Why Couples Therapy with a Narcissist Will Undo You
two therapists on narcissism in couples therapy, how to avoid the harm so many therapists unknowingly inflict, and how to tell if you're experiencing narcissistic abuse
Welcome to my third post tackling the tricky subject of couples therapy.
I first wrote about couples therapy here, where I shared my own experience with couples therapy over my 14-year marriage, and questioned whether the entire design of marriage causes us to put up with, and tolerate, abuse. I argued that most couples therapy is designed to save the relationship, not the people within it, a focus that can cause a lot of harm.
“Marriage teaches us to tolerate abuse. Because the vow that we make, to stick with this person through better or worse, tells us that it will get better or even if it doesn’t, we said we’d stay. No matter how bad it gets. Better or worse, folks! Keep your side of the bargain.”
My second post explored how destructive couples therapy can be when the couple is trapped in patterns of abuse (and often no one can actually see and name it, including the therapist themselves). I shared one woman’s story of how damaging this dynamic was for her, in her own words. You can read that post here.
That story examined what it looks like to enter therapy with a narcissist, and the woman shared her work with Chelli Pumphrey, LPC, CCTP-II, NAST.1 Pumphrey was a couples therapist for twenty years before she eventually stopped offering couples therapy because of how often she found couples in her office that consisted of a narcissist and their victim. She now focuses her work on Narcissist Abuse Recovery. She shared some of her perspective with me via email:
I was trained in marriage and family counseling and spent the first twenty years of my career as a therapist working with couples. I loved the challenge of couples therapy and seeing some couples grow and heal together. But over time, something started to feel off. I kept noticing a pattern in many of the couples who came to see me. It was common to see one partner with traits of narcissism or another Cluster B personality disorder. These sessions felt different. The same tools that helped healthy couples repair their relationships just didn’t work here. In fact, they often made things worse.
As couples therapists, we’re taught that traditional couples therapy isn’t appropriate when abuse or coercive control is present — though some approaches still attempt to work with these dynamics. The problem is that many therapists receive little to no training in recognizing coercive control, personality disorders, or the complex manipulations that occur in abusive relationships. If you don’t know what these patterns look like, or how convincing abusive partners can be, it can be very difficult to identify them in the therapy room. In relationships involving narcissistic, psychopathic, or sociopathic abuse, the harm is often emotional, psychological, and covert, leaving even seasoned clinicians confused.
This created a painful gray area for me as a therapist: I wanted to help, but I also realized that traditional couples therapy could easily retraumatize the victim. Eventually, I stopped offering couples therapy for these reasons and now work exclusively with survivors of narcissistic and relational abuse.
One of the reasons couples therapy can be so risky in these situations is a manipulation tactic called DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.2 Here’s how it plays out:
When the survivor brings up painful or concerning behavior, the narcissistic partner denies it, attacks the survivor for even mentioning it, and then flips the narrative to make themselves look like the victim. To an untrained or unsuspecting therapist, this can look incredibly convincing while the real victim ends up further invalidated, gaslit, and blamed.
Narcissists are often charming, articulate, and composed in session, while their partners, who are living with chronic stress and are typically very traumatized, can appear reactive or emotional. It’s easy for a therapist to misread this dynamic and side with the calmer partner, not realizing they’re watching trauma unfold in real time.
As I was reading this account, I began to wonder if narcissists are particularly drawn to the therapy room as a way to feed their need to be right. As a new arena in which to parade their persona. Here is what Pumphrey said in response:
It’s not uncommon for narcissistic partners to be drawn to couples therapy. This is not because they want to repair the relationship, but because it offers a new stage. In couples therapy, they can perform for a new audience, manipulate and control the narrative, and gain validation from the therapist. It’s an environment where they can shift blame, appear reasonable, and portray their partner as the problem. A couples therapist could be considered a high-value target for a narcissist, essentially. If the narcissist can convince the therapist that they (the narcissist) are the victim and their partner is the abuser (DARVO), it is the ultimate form of gaslighting. The unwitting therapist will be used to confirm the message that the person being abused is indeed “the crazy/over-reactive/abusive one.”
She goes on:
Ironically, therapists share many of the same traits with victims of narcissists: deep empathy, compassion, agreeableness, and a high tolerance for difficult emotions and challenging behaviors. These are ideal qualities for a therapist to have to do their jobs, but they can blind a therapist to the red flags and manipulation of narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths. Looking through a trauma-informed lens is essential, but therapists MUST seek further training to cultivate a Cluster B personality disorder (aka narcissism)-informed lens. They’re not the same thing, and the difference can determine whether therapy helps or harms.
Pumphrey was kind enough to share this helpful list:
How to Tell If You’re Experiencing Narcissistic Abuse
Persistent confusion and self-doubt — You can’t tell whether your partner is loving or cruel, safe or unsafe. You feel emotionally whiplashed between extremes.
Walking on eggshells — You’re hyper-vigilant, constantly trying to keep the peace or prevent an angry outburst.
Gaslighting and reality distortion — They deny things you know happened, twist your words, or make you question your memory and sanity.
Cycles of idealization and devaluation — Moments of affection or “love-bombing” are followed by criticism, coldness, or silent treatment.
Emotional control and punishment — They use anger, guilt, or withdrawal to keep you off-balance.
Loss of self-trust — You start to doubt your instincts, confidence, and even your identity.
Isolation and dependency — You find yourself cut off from friends or family, increasingly reliant on your partner for emotional validation.
If you see yourself in any of these patterns, please know: confusion is not a sign that you’re broken — it’s a sign you’ve been manipulated. And awareness is the first step back to your truth.
You can follow Chelli here. You can buy her book on how to avoid these kinds of relationships here.
Kate Engler, LMFT, CST3 reached out after my first post to share her perspective as a couples therapist and just how rampant the idealization of marriage is in the field.
One of my first jobs after graduate school was at a private practice that focused on couples therapy. It was there, during one of our clinical case consultations, that I first heard the notion that couples therapists should be “marriage-friendly.” I was shocked to find out that the majority of my colleagues aligned with this philosophy. I bristled immediately at the idea and have only grown more bothered by it over the years.
One of the biggest pushers of this was a very well-known and influential Marriage and Family Therapist, William Doherty. He is vocal about his belief that all couples therapists should be pro-marriage and has even railed against the fact that we have moved away from calling it marriage therapy, even though the shift to the term couples therapy was done to be more inclusive.
He finds it problematic if therapists take a neutral position on divorce and notes that while he supports divorce in some cases, it “…ought to be the tragic exception, not the norm,” and views divorce as being “like an amputation to be avoided if at all possible because it brings about permanent disability, especially when children are involved.”
This whole concept feels antithetical to what my work as a couples therapist should be. (I also think it is too tied to specifically Christian ideas about marriage.) If people want to strengthen their relationships then, great. I’m down to help with that, but 1) it’s THEIR choice and I trust my clients to make the decisions that work for them, not what align with my values and 2) my focus is on the well-being of the HUMANS in the relationship.
I also believe that being in a legally binding relationship is not more valuable/important than being in a non-legally binding relationship. Honestly, I think getting married often brings on complacency. People feel locked in, so they don’t work on the relationship, they don’t show care to their partners in a meaningful way, they don’t worry about the health of the relationship and the people in it. Unfortunately, this is still very prevalent in mixed-gender relationships. (Shocker!) Men still benefit more from marriage than women do, and gendered power dynamics are still rampant and extremely problematic. In addition, I believe that we, as a culture, have over-prioritized romantic relationships. As a result, we haven’t nurtured other important relationships that could bring so much support and love into our lives, and, when romantic relationships do end, the lack of outside connections leaves many people completely adrift.
Because of all of this, I refuse to promote marriage as the ideal, the be-all-end-all. I don’t even think that our licenses should be called “Marriage and Family Therapist!” I think we should be called systems therapists because that doesn’t covertly prop up marriage as the goal.
I asked Engler if there are any signs that a marriage is too far gone for help. Here’s what she said:
I have had a few surprises during my career when relationships that seemed headed for divorce made a turnaround and vice versa, so I never say that there is 100% certainty that marriage is too far gone. However, there are three things that definitely raise a flag for me:
· Both members of the couple are completely shut down. They don’t argue, they don’t have strong feelings, they don’t connect in any way. If they have reached this apathy stage, it is very hard to come back from it.
· When one or both members of the couple do not even attempt to make changes to their behavior or approach to the relationship. I often say, “I’m good at my job but I’m not a magician. If you expect to keep doing the same thing, but getting a different outcome, I can’t help you.”
· They cannot name even one positive thing about the relationship—past or present. I actually use this as a diagnostic tool early in our work. Even couples in a really bad place can usually reflect on some tiny thing that was once good, but if they can’t it is often the death knell of the relationship.
Kate is a Fair Play Facilitator. You can follow her on Instagram here.
I’m so grateful to both of these women for taking the time to answer my questions and further our conversation on The Mother Lode about the pitfalls of couples therapy. If you know someone who would benefit from this series, please use the button below to share it with them. All posts on couples therapy are free.
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GOING FURTHER
The Happily Never After Podcast with Heather McG: This podcast is finally available where Heather interviews Kate Anthony and recorded the clip above. You can listen to it here.
The amazing Zawn Villines has a series on couples therapy as well. You can read her posts Why couples counseling so often makes things worse, Why couples counseling won’t solve household inequality, and today she posted How to be a more feminist therapist.
LPC means Licensed Professional Counselor. CCTP-II means Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, Level II. NAST stands for Narcissistic Abuse Survivor Treatment certification.
Dr. Jennifer Freyd is the founder of this framework.
LMFT means Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. CST means Certified Sex Therapist.
I am forever grateful to the therapist who said to me, in our third session, when I was close to deciding about leaving my 33-year marriage: ‘I think you’re done with Bill.’ I sat there in shock that she said that, but she was right. I was done, and had been for some time.
Men with Borderline have a lot of overlap with covert narcissists and the resulting therapy is equally maddening. I can't believe how long I bashed my head against that wall. Thank you for writing this.