Couples Therapy and Abuse
don't give intimacy exercises when she needs an escape plan
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**There has been so much interest in more content on couples therapy. This is the first follow up post to my initial post, When Couples Therapy Turns Cruel. It touches on what happens when couples try therapy when there is active abuse going on. I’m nervous about posting about abuse. I am not an expert nor a therapist but this theme came up in so many comments and from readers who reached out that it felt important to cover. I share one woman’s story in full at the end of this post as well as some resources. I hope to interview therapists in my next installment of this series. Thanks as always for commenting and responding with grace and kindness.**
The response to my post When Couples Therapy Turns Cruel was overwhelming. I finally put into words something people had experienced individually but no one was talking about collectively. And that is the extremely damaging effects the marriage industrial complex can have, and on women, in particular. Especially couples therapy.
If you missed that post, read it here. Something that emerged in the very robust comments section is how harmful it is to be in therapy with someone who is abusive. If you are being abused, you should not enter marriage therapy. You should get out. And yet, so often, women find themselves in therapy with, you guessed it, abusers.1
The problem is, some abuse is so hard to identify. They don’t start out as abusers, do they? If they did, no one would date them. They start off sweet and kind and accommodating. Attentive. Maybe they have a few bad days. Maybe they do egregious things but you tell them it hurt your feelings and they promise to do better.
And then it happens again. And again. And again.
In fact, all too often you don’t see the abuse for what it is until you have escaped.
While physical abuse is more black and white, even then, we know how hard it is for women to leave. So abuse that is more difficult to identify like emotional abuse, narcissistic abuse, and financial abuse? We haven’t learned the signs. So often, we don’t even realize it is happening.
Countless couples then enter therapy in hopes of improving the relationship. But sadly, especially in cases of narcissistic abuse, the abuser can come off as charming, intelligent, committed. Thus the one who is desperately trying to get help by coming to a neutral space where they hope someone else might see what they are facing, is further harmed by being tasked with exercises and strategies that put them back in harm’s way.
Even more troubling, they begin to question their own experience of reality further.
“I had a useless couples therapist who couldn’t spot coercive control, took his side in everything, and gave me intimacy exercises instead of an escape plan! She just helped him torture me further. For a year.”—a commenter on When Couples Therapy Turns Cruel
Couples therapy cannot cure an abuser. If there are signs of abuse, the therapist should stop seeing the couple together and notify the one who is being abused of what is happening. Some might even argue continuing to counsel said couple is enabling the abuser.
And yet, for the partner who does not yet know how to leave, is it right to abandon them with no support?
Ideally, couples therapists would be trained to identify abuse even if that word is not being used by the couple. But I am not sure this is happening, especially for more nebulous forms of abuse like those mentioned above.
In addition, so much of this behavior can be excused in a patriarchy that prioritizes the man’s needs over the discomfort of the woman. Let’s not forget the story Glennon Doyle shared in Untamed about how in couples therapy with her ex-husband who was a serial cheater,2 her therapist suggested that if she didn’t want to have sex with him, try just giving blow jobs.
“Our latest couples therapist immediately clocked my ex’s manipulation and abuse tactics and ultimately helped me create an escape plan - we started meeting 1:1 after my ex fired her. I think I just got lucky - my advice would be if you have the slightest feeling your partner is manipulative/controlling/abusive - you don’t need a couples therapist to tell you what your instincts are already telling you - you’re worth saving, not your abusive marriage. Get a good individual therapist to work with and make your plan to leave.”—a commenter on When Couples Therapy Turns Cruel
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I know that narcissism is a catchword and every divorced person feels like their ex is a narcissist. Believe me, while I think my ex is one, he is just as convinced I was the narcissist in the relationship!
But I believe going to therapy with a narcissist is always, always harmful.
Here’s why.
Dr. Ramani Durvasula has written a great book on narcissistic abuse3 called It’s Not You, which may be the most perfect title ever, because my entire marriage, I was told (and believed) I was the problem. That’s what narcissists do. Make every issue you try to bring to them your fault.4 She writes:
“Narcissistic abuse always entails blame shifting. Nothing is ever their responsibility or their fault because for a narcissistic person to take responsibility or accept blame means having to accept that they are accountable and imperfect. The blame shifting allows them to maintain their grandiose and self-righteous conception of themselves as being better than you or as the victim of circumstance.”
You can imagine, therefore, why being in therapy with a narcissist is not just an exercise in futility but an opportunity for more harm.
ICYMI:
“My ex was emotionally and financially abusive. Our therapist did so much damage by not acknowledging what was in front of her and made me feel like I was to blame. I’ll never forget the burning injustice of sitting there wondering what stopped her from calling out what was in front of her, especially since she was much more direct with me than him. I was more willing to cooperate with the process and I think I was just an easier, more malleable person to work with. She really should have known better.”—a commenter on When Couples Therapy Turns Cruel
Below I share the story of one reader who opens up about undergoing couples therapy with a narcissist and what it took to leave him. For more stories of narcissistic abuse, read my interview with Kate Hamilton, author of Mad Wife as well as her guest post on Post-Separation Abuse.
I also highly recommend Kate Anthony for her content on these topics, in particular her podcast episode on The Abuser’s Playbook.
“I’m approaching five years from the day I told my narcissistic ex-husband I was leaving. I’ve been rereading my journals from the year before we separated while reflecting on the role couples therapy played in the end of our marriage. As I read back I was shocked at the amount of emotional abuse I endured and how I responded to it with self-criticism instead of empathy for my own pain. In one entry I noticed how my ex constantly criticized me for not making enough money even though he’d strongly encouraged me to pursue a creative and low paying career path. Later that same day I wrote that I recovered from my “mopey” mood and was feeling “positive” enough to have a nice evening out with him. I forgot how low my self esteem was in that last year.
The final year of my marriage was a series of shaky steps towards independence, like a newborn fawn learning how to walk. I got a slightly better paying job, said no to a backpacking trip he planned that felt genuinely dangerous, and got my own bank account. Meanwhile my ex, a beloved professor at a local college, belittled me over the low salary at my new job, told me I must either be gay or asexual if I didn’t want to have sex with him every day, and once got so drunk he yelled at a cop in a public park. But in between accounts of this abuse, my journal was peppered with entries like, “I accomplished my whole to-do list today! Yay! :) ” The roller coaster of good days and bad ones left me confused and exhausted.
In July of 2019 I finally told him I was done. The backpacking trip had been what I thought was the last straw. He gave a half-hearted apology and one final hail mary, saying that we hadn’t even tried couples therapy yet. I agreed to give it a shot since it seemed like people would ask if we tried it when I shared we were getting a divorce. We set up a meeting with the therapist I had been seeing for a few months at that point. He had one meeting with her by himself and deemed her suitable.
In hindsight the visits together were harmful from the start because of the therapist’s attitude of false equivalence. She assumed that both of us were in the marriage because we sought an emotionally supportive relationship. She assumed that both of us were mature enough to self reflect and give the other the benefit of the doubt. She must have assumed that I would have already left the marriage if I were experiencing severe emotional abuse. None of these things were true.
Emotional connection and support were pretty far down on my ex-husband’s list of reasons to be married. He stayed because being married improved his status in the workplace and as a man in general. He was in the marriage to have as much sex as possible. He was also in the marriage because I cooked all the food, did the dishes, and moved where he needed me to for his career to grow.
We never identified this mismatch in motives and as a result couples therapy moved me from a place where I had resolved to move out on my own, back being lost in a swirl of self-blame and cognitive dissonance. The sessions required me to reiterate arguments I’d made and had dismissed by him many times before, except now with a professional referee who was supposedly neutral. My ex was an intelligent and articulate person who was extremely persuasive. The therapist made an effort to remain unbiased, but in hindsight she was swayed by him. Mismatched libidos were a common point of tension, and when I shared the many legitimate reasons why I didn’t want to have sex all the time, she replied that I should get my hormones checked first to make sure that wasn’t the issue. She never suggested that his expectations could be inappropriate and harmful.
The low point came in a session in August where she asked each of us to verbally list some things we were grateful for in the other person. I went first, and talked about how great of a teacher he was, how he was fun at parties and very knowledgeable about the outdoors. I said he was a kind person and a good friend. When it was his turn, he literally could not think of a single thing. He said, “Um… hmm” and stared ahead blankly for a long time. It was one of the most insulting experiences of my entire life. I wish I had walked out of the office and the marriage itself right then. I somehow made it to the end of the appointment, but then left without speaking to him and we drove away in separate cars.
We had a few tense days at home. Then he wrote me an uncharacteristically sweet letter listing 30 things he loved about me. For context, I had written him a list like that for his last birthday, and he took the actual printed list I gave him and wrote his on the other side. This unoriginal gesture somehow bought him seven more months of my time and patience before I was mad enough to finally leave. Now I understand that he had a narcissistic personality, and the list of things he loved was an example of “hoovering” me back so he could maintain control over me.
Leaving a marriage to a narcissist is like shaking a soda can until it finally explodes. It requires a huge amount of pressure and pain to build up before the victim of narcissistic abuse feels that the suffering brought by divorce would be preferable to the suffering of staying. In my case couples therapy reduced this necessary pressure in an artificial way. In the name of being fair to both clients sitting in her office, an authority figure I trusted was now gently questioning my reasons for leaving. Despite also being my personal therapist, she was missing the context needed to see that I was being harmed by this person, and leaving was the best thing I could have done.5 I finally got out in February 2020, just in time for the Covid pandemic.
Fast forward to 2024 when I found myself ending a six month relationship with another, surprisingly similar, narcissist. I was so furious to see this pattern repeat that I found a therapist named Chelli Pumphrey who specializes in narcissistic abuse. In an early session, I was shocked and validated to learn that she doesn’t offer couples counseling at all anymore. She shared that couples who sought therapy were so frequently made up of a narcissistic abuser and their victim that it was too painful for her to offer the service.6 She knew it would be a futile effort and might prolong the doomed relationship. The victim in that scenario is in a Pathological Love Relationship or PLR, meaning the narcissistic partner has something clinically wrong with them that talk therapy will never fix.
I’m so grateful to have found Chelli, and to have gained enormous insight and self compassion over the last five years. Couples therapy slowed my escape from a harmful relationship and I cannot imagine ever participating in it again. I would rather go through a second divorce than to sit through such a humiliating and wasteful experience. I hope more therapists will familiarize themselves with Sandra Brown’s work on PLRs and cognitive dissonance so they can recognize when a client is experiencing not just a normal rough patch but narcissistic abuse.”
Thank you to this reader who so graciously reflected on her experience.
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Going Further:
I had the pleasure of chatting with Chauncey Zalkin for her inaugural season three episode of her podcast Actual People. Listen here!
Also let me just acknowledge how hard it is to leave. Especially when you share children with this person. Often women stay for the very reason that they do not want to subject their children to potential abuse by splitting custody.
which is widely considered a form of emotional and psychological abuse
Did you know that fawners and narcissists often find themselves in relationships? In fact, Dr. Ingrid Clayton’s second book was about narcissistic abuse. It’s called Believing Me: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Chronic Trauma. And if you haven’t yet ordered it, Fawning is out now!
Again, I did MDMA therapy to fix myself. It was my last-ditch effort to become the person my ex needed me to be. Luckily in MDMA therapy I discovered the relationship I needed to save was the one I had with myself.
Many couples therapists feel it is unethical to counsel both the individual and the couple. Yet I can’t tell you how many stories I have heard of this exact situation.
We had a marriage therapist who asked how I expected to have a good relationship if we never had sex. I refused to go back for another session.
The two times we tried couples were nearly useless. To be fair, they aren't trained to do arbitration. They are trained to treat the "relationship" not the people. I sat silently through session after session thinking his narcissism and defensiveness and emotional immaturity would be obvious, and when she tried to call me out on things it was weak, like she was grasping for equal treatment. The assuming both people want emotional connection and responsibility in the relationship is so key. Even the Terry Real school, which claims (if you read his books) sort of exorcisms for the aggravating party in the marriage isn't robust enough, and may be kind of a scam but at least its not the equal failure approach most therapists take. Its a total waste of time and money.