If your partner is a narcissist, couples counseling will exacerbate any issues.
After studying my family’s long-term relationships, years of premarital counseling work with young couples at my church, and my own decadeslong marriage, I thought I knew what it took to make a relationship work: communication, compromise, and compassion.
I’ve always believed relationships require hard work, and I’ve been willing to put in the time and effort to develop new relationship skills, and even ask for help. Sometimes that work requires a third, unbiased party to help the couple identify where the work needs to happen. And I’ve always been on board with that.
What I didn’t realize until years after divorcing my first husband of 20 years was that couples counseling doesn’t work for every couple and that it can’t save every relationship; in disordered relationships, it can escalate the issues.
And what I’ve learned through my professional work with thousands of narcissistic abuse survivors is that this is the rule, not the exception. When the relationship falls apart, it doesn’t mean you had a bad counselor. It’s not about timing, participation, or any other factor. The stark reality is couples counseling is a terrible move when you have a narcissistic partner.
Here are five reasons why.
Your partner won’t present as a narcissist
When a counselor (or anyone on the outside) sees your relationship, it’s like seeing the tip of an iceberg. They see what’s presented to them, and then interpret what they’re seeing through a lens shaped by their past personal and professional experiences. They form an opinion, but it’s just that – an opinion.
All narcissists create a persona, a false self, that they present to the world. Much like playing a role, their persona includes all the qualities they like and admire about others and excludes those they don’t. Then they create a narrative that supports this persona. The narcissist lives entirely in the made-up world they’ve created, and because this process probably started in childhood, there are dozens, even hundreds or thousands, of others who believe the narcissist’s persona and false narrative are real. Those people are known as flying monkeys, which is a cross between a henchman and an enabler. Knowingly or unknowingly, the flying monkey enables the narcissist while carrying out their work, similar to the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.
If your partner presents well, meaning they’re skilled at presenting the persona they wish others to see, that is what the counselor believes to be real (unless they are highly skilled in narcissistic abuse).
During counseling, your partner may come across as caring, concerned, loyal, devoted, and supportive. Yet at home, they are devaluing and dismissive of you and your feelings.
The counselor becomes the narcissist’s flying monkey
When a professional (doctor, therapist, lawyer, judge, pastor), becomes a flying monkey, the results to the victim are devastating because they unknowingly further the trauma.
Your narcissist partner knows how to trigger you silently (also known as a dog whistle) with a seemingly innocuous word, phrase, or behavior to draw an intense, and often uncontrollable, emotional reaction. Think of it like a safe word but with the opposite effect: Its meaning is only known to the couple. To the counselor, you appear reactive or unstable, while your narcissist partner gives an Emmy-award-winning performance of being calm and concerned while enlisting the counselor’s help to deal with you.
Your counselor may then see you as erratic, unstable, an addict, an attention seeker, or controlling. It’s easy to believe when the narcissist sets you up to provide evidence.
Here are a few examples:
Your narcissistic partner spends $5,000 over your agreed-upon budget in a given month and, as the primary wage earner, you completely freak out. You attempt to communicate how this causes you stress, how the over-spending needs to stop, and how it compromises your ability to trust. Your partner uses this as evidence to show your counselor that you’re controlling, reactive, and value money more than people.
You mention in counseling that you believe your partner is hiding your keys just to watch you frantically search for them. (As outrageous as it sounds, it’s not uncommon.) You have story after story to confirm this belief. Your narcissistic partner uses this discussion as evidence that you’re losing it and need help.
You reveal you have evidence of your partner’s infidelity (text messages, a witness, a hotel bill) in counseling. Your partner explains it away as you being paranoid, or worse, as you being the one having the affair and the counselor believes this to be true.
You believe you’re the problem
Not only does all of this manipulation work on the counselor — it works on you as well. As a narcissistic abuse victim, you struggle with self-doubt, low self-esteem, low self-confidence, and shame at baseline, regardless of how successful you are. The constant devaluation in your most intimate relationship leads you to believe something is wrong with you — you’re losing your mind, you’re not good enough, and more.
This is especially true when it comes to making a marriage or relationship work. You believe that you’re 100 percent responsible for the outcome. What you don’t realize is that even if you put in 110 percent, your narcissistic partner is working against you. The relationship will never work.
Because the couples counselor is skilled at helping healthy people in dysfunctional patterns communicate, compromise, and collaborate effectively, they may make assumptions that aren’t true of your disordered relationship.
- There are two sides to every story.
- You both need to examine your part in this conflict.
- Try seeing it from his perspective.
- Can you see how that would be hurtful? (Regarding your reaction to abuse)
- I want you both to work on this next week.
These statements deepen the victim’s feelings of inadequacy, shame, and the sense that they’re going crazy. While it’s unfathomable that this trained professional is unknowingly putting responsibility for the problem squarely on the victim’s shoulders, this is exactly what often happens when they’ve been deceived.
You’re further traumatized
The couples counseling experience leads to further trauma for the victim.
You’re left feeling unseen, unheard, shamed, blamed, and responsible for your abuse, which goes unrecognized.
The trauma and victimization by professionals sought out for help, be it counselors, therapists, pastors, attorneys, or doctors, can be more harmful than the trauma and abuse from the narcissistic partner. These trusted professionals’ opinions carry so much weight that they can gaslight and confuse the victim easily, even if unintentionally.
You’ve given the narcissist your playbook
This is the biggest harm of all.
Narcissists are unable to regulate their own emotions and self-esteem. They rely on narcissistic supply from others — obtained either through positive means like admiration and respect or through negative means like devaluing and controlling others.
When you actively participate in couples counseling, you share your feelings — what you like, what you don’t, etc. You share how things make you feel and how much distress certain behaviors cause. You spell it all out.
You do this at the counselor’s direction with the hope of improving your relationship, but instead, you’ve done your narcissistic partner’s heavy lifting for them. You’ve given them your playbook – the specific ways the narcissist can successfully gain narcissistic supply by devaluing you.
You share that you feel insecure when they don’t come home on time and don’t call. They exploit that by doing it more. Devaluing you gives them more narcissistic supply.
You express your frustration at their spending. They spend more.
You share how hurt you are when they shut you out with a silent treatment. They shut you out more often and for longer.
Your relationship gets worse. They destabilize you to control you. The counselor doesn’t see it. You feel like you’re losing your mind.
What to do if you’re in a relationship with a narcissist
If you suspect you’re in a narcissistic or otherwise toxic relationship, you need to start healing yourself. I know this can be really hard to understand and even harder to follow. It feels like the relationship is the problem. It feels like the relationship needs your attention.
From my work with thousands of people who’ve experienced narcissistic abuse, I’ve learned that the work needs to focus on you.
Enlist the help of a therapist fluent in narcissistic abuse for individual therapy. Educate yourself. Increase your awareness. Focus on your healing. Become the best version of yourself.
From a solid foundation, it becomes clear how to best move forward.
Melissa Kalt, MD, is a trauma and narcissistic abuse recovery expert who frees survivors from the aftereffects of narcissistic abuse. Download her free guide Was Any of It Real? or learn how to discern the narcissist from the victim here.
