Hoovers: Don’t Let the Crazy Suck You Back In
On the Shrink4Men Forum, there are several gentlemen in the process of ending relationships with abusive wives and girlfriends. Predictably, this has triggered their partners’ abandonment fears and control issues. Oftentimes, when an abusive personality senses they are losing their target/victim or that their target/victim is pulling away, they will make efforts to re-secure their victim’s attachment to them.
An abusive personality’s attempt to re-secure the relationship is sometimes referred to as a Hoover. It’s called a Hoover because, like the eponymous vacuum cleaner, the abusive personality tries to suck you back into the relationship.
The abusive person may or may not be conscious of what they’re doing. Essentially, a Hoover is just a behavior or series of behaviors that are employed to get you to re-engage and remain in the relationship. Sometimes, a Hoover is referred to as “relationship recycling,” which sounds a lot like something one does with aluminum cans. I prefer the term Hoover because it is more evocative.
An abusive personality cannot successfully Hoover you or get you to re-engage or recycle without your participation, which is why it’s important for you to recognize and understand what’s happening, why it’s happening, your buttons, desires, hopes, Achilles’ heels and fears. An effective Hoover plays on both your hopes and fears. When dealing with an abusive personality, your hopes and fears will become traps that ensnare you if you are not mindful of them.
For example:
- Are you afraid of being alone?
- Being replaced?
- Being perceived as a “failure” or “bad guy?”
- Losing your kids?
- Losing your assets?
- Are you afraid the pain of being without her will be worse than the pain of being with her?
- Do you love to be needed or need to be loved?
- Do you cling to the hope that if you can just find a way to reason with her she’ll change for the better?
- Do you worry she’ll meet another man and magically become a wonderful person?
- Do you fear that you’re really unlovable, not good enough, not enough of a “man” and that no one else would want you?
- Do you have a fear of loss and a need for approval?
You may not know what hopes and fears keep you in your abusive relationship, but odds are your abusive and/or personality-disordered partner does — either consciously or intuitively. In order to stay strong and not fall prey to a Hoover or series of Hoovers, you will need professional and/or peer support and you will also need to reality test your fears and hopes. Please note, when dealing with an abusive personality and/or a personality-disordered individual, any hopes you have for her and the relationship are probably better described as wishful thinking.
Even if you’ve been successfully Hoovered, please don’t give up on yourself. According to domestic violence lore and literature, it takes an abuse victim on average 7 attempts to end the relationship with their abuser.*
You are not powerless and you are stronger than you think. You don’t have to go back, but you will need to shore up your boundaries and weather your fears, self-doubts, wishful thinking and be able to identify different kinds of Hoovers as they occur.
Hoovers Come in a Wide Variety of Models to Meet All your Hopes and Fears
Hoovers aren’t all sugar and spice and everything nice. There are different kinds of Hoovers for all your different buttons. Abusers will frequently alternate between different kinds of Hoovers until you re-attach:
The FOG Hoover: Ahh, the sweet suckage of fear, obligation and guilt. The FOG Hoover is basically just emotional blackmail.
How can you do this to me? How can you even think of abandoning me and the kids? (Placing “me” before “the kids” is a deliberate grammatical error. It denotes who really comes first.) How will we live? You have no idea how hard it is for me. You think I’m a heartless, soulless monster, don’t you? You don’t love me. You never loved me. You promised me you’d love me forever. You made a commitment to me before God, our family and EVERYONE. How can you be so cold-hearted and mean?
If you have faulty beliefs about love relationships like, “I must always put my partner’s needs ahead of my own” or “It is my responsibility to make my partner happy,” you’re probably especially vulnerable to this kind of tactic.
The Psycho Hoover: The Psycho Hoover is the FOG Hoover on steroids. It includes threats of suicide and/or violence. Basically, the abuser is just escalating their guilt and/or intimidation tactics to keep you in the relationship.
The only healthy response to a suicide threat and/or attempt is to call 911. Same goes for violence or threats of violence directed toward you. No ifs, ands, or buts. 9-1-1.
If she really is suicidal (and that’s a big if), she needs to be hospitalized. If she’s just engaging in emotional manipulation and blackmail, then she still needs help and some real life consequences via the police and a trip to the ER for a psych evaluation.
The Concern Hoover: This Hoover employs tactics similar to those used by Concern Trolls on websites and forums. The goal of a Concern Troll and a Concern Hoover is to sow seeds of doubt, uncertainty, guilt, self-recrimination and fear, while claiming to have your best interests at heart. To people who don’t have an emotional stake, the Concern Hoover and Concern Troll come across as condescending and pathologizing.
I’m so worried about you. You’re not acting like yourself. You’re so angry all the time. I think you should see a doctor and be evaluated for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and start taking medication. I just want you to be happy. I just want you to be well. You’re talking to your friends again. They’re trying to break us up. They don’t have our best interests at heart. I think this has to do with your fucked up relationship with your mother. This isn’t how the man I know and love treats me. A good man would forgive me and do the right thing.
Of course, it doesn’t occur to the abusive personality that the reason you’re not yourself or that you’re depressed, anxious and angry is because of their abuse. They’re blameless and you’re the one who needs serious psychological help, which may very well be true, but not for the reasons the abuser thinks.
Oh, and by the way, what an abusive person means when they say, “You’ve changed” is, “You’re not letting me get away with my usual behavior.” When they say, “You need to go to therapy and get help,” it means, “You need to quit holding me accountable and go back to the way you were before, even if it means taking medication you don’t need and become a psychopharmacological zombie.”
Markos Moulitas of the Daily Kos describes Concern Trolling as “offering a poisoned apple in the form of advice to political opponents that, if taken, would harm the recipient.” The same can be said of Concern Hoovering; offering a poisoned apple in the form of advice, concern or love to a partner or ex that, if taken would harm the recipient. Don’t bite on it.
The Any-Pain-You-Can-Feel-I-Can-Feel-Worse-I-Can-Feel-Any-Pain-Far-Worse-Than-You Hoover: She hurts more. She feels more. Her pain is real; you’re just too sensitive. Any pleas to respect and acknowledge your hurt feelings and pain (especially if they’re the direct result of her actions) will be minimized and ignored.
Why don’t you think of anyone beside yourself? You never think about how your actions impact others. You have no idea how much I hurt and how hard I’m trying. I know I get angry, but you have no idea how hard you are to live with.
Asking your abuser to have empathy for your feelings is almost always an exercise in futility. If she cared about your feelings even half as much as she cares about her own, she would not treat you the way that she does.
The I’ve Never Been Happier Hoover: This Hoover is basically a form of reverse psychology in which the abuser assumes, rightly or wrongly, that your abandonment fears are equal to or greater than her own.
I haven’t been this happy in years since you left. You always brought out the worst in me. I never behaved that way with anyone else. I started dating again and am being treated the way I always wanted to be treated. You have no idea how to treat a woman.
The purpose of this Hoover is to get you to begin to doubt your experiences, feelings and memories of her and the relationship. This kind of Hoover can lead you to wonder, “What if I’d said or done x instead of y? Maybe it really is me? Maybe I should give her another chance? What if she really is wonderful with the new guy? Why wasn’t she that way than me? I wonder if she’ll take me back if I promise to try harder to make her happy?”
You’re hurting and grieving the loss of the relationship and she’s acting as if she’s magically transformed into a brand new woman without a care in the world and with her pick of suitors. Newsflash: Someone who is really happy with their new life or relationship doesn’t contact their ex to rub his or her nose in it.
The Deluxe Hoover: This is the Hoover in which she morphs from abuser to super sweet, sexed up, Stepford wife. In reality, it’s nothing more than a return to the honeymoon and or love bombing stage of the relationship. In other words, she turns on the charm or whatever it was about her that attracted you to her in the first place. It can have the effect of resurrecting your hopes that the woman you fell in love with is real and that maybe, just maybe, you can go back to the way things were “before.”
I promise things will get better. I love you SO much. We were great together at first. We can get that back! Please just give us another chance! Remember the good times (or time)? Don’t you want to have that again? We’ll both go to therapy. We’ll make it work.
More often than not, the abuse behaviors resurface once you return.
The Happy Ending Hoover: In this Hoover, the abuser takes you to the Boom Boom room and tries to sex you back into submission. Just remember, orgasms only last a few seconds or minutes, if you’re lucky. Crazy and abusive is typically forever.
Breaking the Trance
It’s not uncommon for men and women who are victims of emotional and physical abuse to go into a kind of trance state when their partners begin an abusive episode. It’s a form of dissociation, which serves as a self-defense mechanism. You go someplace else in your mind while she’s twisting the screws. This is why you might have difficulty remembering things she says and does during a verbal tirade or physical attack.
It’s also possible to fall into a trance-like state, i.e., shut off your conscious brain, when being emotionally blackmailed and/or manipulated and revert to conditioned behavior. For example, you do whatever you have to do to pacify, mollify or please her in order to get her to stop and to get the pain and discomfort you’re feeling to stop. This is a mistake. It’s a temporary solution to what is more than likely a very long-term problem.
Reverting to your conditioned response to her abuse only serves to reinforce her abusive behaviors. For example, participating in a Hoover and returning to the relationship teaches her that all she has to do is x, y and/or z and you’ll scamper back. Her promises to change are meaningless. Why should she get help and change if there are no consequences for her abusive behavior?
Additionally, you are only learning and reinforcing your own unhealthy behaviors. For example, Nick the Knight breaks up with Abusive Allie, which triggers Abusive Allie’s abandonment and control issues. Abusive Allie begs, pleads, and love bombs Nick the Knight. Nick the Knight returns and things are good. Abusive Allie resumes her abusive and crazy-making behaviors. Nick the Knight threatens to leave again because he learned from the first break-up/Hoover that Abusive Allie will treat him better, at least for a little while, when he makes noises about being unhappy and ending the relationship.
It then becomes a cyclical dance between the two partners. An extremely unhealthy dance. Trust me, you do not want to get stuck in one of these dysfunctional do si do’s.
Therefore, you need to develop an awareness of your psychological Achilles’ heel, shore up your boundaries, get some emotional support and find a way to break the trance of abuse and manipulation.
True Life Example
A Shrink4Men Forum member is in the very early stages of his divorce from an abusive and highly likely personality-disordered wife. Once he worked up the courage to move out, his wife turned on the Hoover. She started with a Concern Hoover. When that didn’t work, she turned on the Any-Pain-You-Can-Feel-I-Can-Feel-Worse-I-Can-Feel-Any-Pain-Far-Worse-Than-You Hoover, followed by another Concern Hoover, then a Deluxe Hoover and finally the FOG Hoover.
It has been torture for this gentleman, but he is holding strong. His relationship with his wife is, in many ways, a replay of his family of origin issues, which makes the Hoovering all the more painful and insidious.
Music plays a big part in this man’s life. Instead of going into the trance when his wife initiates a Hoover, I encouraged him to play a song in his head in order to break the spell. I suggested the Commodore’s Brick House, but with a few minor changes.
(Chorus)
She’s a brick—-WALL
You talkie talkie
but it makes no difference at all!
She’s a brick—-WALL
The lady’s whacked and that’s a fact,
ain’t holding nothing back.
She’s a brick—-WALL
She’s the one, the only one,
who let a horse crap in our john**
Can’t take it no more heaven knows,
and here’s how the story goes.
(Verse)
She knows she got everything
a woman needs to mess with a man, yeah.
How can she use, the things she use
projection & gaslightin’, what a winning hand!
(Chorus)
(Verse)
The name calling, her nasty ways,
make an old man wish for the end of his days
She knows she’s right and knows how to destroy self-esteem
Sure enough to knock a man to his knees
(Chorus)
(Bridge)
Movin’ out, movin’, movin’ out now (repeat)
Rogers & Hammerstein I’m not, but you get the idea. Find something that works for you, whether it’s calling a friend, going for a jog, banging on a drum set, chopping wood — whatever helps you to snap out of it.
It is not your fault you’re being abused. However, if you want things to change, you’ll need to take responsibility for your own health and happiness, face your fears and make different choices. In order for you to heal, you must resist the Hoover, no matter how good and/or bad it makes you feel.
* I looked for the original and, one hopes, peer-reviewed source for this statistic, but most women’s DV organization websites don’t offer citations for their statistics and claims. If anyone knows the original source, please post it below.
** The forum member’s wife is one of the out-of-control animal rescue types. She actually brought a small horse into their master bathroom in order to bathe it. Why? Because it was “too cold” in the barn. The horse emptied its bowels all over the place. I’ve seen the pictures.
Shrink4Men Coaching and Consultation Services:
Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.
58 Responses to “Hoovers: Don’t Let the Crazy Suck You Back In”
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EXCELLENT article, Dr. T! However, “Brick House” is forever ruined for me. lol
Thanks, MB! Apologies re: “Brick House.”
While on the subject of bricks, you might also like Ben Folds Five’s “Brick”
“she’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly…”
A tune I played passionately in the year before I married psycho wife.
Good times . . .
You know, I was just thinking about that song again. In the song, he doesn’t really like her, probably doesn’t want to be with her anymore, but she’s dying. He knows before she does. It’s the burden of being the one for her when she has no one else, a burden he didn’t want, that is the brick that makes him so alone. And the only way out, as he’s constructed it, is for her to die.
It would be too easy to criticize him from any direction: he should have been strong enough to leave earlier, he should be strong enough to hold up for her now. But while his own inaction, or maybe lack of understanding, got him into this situation, how does he get out? It wasn’t her fault, she didn’t choose to be ill. For all the similarities, she’s not a PDI.
At any time when I was singing that song, it was self-pity. I could have called it off at any time and left her. But I let her become the brick. The singer in the song had a choice, maybe, in the time before the song’s narrative occurs.
Actually, it’s about an abortion….
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080408110132AA9Ql6k
Heh… maybe some gilbert and sullivan..
“She is the very model of the modern pampered princess,
Who’ll suck you in and steal your pain and always tells you where it hurtses…”
also – love the lead pic.
Hi xnook,
I just watched “Topsy Turvy” again a few nights ago.
Thanks and glad you like the photo.
Thanks Dr. T. My ex has recently turned on the psycho hoovering full blast with a not so veiled statement about “not having the will to go on.” We’re getting close to a settlement in the divorce and she’s quit her lawyer, saying she doesn’t have the money to pay the legal fees (my ex is a paralegal). She’s sent me an email that the she’s two months behind with the mortgage payments. And, oh yeah, did I mention if I don’t pay she’ll let the bank take over the house. This is our primary asset and she knows I’m counting on the settlement to reestablish myself.
Before all this, when she had a lawyer advising her, we were talking her buying me out and I was asked to provide a figure on which we could negotiate. I guess she saw if she went through with that she couldn’t try to control me anymore and so here I am. I knew her game as soon as I saw the email and have steeled myself for another year or more of wrangling to get this done. In all likelihood, any monies that would come to me will be eaten up by lawyer’s fees.
Hi blueshound,
Sorry to read the stbx is derailing the divorce process now that you’re so close to the finish line. As I’m sure you know, this is common behavior in high-conflict divorce.
Finalizing the divorce means an end to the conflict and also means the marriage is OVER, which is probably triggering abandonment issues. Is there any leverage you can use to move this forward? Can she be held accountable in court for not making the mortgage payments and jeopardizing the joint asset?
Excellent update of the original Hoovering article from the old Shrink4Men site. Which brings back memories from when I was living in my sister’s house after my ex-wife kept me out of my house and away from my son. How far I have come since then, tahnks in no small part to Dr. T’s online therapy!
True that, Funky Monk. This web site has been crucial to my escape from my abuser. Dr. T is the Pied Piper of abused husbands!
I don’t know if I like the Pied Piper analogy as that would make you guys rats, which you are most definitely not!
I like to think of S4M as an online underground railroad. I do not see myself as Harriet Tubman, however.
Thanks for the kind words, Funky Monk. I’m glad the information here and on the old blog continues to be a source of support. I’ll have to go back and re-read the old Hoover post. I only vaguely remember it.
Oh, and by the way, what an abusive person means when they say, “You’ve changed” is, “You’re not letting me get away with my usual behavior.”
The precise rendition was, “You seem different.”
Another classic, “If I sleep with you now, you’ll own me again.” (delivered 10 minutes after learning I was seeing another woman)
Is that the Deluxe Hoover or the Happy Ending Hoover? Inquiring minds want to know….
Seems more Deluxe than Happy Ending.
Dr. T, you’ve nailed it yet again.. thank you.
Every article feels as though it has been written about her specifically, it is quite uncanny.
(I guess that just reinforces the text book nature of her pathology…)
After I decided to go my own way and leave her to her self imposed world of pain. The hoovering commenced, privately.
Outwardly, she was actively portraying me as the love sick puppy that had come crawling back on his knees.
(Really just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the mistruths that were spread through the sleepy little town that we shared…)
Hi Matthew,
I’m sorry to read you went through such a painful time. The Hoovering privately while pretending you’re the one begging to reconcile is pretty common in my experience. It’s about the fear of appearing inferior, less than, or undesirable.
It can be very galling when you’re on the receiving end of it.
Love the lyrics to brick house …
After years of torture and ridicule this group has reawakened my inner voice that says I don’t deserve to be treated this way usually when I say That to my wife she says you deserve worse ..
Paul alluded to the clown in the mirror….I got my online name from a twilight zone episode ..”nervous man in a $5 room ” I encourage everyone to watch it and you will see why I chose that name ..very inspiring episode I draw on when I’m feeling bullied
Hoovering can be subtle I am now in solitary confinement …wife sleeping in another room close to a month now …my wife knows I hate that …..this time I have resisted the Hoover suction …..where she catches my gaze and tries to smile ……it’s always the same ……she’s sleeping Alone because I. Abused her ..other times because I snore other times I get in to late from.work ….if I Would Only get to bed early we could have sex…get to bed early she’s too tired
I resist the seductive smile because I see no point …..the relentless abuse …details of which are beyond the scope of this post which I deserve is becoming difficult to ratiionalize away
I could use some advice
We are visiting her family for Passover …she has not slept in the same bed With me in a month …we’ve been invited to her sister
Of course my wife will put on a Hoover carnival …..showing affection to me even seduce me because she feels great there …and needs the social Illusioni of the Happy marriage
I want to scream out does anybody get it? This Is Crazy your daughter / sister doesn’t even share a bed With me
I.am only going there …..its a flight away ..to spend the Seder night with our kids
How do I stay in a hotel without being seen as the bad guy which I Will surely be portrayed …….see John is Crazy youve invited him to your home and hes going to a hotel what an ingrate
I would like to shout out it’s because you don’t sleep With me at home why sleep With me here to put on a show? ..but I don’t believe in airing out issues like that in public
In the past 2 years I have ended a. Business partnership that is still going through hostile negotiations after I finally refused to verbally abused and bullied and dismissed employees after …believe it or not alllowing abusive insubordination and accepted lousy work first years
These were tough decisions I suspect I will be working my way toward ending this abusive marriage which I tried to do in the past but got Hoover’s in with fear. Sex and the false promise of hope ..but the vacuum is becoming less powerful..that’s for later
For now brothers and brave sisters…I could use advice on my forthcoming trip
Dr T you’re support and understanding of what we go through Is amazing and uncanny in it’s accuracy and empathy a gift from the Creator!
it’s on YouTube. Awesome…stars the guy who played Angie in “Marty”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF1hfVP62JQ
Hey JP thanks for posting it …..didn’t realize it was on YouTube …it really is awesome and an inspiring episode for all of us being bullied and manipulated …a lesson that we all have inner strength we can tap into once we allow it im.still trying
The Twiligiht Zone is also available for streaming on Netflix. I plan on watching this episode tonight.
Hi john roads,
I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your question earlier. Are you going to Passover? Will you stay with the family or get a hotel? I understand not wanting to go through with the charade, on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to expose the children to more needless conflict. Also, if you make a stand of that magnitude, you might set off her “he’s acting different – danger! danger!” which may tip her off that you’re thinking of leaving.
If you have the courage and sense to end an abusive business partnership, you can do the same with an abusive marriage. Unfortunately, it will probably also be very unpleasant and drawn. High conflict people loves them some conflict. They never want it to end.
LOL! Dr.T. great rendition
My friend has a DELUXE HOOVER residing at his house, and he grabs the bait every time.
Well, he’s tried to leave three times in the last 7 1/2 years, I guess he’s almost halfway there….
If he lives that long.
Very timely article. Several of these hoover tactics have been deployed since my wife filed. I must admit I’m at a spot where the risk of the hoover being successful is unfortunately high.
lifeonborder-line, please seek the help of a therapist. I know that some of these articles are very in-your-face about your own damage, and others, like these, are more subtle in the ways they point out how your exact weaknesses are what the disordered personality seeks to exploit, but a good therapist can help you work on this and become stronger and more self-aware.
Finding a Therapist
While I think tenquilts advice is good, finding a therapist who “gets it” may be tough. My success rate was less than 1/4. (Consider some sessions with Dr. T.)
The first marriage therapist (female), my wife and I attended together, mostly allowed my wife to dominate sessions by ranting about my faults. Her reply to my complaints of my wife’s emotional and sometimes physical abuse was that this was a good sign–that there was still life in the relationship and a little conflict was good. (another therapist made this same comment)
A second (male) therapist was the most promising in that he didn’t overlook or dismiss my complaints of abuse, and gave me practical handouts of “verbal self-defense strategies.” But he was a strange fellow that made me vaguely uncomfortable. He was kind of authoritarian, or something. I can’t quite put my finger on it… I only saw him once. Probably I should have given him a second chance.
A third (female) refused to accept my request that I engage her for individual counseling to help me cope with the problems I was experiencing in my marriage. I don’t think she believed my stories of the abuse I had been experiencing. Her final reply was “I don’t do marriage counseling that way.” (I didn’t ask for marriage counseling.) “You’ll have to bring your wife in too.” That was the last thing I wanted because my wife is so verbally dominating. It would have been a waste of time and money.
The fourth (male) was a so-called Buddhist therapist who has a reputation in town for giving workshops on aspects of Buddhist spirituality. My wife picked him out. I think he believed that he was enlightened because of his Buddhist orientation. The possibility that some pathology was a factor in our marriage was not on his radar. Also, his radar was easily snowed by my wife (we tried joint therapy with him.). He assumed that all problems could be resolved by listening better, receptive body language, more affection…. He gave my wife plenty of new levers for exploitation. (“The counselor sais you should hold my hand while you are talking to me”…this said while her gaslighting and emotional blackmail generators were going full-blast and I think she knew I was repelled by it. So creepy…it makes my skin crawl remembering. Another time: “The counseler told me you are depressed. All my friends think so. I think you should take some anti-depressants.”) I was fairly sure this last had to be an outright lie. The counselor never said anything to me about depression nor had we ever discussed it. I can’t imagine he would discuss with my wife his own private theories about my depression without discussing them with me.
I don’t honestly know how I kept my own confidense through all this that I was not the crazy one. I suppose that I had really begun to understand the patterns of control employed by my wife and was alert to them. I knew how insidious they were and didn’t necessarily blame the therapists for not seeing them. After all it took me over 10 years to get it! Anyway, the short message of this long post is to trust your gut about any therapists you might engage. If you don’t feel like they are “getting it” they probably aren’t. I know that Dr. T can elaborate on the reasons why this might be. I can only share my personal experience.
Good Luck lifeonborder-line.
There’s an awful lot of PC in psychology education these days, and it’s my impression that most therapists are not taught about the kinds of issues we discuss here. I think a lot of therapists are either taught that the Cluster B personality disorders are exclusively a male problem, or they just aren’t taught about them at all. I took two psych classes in college, and while the material was fairly basic, there was a survey of personality disorders, and I don’t recall any of the Cluster B disorders being mentioned at all.
Dr T does have a few things to say about therapists in the index:
How to Find a Good Therapist If You Are Involved with an Emotionally Abusive Woman (October, 14, 2009)
I’m going to have to find a good therapist. My individual therapist is ok. She had no clue what I was going through until she saw my reaction to a phone rage in her office. We are probably going to engage a therapist to see if we can improve things between us. Ironically she is the one that wants to reconcile but I’m being made to be the one who wants to reconcile abandon. Just par for the course.
I read the one article about why therapy fails and indeed I identified several of those in her efforts at individual therapy and ours as a couple. In couples therapy I was exposed to rages for being laid back, exposed to rages for telling the therapist relevant information that my wife was embarrassed about. In her individual therapy she hoodwinks the psychologist into believing she is the poor little old victim of an abusive male.
In one of her works, Marion Solomon says changing the dynamics of a relationship in which one of the partners has a PD was “…like trying to capture smoke.”
Great article. In fact, I intend to post a link to a site in which stepmoms are often dealing with their husband’s crazy “Golden Uterus” birthmoms in order to better understand why they can’t see it for what it is and react as we would hope they would (the explanation about the dissociation). My husband’s ex went through all of these in some form or another, my favorite technique being the intervention she staged with her friends during the Concern Hoover phase. For her, the Psycho Hoover never included threats of violence but threats that he would never see the children again and attempting to poison them with similar thoughts. She has permanently settled (more than three years after the request for the divorce, which has been final for almost a year) in the FOG mode. What saddens me is when he is still hurt by her accusations that he’s “changed … not the man I married” when I see exactly what you point out that it means, and that it’s nothing more than another play from the manipulation playbook.
What I think is worth adding is that the “I’ve Never Been Happier Hoover” is what accounts for why these women will never accept their exes’ new relationships. My husband WANTS his ex to find someone and be happy, even if she is somehow able to have an emotionally healthy, reciprocal relationship with someone else. He has obviously moved on and wishes she would too. But her forays into this Hoover are short-lived because it DOES bring him happiness to think this. On the other hand, when she sees how successfully he has moved on and how happy he is with me, it reinforces the idea that the problem with the relationship was NOT him, which is absolutely unacceptable to her. If she is not happy, he is not allowed to be either, which is why she still seems intent on at least denying, if not destroying, our marriage. It doesn’t work, though. Being aligned against the crazy only brings us closer together.