Note: This content is another partial adaptation of my presentation at the 2023 AACC Know Hope World Conference. The audience was counselors, pastors, teachers, leaders, and coaches who come alongside others as people-helpers. For the sake of simplicity, and because women make up a majority of my niche audience, much of the language here refers to women as the victim and men as the perpetrators. However, we readily acknowledge that both men and women can play either role. I also work with emotionally abused men, and the impact is as devastating to them as it is to women. Please exchange the pronouns in this presentation where applicable to your experience.
Guidelines for Couple’s Work in Narcissistic Relationships
Standard, run-of-the-mill approaches are potentially dangerous for couples stuck in power and control cycles. As coaches and counselors, we must protect the victim from further harm and work to potentially bring them to a place of collaboration. The dominating partner must become connection-oriented before collaboration can occur.
This means that couples work is NOT the first step!
If they are bringing crap to the table, all we have to work with is crap. Deal with the individual junk so they have substance with which to collaborate. There must be the individual wherewithal to maintain freedom, reciprocity, and mutuality to build a marriage relationship that is transparent, connected, authentic, and life-giving like God has written on our hearts for it to be.
Address the Irresponsibility
An abusive person will cry foul when something’s not working for them, without ever acknowledging that they poked, and poked, and poked until she exploded. We have got to get behind the explosion and confront the poking.
The misplaced responsibility is emotional laziness. An emotionally abusive person puts the full weight of responsibility on the other person to not only name what’s wrong but to come up with the solutions. Those solutions better not mean anything he has to change.
So, the irresponsibility looks both like not owning their own bad behavior and not putting any thought into how to eradicate it. Call it out for what it is. Change will not happen until the doer feels their own pain and owns their own steps.
Address the Entitlement
He does what he does because he wants what he wants, and that does not include honoring her as a separate person. She does NOT have to stay in the marriage. She does NOT have to give in to his demands. He is not entitled to her listening ear when he is raging at her and bullying her. She does NOT have to explain herself, prove her worth, or prove the depth of abuse. She does have her own right and responsibility to show up as her own person. It is an unalienable, God-given right! Give her a voice and a choice. God cares very much how people treat people.
Don’t be afraid of a separation! This marriage is already on a divorce track. A separation will not make that more likely, and may be the one thing that gives it a fighting chance to survive. It will make necessary room to clear their heads, mark the end of the old and the beginning of the new, define the transition, and make a workable plan for the future.
Address the Real Results of Real Behavior
Not the intention. Or the motives. When you stomp on someone’s toe every time you see them, they are not going to allow you to see them. Lying to someone breaks the relationship, and they learn you are not reliable. When you dismiss her, she knows she cannot count on you to hear her or protect her. When you’re a jerk, no one wants to be around that. Cheating ruins your own reputation. Every action brings very real consequences. We reap what we sow, and this is not a forgiveness issue. It is a repentance issue.
Trust doesn’t make someone trustworthy. Forgiveness does not make the abuse stop.
Repentance is about going and doing differently. Deal with the destructive behavior, not simply excuse it away.
Address the Trauma of This Relationship
Trauma work is a vital part of individual work, and I’ll touch on that in just a minute. In the context of this relationship, it is important to connect the dots to how our desperation for safety and security is being played out in the triggers, the control cycles, and the self-destructive self-protection.
Address the Consequences of Sin
Where there is sin, there is death. Death of desire, of feelings of love, of hope, of motivation, of faith. What has become dead is NOT resurrected just because there is an apology, even IF there is very real repentance. God does not automatically remove consequences. They are still a very real part of what must be worked through. If the work they’re doing is solely to alleviate the consequences, they’ve missed the point. Ultimately, God uses those consequences to shape character, even with the potential of no marriage restoration. If marriage were the point, there would be marriage in heaven. There isn’t, according to scripture. God is the point and he wants your surrendered heart.
Address the Spiritual Warfare Element
Marriage issues aren’t really marriage issues! They are symptoms of root individual issues being played out in the context of a relationship. This is about each person being faced with a choice to surrender to God vs. do what is right in their own eyes. And any movement toward surrender will be actively, fiercely opposed by a very real enemy. Satan seeks desperately to make sure we are all distracted, disabled, defeated, and deceived. This is a war for our souls!
Tap into Resilience
God always leads toward light and life and freedom, not toward death and oppression.
What matters for all of us, including those in this marriage, is how we show up, making the most of what God gave us to care for, steward, and manage, with deference to Him. This isn’t just about making a happy little life together! Eternity hangs in the balance. And marriage is a gift that allows you to not have to walk that out alone.
Recognizing the Language of Narcissism
The nuances of language are powerful! How they use words is more telling than what they’re telling you about. If you listen, you can tell exactly who is powering over who.
The Connection-Oriented Language
One is trying to understand. She’s seeking insight, and looking for a collaborative effort to stop the harm and to reconnect. She’ll often use very apologetic-sounding language, as if she is a burden to the conversation. They’ll stumble over their words and apologize for not knowing how to say what they mean. It’s almost as if she’s asking permission to show up or seeking forgiveness for having a different opinion or perspective. They apologize for “hurting” their spouse by talking about what has happened, even when it is real, observable behavior, as if talking about it is what made it harmful. You can tell this person is not normally given the space to speak her own mind.
The Control-Oriented Language
The controlling partner is telling you how it is with no room for anything other than his perspective. He speaks with coercive, directive language. They demand agreement and get offended easily when they don’t get it. If she shares her heart or request change , he takes it personally as an assault on his character. He is looking only for her to change, not change himself. For example, if she would just forgive him, they could move on. Or, if she would quit holding him to her unrealistic expectations, they could get along fine. He might blame her hypersensitivity or “ultra” high expectations. You will hear that the controlling spouse’s goal is to rectify the current crisis in some way. He wants to just get back to “normal,” to avoid sleeping on the couch, wasting time with counseling, or going through with the divorce.
You will hear in her use of language that her goal is exactly the opposite of his: She is seeking to use the current crisis to change the status quo because she is not interested in getting back to his “normal.” She is asking for a total change in direction.
Assessing the Couple: Key Questions
I also watch to see how he responds to what SHE says SHE needs for healing. He doesn’t get to tell her what she needs for healing. There will not be healing or reconciliation if he continues to power over her perspective, thoughts, desires, and requests. If she says she needs space, or no contact, for example, and he decides she needs a dozen red roses and an incredible apology letter, what do you think is probably going to happen with those flowers and that card? They become one more example of him deciding he knows better than her.
This is the framework I use when assessing a couple:
- What is happening?
- What needs to happen to collaborate, resolve, and reconnect?
- What needs to happen in the future to stay connected?
It’s not about trying to figure out who’s right or wrong, whose version of events is correct, making one see it like the other, or fixing it today in this hour. The journey is about collaboration that brings connection. Listen instead to what they’re saying they have left to work with and help them take what they’ve got and make it work together for them to walk this life together.
They can learn to fight for connection rather than self-destruct! What are they authentically bringing to the table? If her thoughts, ideas, needs, or influence is silenced, he will get the very thing God said was not good: To be alone.
Individual Healing in Narcissistic Victim Syndrome Recovery
If an individual has been systematically silenced, given little to no room to speak about concerns, hopes, and opinions, they will be hypervigilant to ANY implication about what they’ve done/have not done to contribute to or maintain the abuse. Plus, they did not come to counseling because THE SPOUSE was unhappy with the status quo. (They might have come to counseling based upon ire that the status quo has been upset…) Don’t ask questions about what her part has been, or what she’s doing to “fix” it, or how she could have been different. She is exhausted trying to fix what he broke. Her healing is going to require first identifying where she’s lost her sense of personhood, beginning with her ability to speak for herself.
Process the Trauma
This is true for both parties! We do not live in the world we were created for, and no one gets through life unscathed. The lessons learned and lies embraced through the trauma are the driving factors of disconnection. We all self-protect. So, we must identify how they are self-protecting in ways that create their own self-fulfilling prophecy and practice the necessary boundaries and self-care that will allow for healthy vulnerability and connection to be safe again.
For him, he has to be willing to consider what he needs to feel safe and seen, and how he goes about getting that in ways that don’t destroy it in the process. For her, she has to consider how she has made him out to be someone who doesn’t deserve her time and respect, if there is ever to be any hope of offering it.
Processing trauma means unearthing what’s been buried. We must understand what they feel, who they blame, what their biggest fears are, and the things that make them feel as if they will lose themselves.
Process the Grief
It doesn’t help to tell people to look on the bright side or expect it will all work out. There is a very real loss to identify, a loss that is deep and broad. For both parties. The question is not how to fix it or how to change it, but how to grieve it. For her, that means acknowledging the death of hope, trust, safety, and dreams. For him, that means acknowledging the loss of power, control, and perception of loyalty and admiration. We must help them find a language that makes it safe to grieve.
Empathy: Seek to Understand as Unique Individuals
They each need to see the other as a person of value who is simply trying to get through this broken world. What they do is rarely about the other person, but about what is broken in them. How can they learn to offer care and compassion, starting with themselves, and extend it to each other?
How can they consider that what is happening in this marriage is something God wants to use to refine them as individuals? Not that He would ever condone abuse, but how can they better become who He created them to be in spite of it? Rather than telling him he shouldn’t treat her that way, or telling her she needs to forgive him, what is the process that God wants to use to make them more like Him? How can we invite Him to help us name what we’re protecting and what we fear losing? God can be trusted with our hearts and our souls.
Discover the Process of Change
Acknowledge the consequences of sin. The lie is that a person who has no hope of saving their marriage has no hope for a good future. But the truth is, God is in the business of redemption and hope. If there is to be change in the marriage, change must start with the individual. A marriage cannot be transformed with only one person doing the work, but each person can be transformed regardless of the other person’s choices. They can have peace and a future!
God does not give us a blueprint. God gives us a process and the choice to follow His lead. This may lead to the redemption of the marriage. It may not. But a healthy marriage will come only as a by-product of healthy individuals. God’s best is not the lack of divorce. God’s best is abundant life in Christ.
Get Outside Resources
He must have accountability with a therapist or support group for abusers. It must be a highly accountable program that makes him own his stuff, or he will find others who are willing to support the idea that it is her fault. She must have a highly accountable support system that helps her to own her own steps of health and healing without shaming her or blaming her for what she is going through.
Conclusion
Healing from narcissistic victim syndrome is a multi-faceted process that requires both individual and couple’s work. The goal is not simply to save the marriage, but to foster individual growth and healing, which may or may not result in a healthy marriage. By addressing irresponsibility, entitlement, real consequences, trauma, and spiritual warfare, individuals and couples can find a path to recovery and wholeness.
