Congratulations you made it through the majority of the Hoover Season! We are, however, not out of the woods yet! That’s right! The dreaded Valentine’s Day is a little over a month away and trust me, the hoovers are not over yet! Instead of walking down memory lane, like the hoovers for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s do, the Valentine Hoover is likely to be a “future faking” hoover. Future faking is when the abuser calls with a hoover promising how they have changed and things will be ever so much better and you’ll go on that promised trip, or get married, or whatever carrot they dangled in front of you before you left. Do NOT fall for it. Future faking is just exactly what it sounds like, they are spinning a fake fantasy of the future with them. Trust me, If you fall for this “Oh I’ve changed, the future together will be better than ever!” you will find that A. They haven’t changed and B. The only thing they will have gotten better at is punishing you. Look, they had plenty of opportunities to “change”. They had plenty of opportunities to be faithful. They had plenty of opportunities to not isolate, lie, gaslight, rewrite history, take that romantic trip with you, spend more quality time with you etcetera. No, they haven’t had an epiphany, what they have had happen is that they ran out of narcissistic supply and all they want more than anything is to have their favorite punching bag back so they can get narcissistic supply. If an abuser’s lips are moving, they are lying. The only future you have with an abuser, is more abuse or worse a date with the coroner’s office. Future fakes keep targets coming back. Don’t.
Is Forgiveness Mandatory?
A lot of survivors of abuse often get pressured from either the abuser themselves or flying monkeys to “forgive” them. Ahem. In short, no! You do not have to “forgive” your abuser. What an abuser means by forgiving them is they want you to “forgive AND forget”...
