13 Clear Ways They Show They Don’t!
You want to believe that a Hijackal–a toxic, difficult, perhaps narcissistic person–loves you. You SO want to believe it.
They don’t have much love to give and here are 16 ways to recognize that they aren’t giving it to you. An eye-opener!
HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS EPISODE:
- The transactional nature of toxic relationships
- 13 ways that love relationships differ from toxic relationships
- Why you must not continue to believe that you are loved and make excuses for poor behavior
- My definition of emotional abuse, and why you are best to keep it in mind
- Clear ways to recognize real love to compare and contrast with what a Hijackal offers you
People who love you listen to you. They want to listen to you. And, you want to listen to them. You’re interested in each other. Not so with a #Hijackal. The Hijackal is interested in themselves and want you to be interested in them, too. Sure, in the beginning, it’s different. That’s how they hook you as I spoke about in the last episode, How Hijackals Hook You Into Toxic Relationships.
You know from listening to the episode on the 3 MUST-HAVES in a Healthy Adult Relationship that equality is a must. Do you believe you have that in your relationship with a Hijackal? I’ll be not. You may want to bring up a couple of instances when there seemed to be equality, but that’s part of the problem. There’s supposed to be equality all the time. There’s an example of the love that’s missing in a toxic relationship: love.
Everything is transactional with a toxic person, a person with narcissistic tendencies, and those with anti-social tendencies as well. They don’t really have love to give you, but they will appear to to have you give them what they want: a transaction. I know, it’s not great to hear that straightforwardly, but it’s absolutely important to recognize it.
You SO want to believe that a Hijackal loves you, I know. Sometimes, it really seems that they do, but only when it serves their purposes and gets them what they want. Sad, and unfortunately, true. Hard to hear, but time to recognize it.
TRANSCRIPT:
In today’s article we’re going to be talking about about how to finally, believe a Hijackal doesn’t love you. It is an important issue and one that I’m often asked about.
I know it’s a tough subject, you want to believe that your loved you want to believe they have love to give you, you really, really hope that’s the case, you may have made yourself into a doormat or a pretzel or done whatever you thought you needed to do; overcompensated, overaccommodated, and over compromised, in order to get some equity, semi quality reciprocity and mutuality in your relationship. But none of that is realizable if you are in a relationship with a Hijackal.
Now for those who are new here, a Hijackal is a person who hijacks a relationship for their own purposes, and then relentlessly scavenges that relationship for power status and control.
I trademarked the term Hijackals. So that we wouldn’t be playing armchair psychologists, we wouldn’t be endeavoring to diagnose people. But we would have a way to talk about the patterns, traits, cycles, behaviors, and know that these trades exist, and that they do produce predictable results in the relationship.
In this article, I’m going to give you 16 clear ways the Hijackal shows you that they don’t love you. And hopefully, you would learn how to finally allow yourself to believe and see that the Hijackal has no love to give you. And if at all they did, you know very well, they would withhold it from you, because that’s what they do.
So at the start of your relationship, you have this big love bombing experience. And they’re very passionate and romantic, they do their best to convince you that you’re everything they ever wanted and more. Everything seems to happen in a rush, they sweep you off your feet, get you into a relationship, begin to cohabit, marry, start a family, etc.
But as time goes on, all of that passion and attention they showered on you in the beginning is turned towards themselves. In other words, they are passionate about getting everything done in their own way. They care nothing about you having anything your way. And that just starves your relationship of what I call the three-must haves have a healthy relationship; namely equality, reciprocity and mutuality. Their obsession with winning means that they need you to lose. But love is not found where there are winners and losers. It just negates the whole concept of selflessness that is the foundation of genuine love. They would however need you around because they want you to support them, validate them and allow them to feel larger than life and take up more space.
So, like I said earlier, I’m going to give you 13 ways, that a Hijackal shows you that they don’t love you. And I hope you’ll open your mind to read this and recognize them one after the other and say even though I really want to believe they love me, I can see clearly now that they don’t. Because you can go for years hoping against hope that what the hijackal feels for you is love. Probably because you are blinded by the false persona of selflessness and kindness that they took on at the beginning of the relationship.
But like we know about hijackals, the real person is the nastiness you’re facing right now. The passionate loving person from way back was a facade that was a chameleon, doing the most to get you into their lair so that they could slowly or in some cases very quickly, take power over you. So, now let’s get down to the 16 ways the hijackal shows you they don’t love you.
Number one: there is no equality in the relationship. What happens when you’re in a relationship with a Hijackal is they don’t realize that in every relationship, there are two ME’s and one WE. And sometimes one of the ME’s has the attention and other times the other ME does. And sometimes the WE gets to have the attention.
And maybe neither party gets exactly what they want. But they can negotiate, they collaborate, and settle on something that is in the best interest of everyone. But when you’re with a Hijackal, they would never do that. For them it’s all about their ME and not about your ME or the WE.
Number two: someone who is in love with you tries to see your point of view, just as well as theirs because they’re curious about you. They’re interested in what you’re thinking and feeling and needing and wanting. They do this because they want to know how to get the best fit for both of you. But you’ll find that the Hijackal is not at all interested in seeing your point of view. In fact, they’re upset when you express a point of view or a request, or worse that you find fault in the way they’re behaving.
So, in summary, the hijackal is not going to be interested in your point of view, unless it agrees with theirs, because they have you in their life to validate them.
Number three: there is no mutuality in the relationship. A person who loves you actively seeks out your best interest. And they’re willing to work with you to make that happen. For example, maybe you’re in a relationship with someone, maybe the marriage them, and you find that one person really doesn’t want children and the other really does. It’s in the best interest of the person who wants children to be set free and go off and find a person who wants children just as much.
Number four: They constantly display their love and affection for you. They are attentive, they give you their time, maybe they bring a gift like a little card tucked in somewhere, they have words of appreciation, they may even do things for you without ever being requested to do so. And love shows up like that in a healthy relationship.
But with the Hijackal you have to fight and beg for bit of affection that you get. And then frequently deploy the silent treatment just to let you know that they can withhold their time, attention, and their words from you, sometimes they won’t even make eye contact with you. Because they need to have some kind of power over you.
Number five: there is no reciprocity. A person in love with always has your back, they walk beside you and you can count on them. The reciprocity we are talking about here is not a tit for tat. It is not a scoreboard of grievances. It is just knowing you can count on your partner. And if you asked them to do something, they would do it, if it is within their power just like you would do the same for them.
You accommodate one another. One time it is the movie you want to see and next time, it’s the movie, your partner wants to see. So there is that reciprocity, and you could count on them, and they on you. So, there’s two of you in it together, and there’s a sharing of responsibility and making things happen.
But you will almost never find that in a relationship with a Hijackal, except during the love bombing phase, because it’s their way or the highway. And you find that you are the one who is doing most of the accommodating, most of the giving and most of the forgiving. While they are doing most of the receiving and taking.
And when you’re with a Hijackal, you can get very good at justifying or rationalizing or making excuses for them. And when you start fixing things for them or solving their problems and excusing their behaviors, and taking away the consequences for their poor choices, so there are no consequences for it, you are effectively enabling them.
And once you realize that they are really not behaving in a ways that can be recognized as love, you have to sit up and say, I’m enabling this. Because you keep harkening back to the great moments at the beginning of the relationship and you are using that to justify all of the piss-poor behavior that you are seeing. And the longer you’re with the Hijackal, the more of that poor behavior you see and the less it looks like love.
Number six: people who love you are willing to compromise. They’re willing to find a way that works for both of you. Hijackals aren’t willing to find a way that works for both of you. They prefer to cajole you and demand that you do what works for them.
That’s never going to be a happy scenario. And you’re always going to feel marginalized and pushed against the wall and dismissed and discounted. They are not willing to compromise. Now a loving person will go the extra mile for you and make an effort. Even if they’re not good at it, they’ll do it because they want to show how much they love you.
And you may be counting the five things that they’ve ever done wonderfully well, while overlooking the 160 things that they do on a daily basis that are dismissive and insensitive and yet, you keep excusing their behavior because they did five nice things a long time ago.
Number seven: Lack of trust. In a healthy relationship, you can trust each other. You don’t have to have to be snooping around each other’s phone when they’re asleep, you don’t have to be wondering what the other person is up to. Because you have had many clear demonstrations that you can trust one another. And you feel good about that. But when you’re in a relationship with a Hijackal, there is mutual distrust.
And you begin to recognize that they don’t trust you even if you have never done anything remotely untrustworthy in the course of the relationship. And the term for that is projection, because they know that they are themselves untrustworthy, they find a way of making it about you.
This thing Hijackals do where they turn things around and make you the villain is called blame shifting. In a loving relationship, both parties trust each other and if you have any doubts about anything, you two can talk about it.
Number eight: Surveillance. The inordinate desire of the hijackal to wield control and command over our lives means they would obsess about our every movement. They want to know who we associate with; and they want to determine we make friends with.
Sometimes the obsession goes as far as them installing cameras and GPS trackers at the bottom of your car, installing bugs or trackers on your mobile phone, etc.
They need to know where you are at all times, what you are doing and who you are with. They want to see your phone, they want proof, they want to talk to people, they want you to stay home, they want to isolate you keep you away from people. They’ll blow up your phone with calls asking where are you and when are you coming home, they know exactly how much time it is supposed to take you to get home from work and they throw a fit when you’re one minute over.
In other words, they are upset that you are out having a good time and they want to know when will you be done so you can return and serve their purpose. If they loved you, they would be happy that you’re having a lovely time with your friends or your mother or with your children. But instead, because it’s not about them, they are going crazy.
This kind of surveillance does not demonstrate love. In the beginning, it may feel like oh, the person just wants to know where I am. Oh, isn’t that sweet? They can’t live without me. But it soon spirals out of control and becomes a way to have their thumb on everything that is going on with your life.
Number nine: you can’t express yourself. In loving relationships, you can talk about anything. You can bring up joys, you can bring up successes, you can bring up sorrows, you can bring up problems, issues, concerns, and the other person is interested and willing to talk to you.
They’re willing to engage in that conversation that goes back and forth, like a really good ping pong game. And they’re interested and you’re interested and there’s a willingness to solve problems.
But you are not going to have that in a Hijackal relationship. The first time that you hit the figurative ping pong ball, they’ll take the ball in their hand and leave the court. They are going to keep the ball, because they are not willing to play fair. And they are not going to be communicating with you in an equal, mutual or reciprocal way.
The willingness to communicate and learn more and more about each other, deepens the emotional intimacy but Hijackals have no interest in emotional intimacy.
Number ten: they don’t respect your boundaries. When you are in a relationship with a Hijackal, they don’t believe you have a right to setting boundaries. They do not like boundaries, you must set them though. But here’s the little trick when you were the Hijackal you quietly neutrally speak about your boundary. And you just repeat it. You’re doing it for yourself. The Hijackal is not going to pay much attention. But you’re doing it for yourself to speak up and not retreat.
Number eleven: There is no acceptance. In a loving relationship, we accept that we’re different from one another. And we respect those differences. And we’re curious about them and we lean in and we’re interested in the differences. And we don’t iron them out in a way that is disrespectful. We can agree to disagree. It’s never seen as a personal attack. It is just we’re different from one another.
But in a Hijackal relationship, there is no room for understandable differences. It has to be their way or the high way.
Number twelve: They have a need for control. In a healthy loving relationship, your partner has no need to control you, rather they want to see you blossom, they want to see you win, expand and have the best life you possibly can. That’s loving, they’re supportive of that they want that for you. They want you to have what it is you want to have, they want you to achieve what you most want to achieve. They want you to soar and they’re willing to walk with you. A Hijackal, on the other hand, wants to pat you down, slap you down, squish and turn you into a pancake just so they can ignore in the end.
Number thirteen: They manipulate and control. Loving people don’t try to manipulate and control you. They have no need to do that. They’re interested in you. They want for you what you want for yourself. As I said earlier, they’re excited when you succeed. They pick you up and walk beside you when things aren’t going well and they never try to manipulate you.
With the aforementioned points, I hope that you can see that a Hijackal is not showing you loving behaviors. And therefore, you can conclude that they don’t have loved to give you but you may have become very aware now of the distinctions, which I hope you have. And also, that you recognize that you want to be in an equal loving, reciprocal, mutual, delightful, communicative respect for Ireland’s safe and trusting relationship, and that you won’t settle for less.
I hope you’ve had some new insights, some ideas and strategies to help you gain clarity and confidence for moving forward toward greater emotional health and safety. And until we talk again, take very good care of yourself, because you really matter. You deserve that and so to your children.
Here are some related posts and episodes that might help you right now:
Love, Lust & Love-Bombing! How to Tell the Difference to Stay Safe GUEST: Dr. Terri Orbuch
The Hijackal Haze: How Hormones Keep You Hooked on Hijackals and Hope
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