I Thought She Meant It This Time: The Hoovering Tactics of a Narcissist

I can’t even count how many times I believed her.

One text. One “I miss you.” One picture from a place we used to go. And there I was — thinking maybe this time was real. Maybe this time she meant it.

But she never did.

What I didn’t know back then was that this cycle had a name: hoovering.

If you’ve been with someone who left you emotionally wrecked, only to come crawling back the moment you start to heal, then yeah — this is probably what happened to you too.

What Hoovering Feels Like

It’s confusing. That’s the word that kept popping into my head.

One week, she’s gone. Cold. Silent. No explanation. The next week, I’m getting, “I just heard our song and thought of you.” Or worse, “I know I messed up… but we had something real, didn’t we?”

And the part that messes you up is, you want to believe her.

You want to believe that the version of her who laughed at your dumb jokes and stayed up talking at 2 a.m. is still in there somewhere. You miss that version. You miss you when you were with her — before the walking on eggshells, before the endless apologies for things you didn’t do.