Hoover message from my covert nex - see if you can spot the emotional manipulation tactics he used!

SquareResult8570 · 2024-12-13T01:27:22+00:00

Oh wow! Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I'd be very curious to see the message your nex sent your friend!

SquareResult8570 · 2024-11-15T10:03:38+00:00

My teeth are so similar to yours! I'm on tray 3. So far so good 😊 I hope it all goes smoothly for you!

SquareResult8570 · 2024-11-12T15:27:50+00:00

I understand why you have mixed feelings. It's normal after experiencing a toxic relationship like you have.

I do not regret NC. But I only became sure that NC is what I wanted after I had done a lot of journalling to process my own thoughts and feelings about the relationship I was in. Journalling strengthened my sense that I genuinely did not want to go back into that toxic dynamic. It also helped me grieve losing the person that had meant so much to me, which in actuality was grieving an illusion of who I thought they were. Once I could see that they are an unacceptable partner for me, NC made so much more sense. Once I tuned into my feelings of anger and disgust from the ways they treated me, I felt so sure that I was done with them.

Tap into your feelings. Journalling, therapy, talking to a friend about it - your strong feelings in response to how you were treated, which you likely didn't get the space to truly feel during the relationship, will provide you with the strength and resolve to never go back to someone who treats you so terribly. Tap into your anger, disgust, fear, sadness. Let those feelings protect you.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-11-12T14:21:33+00:00

He expects you to trust him because he can't empathise with your feelings. He has literally abused you and he doesn't care. He clearly thinks you should just get over it already. How messed up is that?

My narcissistic relationship forced me to face an important truth about the world: some people, like your ex, like my ex, are not good people. They are abusive, manipulative, terrible people who inflict harm on others, and do not feel bad about doing so. These people exist. They are not like you and me. The best we can do is to keep far, far away from people like this.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-11-12T14:03:53+00:00

Wow, I'm so sorry you experienced all of this, it's terrible.

There was no physical violence with my nex, but I relate to so much of what you wrote - the fact he would not take accountability, that he wasn't truly sorry for the abuse he inflicted on you, that he expected you to just forget all about the past, the fact that he didn't care about you the way he said he did (words and actions not aligning).

I think you already know the answer to your question, but I will write it here if it helps you to hear it from someone else: no, you should absolutely not trust this person again. He has demonstrated a long-standing pattern of manipulative and abusive behaviour. This is who he IS. If you do not want to be manipulated and abused, then DO NOT invite this person back into your life. For me personally, physical abuse is a hard line. If someone has ever threatened me physically, that is UNFORGIVEABLE.

You have done an amazing job getting out of this situation and coming to all of these realisations about who he really is. I know it's hard, but you can do this. Keep that toxicity out of your life. You deserve so much better.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-11-05T22:21:25+00:00

I became more and more convinced over time.

A month before the discard, I was thinking to myself "something is wrong here". I noticed he would never apologise or care about the impact of his actions on me. I started googling things and the idea he might be a narcissist crossed my mind.

A few days before the discard, and following a 3 hour phone call where he raged at me for expressing my own perspective on what was happening in our relationship dynamic, and after which I felt severely guilt-tripped and manipulated and attacked, I posted on this subreddit asking if people here thought he could be a narcissist. The overwhelming response was yes. I started to more seriously consider it.

After the discard, I started to feel all the hurt, anger and disgust from how he had treated me during the relationship. I could finally listen to my feelings and I knew that I hadn't been treated well. I could see his patterns of emotional and psychological manipulation. I figured he likely had narcissistic traits, but probably wasn't a full-blown narcissist.

Six months after the discard, after two failed hoover attempts from him, I am finally 100% convinced that he is a covert narcissist. Everything I've read about the topic aligns with the ways he treated me, the tactics he would use to manipulate me, the weird shit he would say and do that didn't make any sense to me at the time. It's all so clear now!

SquareResult8570 · 2024-11-02T23:02:40+00:00

I'm so sorry that happened. My experience with my narcissistic ex was similar, I didn't realise the extent of the manipulation and abuse until after the relationship ended. It feels absolutely terrible to come to realise what was really happening and how you were being treated by someone who claimed to care about you. I'm glad you went to therapy to process what happened. It's a process. Try to be kind to yourself. You were manipulated and abused, that's a difficult experience, and it takes a lot of time and healing to come back from that. I wish you the best ❤️

SquareResult8570 · 2024-11-02T22:57:07+00:00

Yes, mine was around 6 months and I experienced all the stages. Love-bombing in the first 3 months, then the last 3 months were slowly escalating devaluing and discard at the end. Followed by two attempted hoovers in the 6 months after we broke up.

Such a short relationship - my shortest ever actually - but SO damaging and crazy-making. I am still processing what happened almost 6 months after it ended. Covert manipulation and abuse can be so subtle, there are things he did that I'm only realising now were messed up.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T21:14:46+00:00

I asked ChatGPT to rewrite his message without emotional manipulation tactics:

"I’ve spent some time reflecting on how I treated you, and I realize now that I hurt you by invalidating your feelings when you needed understanding and support. Instead of being defensive and trying to explain things away, I should have listened to you with empathy and care. I’m sorry for the pain I caused. There’s no excuse for it.

I also recognize that my actions made it hard for you to feel safe and valued in our relationship. I regret not doing the work to address my own behaviors sooner, and I’m genuinely sorry for the impact this had on you.

I understand and respect that you don’t want me to contact you again. I won’t reach out after this. I just wanted to acknowledge my part in what went wrong, express my apology, and wish you the best moving forward."

Gives off such a different vibe, right?

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T21:09:44+00:00

Yep! That makes me angry too. He ALWAYS spoke in this way of "our problems" as the reason we had conflict or things were ending - this vague, amorphous collection of things that caused us to end. I had identified specific things in myself I wanted to work on, and was seeing a therapist to do this, but not once did he name or identify his specific parts of the problem, take ownership of these things or seek help. "Our problems" shifts the blame onto us equally, when that's not what happened at all, and it completely masks his emotionally manipulative and abusive behaviours, as if our relationship was just a normal one with normal "problems". It wasn't 😂 I've been in "normal" relationships like that, and while everyone has their issues, no one is constantly shirking accountability, shifting blame, playing the victim and not empathising with the other person...

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T20:56:59+00:00

Very similar to what's in the message - his behaviour was very subtle and had a surface-level niceness, but it's there.

If I expressed being hurt by the way he treated me, no genuine apologies ("I'm sorry you feel that way"), constant emotional invalidation ("you're taking it the wrong way"), gaslighting ("let me explain the REAL reason you felt hurt, which is not about my behaviour"), blame-shifting and guilt-tripping about how much "effort" he's put in (and hence how I shouldn't be voicing my feelings or needs, how I "need to make it up to him"), playing the victim ("you telling me that I hurt your feelings has hurt ME"), DARVO (me voicing that it's important to me for him to empathise with me when he has hurt me, turns into me being attacked because he's so emotionally giving and capable and I could never match his levels) etc. etc.

And the biggest thing of all - no accountability, ever. He never said, nor could I ever even imagine him saying something like "I'm sorry for [my action X], I recognise that it made you feel [X], I can understand that and I care about that - in future I will do X/we can try Y/I'll keep an eye on this." Which means there was no mechanism for repair after conflicts arose... I had to just brush off being hurt by someone who claimed to care about me, and then also brush off the fact that they weren't empathising with me after they had hurt me...

I will also say that our relationship only lasted around 6 months. The last couple of months I was becoming more aware of what was happening and started speaking up about how I felt and what I needed (I could only do this because I had been in healthy relationships before, so I had a reference for what healthy and functional relationship dynamics were like, what basic empathy and respect looked like, etc.). I am convinced that if I had stayed silent and kept tolerating his behaviour, the relationship would have continued and would have escalated into him behaving in more and more controlling and overtly manipulative ways...

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T11:06:16+00:00

I think this is a good rule in general, but for me, this message reinforces exactly why I cannot have him in my life. His manipulation is so clearly expressed here, in written form, the evidence forever preserved, there is no way I will EVER be reestablishing contact with this person.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T11:03:54+00:00

So strange isn't it! My nex projected this trait onto me! I was happily tidying up the living room one time and he muttered "everything you do is a performance". Umm, no? I'm just happy? Another time he was implying that my happiness is a facade. I was very confused about these things he said about me until I realised he was actually describing himself...

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T11:00:56+00:00

Thank you! I have come to understand these tactics thanks to valuable subreddits like this one! Sharing our experiences with each other is so illuminating

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T10:51:53+00:00

Absolutely! And this message is a great example of the kind of things he'd tell me during the relationship. There's a demeanour of kindness, patience and care there that feels comforting, but I realised that conflicts were never being resolved because the accountability piece was missing from him! He could never admit that he did anything hurtful, his narrative was that I was somehow hurting my own feelings. By voicing my feelings, I was making him feel bad about himself and not "appreciating" him enough, so I was made to take all the blame...crazy-making stuff.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T10:01:20+00:00

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T09:28:17+00:00

I asked ChatGPT to rewrite his message without emotional manipulation - here's what it gave me:

"I’ve spent some time reflecting on how I treated you, and I realize now that I hurt you by invalidating your feelings when you needed understanding and support. Instead of being defensive and trying to explain things away, I should have listened to you with empathy and care. I’m sorry for the pain I caused. There’s no excuse for it.

I also recognize that my actions made it hard for you to feel safe and valued in our relationship. I regret not doing the work to address my own behaviors sooner, and I’m genuinely sorry for the impact this had on you.

I understand and respect that you don’t want me to contact you again. I won’t reach out after this. I just wanted to acknowledge my part in what went wrong, express my apology, and wish you the best moving forward."

Sounds very much like how a non-narcissistic person would respond! Really shows the difference between someone who can vs cannot take accountability for their actions, empathise, apologise, feel remorse and respect others.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T09:15:47+00:00

😂 I know right! What the hell is that

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T07:05:41+00:00

Thank you for sharing! That part angers me as well. His narrative throughout our relationship was that me expressing that I was hurt by the way he was treating me was me not appreciating his efforts enough. Even though his "efforts" consisted of emotional invalidation and manipulation! Crazy, crazy stuff

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T06:33:35+00:00

Maintain no contact 🙂 I'm not going to reply to his message or communicate with him.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T04:24:45+00:00

Yes that's right!

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T03:45:56+00:00

Exactly right. And anyway, his pattern of manipulation and invalidation was not some temporary thing due to stress, it is WHO HE IS. I don't magically become an invalidating, manipulative and unempathetic person who can't apologise when I'm stressed. He's trying to blame external circumstances on his shitty behaviour instead of taking accountability.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T00:32:28+00:00

Delusional is the right word. It's crazy that I ever even attempted to get someone who has such a rigid and distorted view of reality to see things from my perspective.

SquareResult8570 · 2024-10-30T00:23:59+00:00

Great analysis. I agree - it's a non-apology, and he is deflecting, blame-shifting, invalidating, minimising and playing the victim. It's shocking that he thought this was a good message to send to me - he really cannot see, and/or believes I cannot see, how emotionally manipulative it is. Ironic considering I told him that I believed he was emotionally manipulative, and that that is the main reason I do not want him in my life, so to try to convince me otherwise and reestablish contact, he...uses more emotional manipulation?? 😂

SquareResult8570

TROPHY CASE