No matter what it is, the message is clear: You’re on their mind. They’re thinking of you. They miss you in some capacity. You feel a cold wave of anxiety wash over you as your mind spins over what you should do next. You don’t want to respond, but you still feel responsible for their emotions—plus, maybe they’ve changed, and the conversation might be different now. According to psychotherapist Nicholas Moran, LMHC: “[Hoovering] is a key characteristic of toxic relationships and manifests in a variety of ways with the focus on attempting to draw a person back in and control them, kind of like a fisher who is fishing or a puppeteer with a puppet.” Hoovering is disruptive to your life because of how jarring it is. There’s a cognitive shift in your being as you refocus on them and their internal world at the cost of your own healing. It’s a subtle power play, but don’t take it lightly. At its heart, hoovering is a manipulative technique designed to seduce you into contact with them and get you back on a dizzying relational ride marked with extreme highs and lows. If your ex is affected by narcissism, it’s unlikely in your time apart that they’ve been able to work on themselves in such a way that generates wholeness and emotional maturity. If you cut off contact with them, they should be able to respect set boundaries and not disregard what you need during your recovery in service of what they want from you. When a relationship with a narcissist ends, it can bring uncomfortable feelings to the surface that the narcissistic partner may not have the emotional bandwidth to handle. To shortcut the discomfort, narcissists instinctively react by reaching out, aka hoovering, to their former partner—who often possesses empathy and high sensitivity—because they don’t want to feel the pain and would rather target it on something else. Know they may care about you as a person, but they care more about what you can offer them to fill their emptiness because they can’t give it to themselves. Does that mean that every time an ex gets back in touch with you it’s hoovering? Not necessarily. There’s a key distinction between contacting an ex to reestablish healthy lines of communication and reaching out to someone with a lopsided agenda that benefits them only. The latter clearly centers one person over the other, which doesn’t equate to a fair flow of genuine reciprocity. Moran notes that hoovering exists on a spectrum of intentional to unintentional behaviors. However, “this is a common characteristic of people who exhibit narcissistic traits and is employed from a conscious or unconscious effort to obtain and maintain control over another person or persons,” they say. The time after the breakup may be unpredictable and chaotic as you process the trauma of a narcissistic relationship and their attempts to ensnare you back into their life. Moran lays out a road map to navigate the twisty turns ahead, in their own words: But knowing yourself and disengaging can only get you so far. If your ex is ignoring your boundaries and it’s crossing over into harassment, it’s not OK. “If any domestic violence has ensued and you’re worried about your safety, you should call your local domestic violence agency for help to leave the relationship,” Di Leo says. Seek help if it escalates into emotional abuse. For anonymous and confidential help, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233 or TTY 1-800-787-3224) and speak with a trained advocate for free as many times as you need. They’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also speak to them through a live private chat on their website.
