Getting off the Hook

I`ve been thinking a lot lately about how the narc hooks us, what the hooks are and particularly, how to get off them. The two really big hooks I`ve come up with are D&D and hoovering, and I`m getting to the point where I`m beginning to believe that hoovering for the narc is just a milder, more innocuous form of D&D, while for us it may well be the last straw that broke the camel`s back.

I`ve been looking back and trying to imagine how I would have felt if my narc had been killed - or ended the relationship - in the idealization phase. Certainly, I would have been terribly upset, tried to talk him out of ending it and needed a while to readjust. But I think D&D hooks us in a way just ending a relationship wouldn`t. In fact, I think D&D IS the hook. I can remember, in the idealization phase, I felt like a butterfly. After D&D, I felt like a butterfly impaled on a pin, struggling to escape, damaging itself even more in its efforts to escape and slowly and very painfully dying.

While he looked on with GREAT enjoyment.

The same happens during hoovering, though the narc makes less effort, it`s a kind of bored effort, as if he were only bothering at all because there`s nothing better doing, which is exactly the case. He makes a kind of minimal move in our direction (like an amoeba expanding to absorb food). If we don`t respond, he makes a slightly larger move, and so on and so forth, until (a) we do respond or (b) better food turns up.

So much for the narc. Lets look at the hooks.
Why does D&D hook us? What investment do we have in someone who has treated us so badly?

I can only speak for myself here, but what I felt after D&D was:

(a) stunned - requiring clarity
(b) deeply hurt - requiring clarity
(c) totally insecure - requiring clarity

In short, I could have coped with feeling stunned, with being deeply hurt, with feeling insecure, if I had received clarity regarding any of these issues.

That it is illogical to expect clarity from someone who stunned me, deeply hurt me and made me totally insecure must be obvious. Yet that is what I did. It seemed to me that the only person who could heal me was the one who had hurt me. In a normal relationship, it is that way; normal people are sorry when they hurt someone they love and try to make things OK again. Narcs don`t.

The hook is "Why?". That is what we are all asking. Why did he do this? Why did he do that? Was it my fault? Is he really a narc? That is why we are all here. We are looking for an answer to why. We have come here, because the narc. didn`t give an answer - that is the hook.

Closure is an answer to "Why". That is why we want it, and they won`t give it. As long as we are still asking "Why", we are still on the hook. And they want us on the hook. Why? (why again). So they have something to do when they`re feeling bored and supply is low. Please don`t imagine it`s anything else. It isnt.

If we look at hoovering, it`s the same. Those of us who get hoovered ask "why is he", and those who don`t get hoovered ask "why isn`t he", but it`s the still the same damn shit. The hook is "why"?. Why he (or she) did anything is just a waste of our precious time and energy. "Why" is the hopeless attempt of an ordered personality to understand a disordered one. "why" is the hook, and they get it into us, not because they were so wonderful at the start, nor because they were so awful afterwards, but because of the mind-fucking dichotomy between the two. We do not ask, "why was he(or she)so wonderful at the start", we do not ask, "why was he (or she)so awful later", no, we ask "Why was he (or she) so wonderful at the start AND so awful later?". This is the attempt of an ordered personality to understand a disordered one, and it is DOOMED.

We must stop asking why. We MUST! We cannot comprehend it, ever. We must give up on why, otherwise we will remain on the hook.

The questions we must ask ourselves are:

Do I feel good with this person?
Can I trust this person with my innermost self? My deepest fears, my greatest longing, the things I am most angry about?
Would this person be a source of comfort to me if I were ill? Would this person be a source of strength to me when I have a problem? Would I want this person around me if I were dying?
Do I like the person I am with him/her?
Do I like the person he/she is when he/she is with me?

And (of course, if we`re looking for a sexual partner!) do the sparks fly every time we physically come closer to one another (which is VERY important, but should not be the first thing we ask!!).

If we answered no to more than two of the above questions, I would say, ditch them and find someone else. I am 50, and have no more time for assholes. Twenty-year olds of course have more time to make their own mistakes. But I fell in love with my first narc aged 17, and was together with him for 4 years. I am not sure how much of my subsequent problems with men had to do with him. Younger girls, you have been warned!

Hope this was helpful, love to all fellow-sufferers, Tigerlily