IPPS it is highly likely we will have someone else and therefore (unless it is malign) you will not be hoovered until your replacement is in devaluation which could be months or even years later. If you are a shelved IPSS you will face a hoover, but not necessarily when you want it. You will receive comfort crumbs instead and the hoover to take you off the shelf is decided by us, not you. If you are a disengaged IPSS then we have no interest in you because we are engaging with other more reliable appliances and yes with the electronic gateway open, you will be hoovered, but at a future point of our choosing, not at your dictating.

However,  blocking of our electronic method of reaching you is not sufficient. You need to go further otherwise you are still committing no contact suicide.

You must change the telephone number.

You must change the e-mail address.

You must come off social media.

This is because although blocking will have some effect, it is still not enough.

We will ring you/text you  from an alternative number, use a Lieutenant’s number (maybe someone you thought you could trust and thus you take the call or read the text) so we circumvent your blocking of us.

We will create a new e-mail address and do so repeatedly to get around your blocking of us.

We will create false profiles or message through someone else’s profile, or just stalk you using these profiles even if we do not contact you.

Of course changing the profiles/numbers/e-mail addresses will not guarantee that you will not be hoovered because of course some (not all) of our kind will expend effort in getting hold of these new numbers and e-mail addresses, but if you block and change you are putting in place a hurdle which will go some considerable way to raising the Hoover Bar and thus diminishing the risk of a hoover.

You will either force us to expend time and effort to ascertain the new numbers etc and/or you will force us to use alternative methods to hoover you and breach your no contact. We may not know where you live or where you work, or these venues may be some distance away and thus by closing (as far as possible) the electronic gateway by blocking and changing there is more chance we will focus on an easy target rather than waste time trying to gain fuel from a source which has become more difficult to extract from.

A total no contact is very hard to achieve. Moving continents, fleeing to the mountains and changing everything about your prior life, cutting off all routes of reaching you through friends and family etc is doable but is difficult. However, if you do not block and change the electronic method of reaching you, you are committing no contact suicide and you will be hoovered at a future point.

If you have to have come channel of communication with the narcissist (for instance co-parenting) then choose e-mail. Make it clear that this is the only means by which the narcissist can communicate with you, that you will only check the e-mail address say twice a week at a set time for e-mails and no other time. This way you will reduce your exposure to the hoovers which have to get through (by reason of the need for some communication) and with them being in writing you can regulate yourself in terms of your response and endeavour to get your emotional thinking under control.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking that keeping open electronic channels is a pressure valve or a safe way of ensuring we do not turn up in person. This is incorrect and is an outcome of emotional thinking. If you think it is a wise move to keep open a text communication so this will prevent us from coming to see you in person, this is bad thinking, because

• Doing this WILL mean you are hoovered with the consequences of you feeling anxious, being subjected to more and repeated hoovers through text and more
• These repeated hooverswhich have been allowed to happen because of the easy electronic route will invariably result in your emotional thinking surging and then we have managed to start seeing you in person again. Do not think you can resist this happening because it is very hard for you to do because your tipping point is reached through the repeated surging of your emotional thinking.
• If we cannot reach you through electronic means it is NOT  a given that we will turn up in person for the reasons explained above. Even if we do, you can still avoid the hoover, escape it and cause wounding.

It is very simple ; keep any form of electronic communication in place with us and you are committing no contact suicide and you will be hoovered at an appropriate point.

 

 

Granting you contentment is part of our design when we seduce you and grant you the golden period. The provision of your contentment at that juncture in our entanglement provides the luscious positive fuel to flow in our direction and all is well. We truly do delight in seeing you content with the illusion that we have woven for you. It is when you and us move into the stages of devaluation and discard that we regard your state of contentment in a wholly different manner,

During devaluation if we witness you appearing content, we are overcome with jealousy. Why should you be allowed to sit there satisfied, happy and relaxed? Why do you not suffer the repeated unease of the desire to gain fuel when those supplies become low? We look across the room at you, your features composed in an expression of peace. The envy rises and we despise the fact that you are sat in pleasant repose, seemingly all at ease with the world. We invariably associate that your composed appearance is achieved in order to annoy and frustrate us. You know don’t you? You know that we have this churning fury inside us which shifts and slides. You know that we have the growing hunger for fuel and how this creates a restlessness in us. You know all of this and yet you sit there, revelling in our discomfort. If you cared you would not be enjoying that book, talking on the ‘phone to a friend or watching your favourite television programme. No, if you loved us properly then you would be ensuring that this restlessness was banished and that our sense of power and might was reinstated. Your content state is being bandied about in front of us, teasing and provoking. You are mocking us because you are achieving something that is denied to us at that time. How dare you behave in this manner? How dare you forget about our needs? This is symptomatic of the selfishness we knew you possessed and now you wave it in our faces suggesting that somehow we are inferior to you. This will not do.

Your contentment at this stage amounts to a provocation and is tantamount to a criticism of us. You have achieved contentment whilst we experience restlessness and you know this don’t you? Oh, we know that you will pretend to be unaware of what you are doing, but we know your game. We are not fooled by these protestations of innocence so when we fling the dinner plate to the floor, shattering the plate and silence, causing you to jump up in fright, you knew it was coming. The plate lies broken and your contentment in one swift move is similarly smashed. You are not allowed to be content unless it is by our say so. We want you on tenterhooks, your nervous eyes looking to us for approval and consent. Exhibit any sign of being relaxed, at ease or content and we will take action to destroy that state in an instant. We will pick a fight, create an argument, call you a name, break something, interrupt you with an insult walk out and slam the door and so many other actions all designed to remove you from your contented position. When we see you like that, you remind us of what we cannot achieve at that time and we hate you for it.

It becomes worse when the relationship has ended. Whether you escaped us or we discarded you, there will come a point when we turn our sights on you again in order to extract that wonderful hoover fuel. It may be weeks or months later but we will have been undertaking observations in order to determine the most effective way of hoovering you. If we see you getting on with your life, radiating happiness and an air of contentment it infuriates us hugely. How dare you seem happy without us? You are meant to be broken and distraught, that is how the aftermath is supposed to be. Admittedly, it usually is, but every so often we may find that one of our victims has seized the power and advanced his or her position, forging through the emotion and formulating their recovery. It may be the case that we have seen you on one of the few good days, the bad days taking place where the world cannot see, but that does not matter to us. Should we witness you looking well, smiling, having lost weight, or looking fitter, dressing elegantly, meeting friends with laughter and smiles it wounds us considerably. You seem to have forgotten us. You are bound to us, forever, have you forgotten that this is the case? You are at our beck and call until the day either of us breathes our last, yet here you are striding across the street, hair glossy and styled, posture confident and uplifted and meeting somebody with a kiss and a broad smile. This was not meant to happen. You exude contentment, a confidence that we thought was shattered and unlikely to be rebuilt for some time. How did this happen? Who has caused this transformation from the sobbing wretch we left without so much as a goodbye to the contented person we now look at from the shadows? It may be a one-off, it may be a glimpse of something that is a work in progress, but such considerations do not matter when we see it. We are wounded by this display. You appear to no longer need us. Where is the stooped figure? The haunted individual with dark-circled eyes and pallid skin? Where is the comfort-eater that we mocked so horribly? Where has the lank-haired, nervous shuffling person we tormented gone to? This was not meant to happen. Ever.

Seeing you so content post escape or post discard is a massive criticism to us. The lesser or mid-range of our kind will most likely slink away, regarding this show of strength (temporary even though it may be) as evidencing somebody with defences high and radar warily sensitive. Any hoover would be doomed to hoover and might even result in further injurious harm. No, the lesser or mid-range will retreat and return to the new prospect that has been acquired and other sources of fuel and make a mental note that a hoover at this juncture is unlikely to meet with success. The Greater of our kind will seethe and glower, dismayed and wounded by this peacock performance. Unseen, we will send baleful glares your way as we formulate a way to pierce this shield of contentment. Schemes will be concocted once again in order to hammer this contentment into nothingness. The Greater may, if sufficiently motivated, spring forward and unless malign actions for the purpose of drawing negative fuel, preferring to adopt such a tactic rather than seek to draw the target back in. It is time to lash out and destroy rather than capture. Our fury is ignited and our calculating minds will ascertain that this can only be a veneer. It is far too soon for you to appear to content again, no matter how much it appears genuine. We want to halt the recovery before it gathers any more momentum and thus the Greater will unleash a savage malign hoover, smearing and hurling insults, dredging up those historic vulnerabilities in order to break the contentment again, just as we did those many months ago during devaluation. The ignited fury drives the Greater forward to shatter, break and destroy and if successful, then he or she knows that further malign assaults can be rolled out to cripple the recovery. Once the recovery has been derailed, the contentment eradicated and the veneer of confidence stripped, then the golden period can be dangled again before the quivering victim.

It never does to see you contented. This is why when we see it during devaluation you will suffer and adverse reaction. Following the cessation of the relationship it wounds us considerably and will generate a certain response dependent on the type of our kind that you were entangled with. The maintenance of contentment is indeed a blow against us.

 

 

I am red of tooth and claw. I seduce, I hurt, I cast to one side and like some malevolent Pied Piper, I play my tunes once again and draw you into my fabricated world. I operate a zero sum policy. I want what you have. If I gain it, I win. I love to win. I must always win. The winner is the conqueror, the strongest and the survivor. This is what I have been taught. That is the reality of my existence. Yet when you have been selected as our targets and the seduction has commenced, we have certain desires that we want to be true. There are initial desires that exist so that we do not have to go down the road so often travelled. We may have ensnared you but might we remain protector rather than persecutor?

We have these wants at the outset of our coupling with you. These are genuine, well-intentioned and considerable in nature. We are imbued with hope, optimism and confidence, every time a new prospect has been embraced by us. We want these things so that the teeth are never bared and the claws remain lowered.

1. You are the one

I chose you because you are so special. I truly believe that you are the one, this time, to change everything that has happened before. You are the one who will save us, you have been selected beyond everybody else because you are the one. That is why we have such an infatuation with you at the outset of our relationship.

2. You will not betray us.

The world is a cruel and harsh place and we know better than most how that is the case. We are surrounded by those who would strike us down and grind us into the nothingness which we fear. Those assassins lurk and wait, seeking their moment and we must ensure we remain vigilant so we do not fall prey to them. Traitors and betrayers mill about us, but we are wise to them. We know their game and we have them in our eye. We do not want you to be one of them.

3. You won’t be like the others

We thought they would be the ones that we desired but they disappointed and dismayed and they left us no choice other than to punish them for their lack of loyalty and their false promises. We had to do so, otherwise a failure to act would only compound the perception of our weakness and we must at all times project to the world our image of success and magnificence. We hope you will not be like them so we need not maintain such a façade and we hope you will prove your worth so that you will not be like the others and let us down.

4. You will stop the emptiness

Each and every day we must seek to fill the void that lurks within. It is part of what we are and we accept that this is the task which must be addressed because so much rests on being able to perform this important act. It is the reason for our existence but perhaps you can stop that sense of emptiness for us. Perhaps you can take away that void and provide us with the substance that we crave.

5. You quell the fury

It is always there, churning away, waiting to be unleashed and directed at some transgressor, critic or traitor. I have learned to control it, many of my kind cannot do so and will never do so, it is a mark of my excellence and my superiority. I make it work for me, to advance my plans and to smite my foes. I have no choice for it is always there, waiting to be ignited in an instant. I can control it but I cannot quell it. Can you be the one to do this for me?

6. You won’t get too close

Perhaps if you avoid getting too close to us you will not then let us down like the others before you have. We hope that you can provide us with all the things that we desire without the need to invade our inner sanctum which must remain locked and shuttered. Do not attempt to enter there for the consequences are too dreadful, for us both. Do not get too close and perhaps we have a chance to achieve the other desires that we wish for.

7. You really do love us

They all seem to do so at the beginning but then we find ourselves surrounded by charlatans, con-merchants and frauds. Why does this always happen? All we want is for you to love us, unconditionally and eternally. That is what we only ever wanted.

8. You will not wound us

No matter how grand and imperial we are, no matter how magnificent our achievements and our deportment that signals to the world that we are truly brilliant, a leader in our field, a behemoth and a colossus, we can be wounded with such despicable ease by those who send criticism our way. It hurts, it burns and it wounds and we must defend ourselves against such unwarranted and disgusting behaviour. Perhaps you will be the one who will not wound us in this way.

9. You will not leave

Don’t leave us. The others have always done so. We do not understand why that is after everything that we have done, all the things we endeavoured to do to please them and then this is what happens. The others leave us twice. They come with such promise and deliver for a time but then they do so no longer and through such an omission they leave us. We want that person to return but struggle to contain the fury which is unleashed from this horrible criticism of us and then you sever all possibility of a return when you walk away from us. Do you know who you are when you do that?

10. You won’t make us leave you.

Please do not do the things which force us away from you. The others all headed down that path. It causes us to consider that we are cursed, forever burdened by the fate that we will have no choice other than to leave you in order to secure our survival. Perhaps you can be the one who prevents that feeling from happening?

Each and every time these ten desires loom large when we commence our engagement with you. Some show such promise and for such a time and then one by one these desires are crushed, shattered and obliterated. We know only one way to respond to the destruction of our desires because we are red of tooth and claw.

 

A series based on the comments made by people who fail to understand the true nature of narcissists and the narcissistic dynamic. Whilst these comments may be well-intentioned, they are incorrect, perpetuate misunderstandings and in many cases create false hope, dashed expectations and perilous outcomes.

“Try to find more things in common.”

The instruction from the advisor is for the victim and the (as yet unidentified) narcissist to try to find more things in common. The confused victim has complained that once upon a time she and the narcissist once did so much together, they had so many shared interests, things in common, a mutual desire to experience certain things as a couple. Now, that has gone and fallen away. The victim does not understand what has changed.  Where once days were spent engaged in pursuits which both she and the narcissist enjoyed, talked about and planned, now the situation is very different. He is either locked away in the study ( the Bolthole), goes out who knows where or sits in the same room with mobile phone or tablet glued to his hand, rarely speaking.

The victim complains of feeling like the relationship has hit a rut, that it has somehow gone stale (oh how it has but not for the reason the victim realises) and is looking to understand how it can be invigorated with a return to those halcyon days of the golden period. The addictive qualities of that sensational time still infect the victim who understandably hankers for the relationship highs associated with that dizzying and scintillating time. The victim turns for help, explaining the trough that the relationship appears to have fallen into and listening to friend, family member, supposed relationship expert or whoever it might be as they listen and then offer this prescription in order to cure the ill that is being currently experienced.

I have see this suggestion made on the pages of an apparent experienced relationship advisor. The background that the writer detailed evidenced clearly the pattern that is recognisable (not to all though clearly) as that of the romantic narcissistic dynamic. The situation was clear and evident, but the response was that described above. The victim was urged to find more things in common in order to rekindle the excitement, interest and vibrancy of the early part of the relationship.

Note how the suggestion is for there to be ‘more things in common’ which presupposes that there was anything in common to begin with. No there was not. What you thought was a magnificent alignment of common interests was the effect of the mirroring that we narcissists engage in. We show you what you want so you fall in love with it. We show you yourself and thinking that it is someone else you fall for it hook, line and sinker. Our apparent enjoyment of fell walking was done to bind you to us. Our interest in Japanese cuisine was only done so you drew closer to us. Our enthusiasm for world cinema was driven by our unquenchable desire for your fuel. Since we saw the person that was going to fulfil our Prime Aims then your interests became our interests. Whether it happened to be morris dancing, medieval battle re-enactments or wine tasting. Whatever you enjoyed doing, we claimed to enjoy it as well, yet this was all fabricated purely for the purposes of ensnaring you. We attended the Star Trek convention with you, we volunteered to pick up rubbish on the local beach and to read the works of Lord Byron to one another. It did not matter because all we were concerned with was drinking up that wonderful positive fuel that you flowed with as a consequence of your enthusiasm, admiration, enjoyment and love for our supposed mutuality of interests.

This advice to try to find more in common is doubly dangerous.

Firstly, it causes you to believe that you actually had something in common in the first place. You did not. We created an illusion for you to fall for as I have described above.

Secondly, it causes you to keep trying to win our favour. You spend your time thinking of common interests that you can engage in with us. Indeed, you start to consider those pursuits which may not really interest you, but you try to find something that will interest us and you, because you want to save the relationship, you want the golden period back, you will go along with them because you are a good person who is trying to fix the slump in the relationship. Your advisor has led you down a dangerous path with such an instruction. This is because

1. You are misled into believing that the problem can be fixed by you trying harder. It cannot but you do not know this and the supposedly wise advice compounds the error.
2. You start to erode your sense of self as you actually move away from finding mutual interests to forcing yourself to do the things which we like.
3. You may well engage in behaviours which you do not really enjoy but you go along with it because you think that if you can do something with us then you will meet with success. You start to make the sacrifices.
4. You fail to realise that you are being devalued by a narcissist. You may be in the Stranger Zone at this juncture and whilst it is dull and bewildering, it is not the out and out abuse of the classic devaluation. This is a time when you might make good your escape from our clutches (if you had been properly advised) but instead you remain and leave yourself exposed to worse behaviours and abuses which will take their toll on you.
5. You continue to plug away, trying to please us, suggesting things together, perhaps turning to those interests we once both engaged in. You will be met with either a lack of interest or your suggestions will irritate and then enrage us. By telling us what we ought to do together you are trying to tell us what to do (at least that is how it will appear from our perspective) and therefore we will feel the need to assert our authority over you by the unleashing of our manipulations. Not only will this hurt you, it will leave you feeling even more confused – you tried to do something good and enjoyable, you followed the advice which you thought would work – yet here you are shouted at, left in silence, berated and accused of being controlling and over-bearing. You are miserable, perplexed and no further forward. You keep trying to get it right but you cannot because you do not know what you are dealing with and you are only going to irritate and annoy us all the more.
6. You become conned by the imposition of a Respite Period. Your suggestion of a bike ride through the countryside is met with a favourable response. You feel elated, it has worked, you have made a breakthrough and you have a wonderful day with us. You had no breakthrough. Your suggestion was irrelevant. It just happened to coincide with us applying a Respite Period. This supposed victory will just bind you to us for longer and then when you suggest such an outing in three weeks’ time (and this time we refuse and pour scorn on you) you are left perplexed again.

Once again, the ignorant have provided their advice which is useless when applied to one of our kind and all that follows is further misery for you.