The term ‘hoovering’ comes from the popular vacuum cleaning brand. In relationships, hoovering is the tendency of a toxic person to ‘suck in’ their victim back into the toxic relationship dynamic. While it can happen in any relationship, it’s common in established romantic relationships.
Toxic and abusive relationships tend to have this cyclical pattern to them. The abuser will love-bomb their victim and give them a good time. The victim’s like, “Wow, this is a great relationship.” Soon after, the abuse happens. That hits the victim like a brick. When the victim gets fed up with the abuse, they contemplate leaving the relationship.
This is the point where hoovering occurs. As long as the abuser abuses, they have power over their victim. Once the victim tries to break free, the abuser has to suck the victim back into the abusive dynamic to regain their power over the victim.
Besides power, hoovering can also be about lowering anxiety. When the abuser senses a threat to their relationship, they get anxious. When anxious, they indulge in rash behaviors that seem beneficial in the short run but damage the relationship in the long run.
People more likely to engage in abusive hoovering in relationships tend to have:
- Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
- Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)1Ainz Galende, A. y Rodríguez Puertas, R. (2024). Psychopathy and narcissistic abuse: the consequences of an unknown type of intimate partner violence. Center of Social Sciences Magazine, 3(2), 53–72.
- Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD)
- Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD)
- Anxious-Preoccupied attachment style
- Fearful-Avoidant attachment style
- A history of trauma and low self-esteem
In this article, we’ll focus on how and why those with BPD hoover in relationships.
Hoovering vs. repairing
Hoovering can occur in normal relationships, but it is rare. In healthy relationships, repairing occurs more than hoovering. When you repair a broken relationship, you don’t ‘suck in’ the other partner. You openly and honestly communicate. You leave the choice to them about how they want to proceed.
In contrast, hoovering is forcing engagement. It is forcing your partner to stay. It’s essentially an emotional manipulation technique where the victim loses their ability to choose what path to take going forward. They’re sucked back into the relationship before they get a chance to think.
Hoovering, like other manipulation tactics, is performed covertly so that the abuser can maintain plausible deniability. If you try to accuse them of abuse, they can justify it by saying that they’re only trying to make things right and repair the relationship. It’s hard to figure out whether or not they’re lying. The best you can do is look for patterns. Is the hoovering chronic? That is a strong sign of abuse. When you repair a relationship, things get better, and you fight better. In hoovering, the same patterns keep repeating, never resolving themselves.
Hoovering in BPD: Why BPDs hoover
Those with BPD are likely to be both perpetrators and victims of hoovering. This is because their fear of abandonment and weak sense of self forces them to cling to their partner. They primarily derive their self-identity and self-worth from their partner. As abusers, losing their relationship not only means losing power but also losing self-identity and self-worth. As victims, they’d rather be in an abusive relationship (have no power but have self-identity) than break free (have power but no identity and self-worth).
As abusers, the core motivation for BPDs to hoover is to maintain their relationship. It’s a mate retention technique.2Tragesser, S. L., & Benfield, J. (2012). Borderline personality disorder features and mate retention tactics. Journal of personality disorders, 26(3), 334-344. When they sense instability in their relationship, they fear abandonment, become anxious, and engage in impulsive behaviors to retain their partner but ultimately harm both their partner and the relationship.
How can you tell that your relationship is bad or unstable? A key indicator is a lack of attention from your partner. This is why many BPD hoovering tactics are designed to get attention, even negative attention, from the partner at all costs. Suppose they manage to suck their partner in. In that case, they feel satisfied because the relationship seems stable and because it proves they have control over their partner’s attention, time, and energy.
BPD hoovering techniques
1. Love-bombing
It’s the go-to technique of emotional manipulators. When you want to leave an abusive relationship, you’re in a sad and vulnerable state. This is the perfect time to bombard you with attention, praise, and gifts. You need it. The moment you take it, you get sucked back into the toxic dynamic.
Other ways in which this tactic plays out:
- Telling you what you want to hear
- Having a deep conversation about something they know you care about
- Doing a hobby that you like together
When it’s repairing, you’ll happily receive the attention you’re getting. When it’s hoovering, something will feel off. You’ll feel they’re trying too hard or forcing you into it. When you get sucked back in, don’t think that this phase is going to last. They’ll discard you again soon because that’s what they do.
2. Random contacting
If you’ve taken a break from your abuser, they will find a way to pull you back in. They want to reach out to you, but that’s too disempowering for them. Instead of contacting you first and admitting their loss of power over you, they’ll hide their desire to suck you in by pretending that their contacting you was random. They’ll say something like:
“X reminded me of you..”
“I went to this restaurant we used to visit. It made me think of you.”
The truth is, they were already thinking about you: how to suck you in. The randomness of the excuse makes you lower your guard and think:
“Oh, they’re not a vicious abuser throwing a trap for me. They just happened to think about me.”
3. Manipulative apologies
Genuine apologies are followed up by a change in problematic behaviors. Manipulative apologies make you feel good in the moment and are not succeeded by changes in problematic behaviors. They’re designed to rouse your sympathy, empathy, and compassion and suck you back in.
Problematic behaviors can be hard to change. To tell whether or not an apology is genuine, focus on effort. They don't have manipulative intentions if they’re putting in the effort to change but are not changing.
4. Gaslighting
You decided to leave because you believed abuse was happening. You may be wrong, or you may be right. If you see consistent patterns of abuse, you’re likely being abused. Because this can be a difficult thing to figure out, your abuser can gaslight you into believing that the abuse didn’t happen.
Since emotional abuse occurs so vaguely and under the radar, the abusers can devise good excuses for their negative behaviors that fit what they did. If you stick to logic and details, you can poke holes into their false narratives. If they manage to convince you that the abuse didn’t happen, they can pull you right back in.
5. Triangulation
When you’ve gone no contact with your abuser, they may try to reach you by any means necessary. Often, this is done by involving a third person you both know. The abuser will try to paint a positive picture of themselves to the third person. The third person, if you trust them, may try to persuade you to get back with your abuser.
Getting a third person’s perspective into your relationship is not a bad idea. Ideally, that third person should be trained professional so they can be as objective as possible about what’s going on. In most cases, the third person used in triangulation is biased toward the abuser.
6. Future faking
Future faking is trying to bait you in by promising a fantastic future together. For example, phrases like:
“We’ll have a great time together.”
“We’ll travel and have fun.”
The abuser emphasizes what was good in the relationship and promises more of it in the future. They completely ignore what was bad in the relationship. They’re likely to go back to their abusive ways once you get sucked in.
7. Crisis faking
This one’s fascinating. Crisis faking is usually the last resort of borderlines and manipulators. If you’ve been able to stand your ground and resist their manipulations, you push them to the edge. They have no option but to try something extreme.
In crisis faking, the abuser will pretend that a tragedy has befallen them. For example, they’ll fake being ill or lie to you that someone close to them has died. Often, they’ll do something theatrical like hyperventilating or beating their chest to ‘show’ that they’re having a panic attack or a mental breakdown.
The goal is to shock you into caring and worrying about them. The moment you do that, you get sucked back in. You’d look bad if you didn’t rush to rescue a devastated person.
At times, the crisis may be real. That doesn't mean they'll not use it to hoover you. If such crises always occur after fights and when their manipulation tactics fail, that's unlikely to be a coincidence.
8. Pleading
Pleading and begging is another related tactic that is designed to rouse your sympathy and compassion.3Mandal, E., & Kocur, D. (2013). The Machiavellianism and manipulation tactics used by patients with borderline personality disorder in everyday life and in therapy. Psychiatria polska, 47(4), 667-678. When you see them in a helpless state, you’re more likely to forget about the abuse and do what they want: get back together.
9. Reputation smearing
Frustrated that you’ve left the relationship and left them with no power, the embittered abuser might launch smear campaigns against you. Since humans care about their reputation, you’ll likely reach out to them to express your anger. Negative attention is still attention.
10. Pretending things are fine
Gaslighting doesn’t just happen with words. It also happens with actions. Pretending things are fine when they are not is a powerful tactic for emotional abusers that can throw your mind into a spin.
Say you just argued with your abuser. There was yelling and an outburst of emotions. You go quiet and need time to process it all. Things are not fine. The abuser, however, acts like nothing happened. They go on about their life activities. They even say things they would typically say when things are normal. For example, you’re recovering from the fight, and they say something like:
“Can we go bowling tomorrow?”
You’re like:
“What?”
“Seriously?”
“We just fought, and you’re concerned about bowling?”
They’re not concerned with bowling. They’re concerned with invalidating what just happened between the two of you and leaving you in the dust emotionally. The wave of invalidation you feel can be very frustrating and disappointing. At this point, it’s tempting to start another argument and give them the negative attention they seek.
Taken to the extreme, this tactic can also take the shape of reverse hoovering. Reverse hoovering is when the manipulator distances themselves from the abuser, pretending to have moved on. They flirt with others or even enter into new relationships.
The goal is to confuse the victim and induce emotional turmoil in them. When the confusion, insecurity, jealousy, low self-worth, and regret become too much to bear for the victim, they’re the ones who approach the abuser and seek reconnection, which is what the abuser wanted all along.
11. Threats
Fear is a classic emotional manipulation technique. BPDs are known to engage in violent behaviors when they experience relationship problems.4Stepp, S. D., Smith, T. D., Morse, J. Q., Hallquist, M. N., & Pilkonis, P. A. (2012). Prospective associations among borderline personality disorder symptoms, interpersonal problems, and aggressive behaviors. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 27(1), 103-124. They may threaten you or threaten self-harm if you don’t get back into the toxic relationship.
12. Pre-hoovering
Okay, this is a term I came up with myself. Pre-hoovering is hoovering that occurs before the abuser does something abusive. If they think their abuse will be too much for you to handle and you’ll likely leave, they’ll do something pre-emptively to make you feel better and closer. After all, if you’re already distant from them and they abuse you, it’ll be easier for you to leave them. When you’re closer, it’s harder for you to leave.
For example, they’ll shower you with love and attention before they do something evil. That way, they don’t have to do much hoovering post-abuse. It also helps them alleviate any pre-guilt they might have about what they’re about to do.
Defending yourself
It’s difficult to determine whether this abusive behavior is conscious or unconscious. I’d say it’s a mix of both. Emotional abuse like hoovering can be devastating for your mental health as a victim. It can feel like you’re on a roller coaster with your head constantly spinning, trying to make sense of the abuse.
If you’re 100% convinced you’re getting hovered, leaving the relationship is a good option. If you can’t physically distance yourself, you must at least do so emotionally. Drastically reduce your emotional investment in the abusive person. Practice what I call emotional investment diversity. Invest emotionally in multiple relationships, including family and friends, and keep nurturing the healthier ones.
When the abuser tries to suck you in, respond neutrally and unemotionally. Any emotion you show, positive or negative, will be used against you. Let their provocations go, like water off a duck’s back. You can respond with strong one-liners and witty comebacks but avoid big reactions. Quit playing their game. It’s best to leave them stewing in their insecurity and misery.
Your job is to protect your boundaries. That’s what they’re after. They don’t like your boundaries because your boundaries decrease their power over you. Identify their abusive patterns and make plans to counter them and not get sucked in. Your power is in your hands, as it should be.