“Is My Spouse a Narcissist?"
And Other Questions Being Asked in Marriage Counseling
By Dr. Shanon Roberts
There are many buzzwords around what is healthy versus unhealthy in committed relationships. More and more partners are researching and understanding these terms. Labels such as narcissist, gaslighter, misogynist, borderline, alcoholic/addict, and abusive are now commonly used words to define unhealthy behavior dynamics in intimate relationships.
While some of these terms speak to a “clinical” term requiring professional assessment and diagnosing, they do speak to the grouping of symptoms that can severely interfere with safe interactions within a marriage that is supposed to build vulnerability and an intimate bond. Professional marriage therapists should be seasoned with identifying attributes, when present, that are contra indicators of not entering couples counseling. At least not immediately.
These attributes, in fact, can be harmful to the process of marriage counseling. In couples counseling or marriage therapy, the therapist is tasked with facilitating a safe and secure intimate bond emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually where the bond has been stunted or fractured. Attachment bonds between two lovers can erode due to inattention, vulnerabilities brought into the relationship by an individuals’ past family of origin or other romantic partnership histories, unresolved hurt or betrayal wounds, and a chronic negative interaction cycle of communication. While all these things can be addressed in therapy, it requires each person to show up with the desire of wanting to learn how to be safe for their partner using vulnerability, open sharing, and acceptance.
Asking a partner to be vulnerable and open to the other partner who is not ready and able to be safe, is not good practice. Re-attaching to an unsafe partner cannot and should not happen and would not be successful.
There are four most accepted attributes that would make this true.
Current Infidelity
You would think this would be a no-brainer; however, it must be mentioned. If one of the partners is currently in an affair either emotional, romantic, or sexual, or whether in person or virtually, asking the other person in the marriage to make themselves vulnerable, emotionally available, and potentially physically present again would be inappropriate. If a partner is divided in their affections, attention, or loyalties while also hesitant on their commitment to working on the relationship, marriage counseling will not work. There must be enough assurance and evidence that the extra-marital relationship has been totally cut off and has no communication. Discussing how the other partner can be sure of this can be discussed with your marriage counselor at the intake assessment. The partner in the affair must acknowledge the “wrongness” of this relationship, the pain it has caused to the marital partner, the willingness to be forthcoming/truthful about it (cautioned with a seasoned marital counselor of what is appropriate and what isn’t), and willingness to increase accountability to gain trust again in the relationship. This HAS to be the first step in marital counseling before working on the core issues of the marriage itself. Whereas both partners are equally responsible for the temperature of the marriage, the partner choosing infidelity as a way of coping is 100% responsible for the destructive choice.
Just because there has been infidelity in the relationship doesn’t require an end. There can be restoration. In fact, if the offending party will shut off all ties, it allows the other partner to decide if the marriage is worth repairing.
Domestic Violence
Creating the presence of a safe haven where couples turn toward their partners for a soft place to fall, as well as, a secure base in which we can go out into the world knowing someone has our back is the goal of marriage counseling. The presence of domestic violence does the antithesis of this. They cannot coexist in a healthy relationship. Please know, there is a huge difference between those that are domestically violent and those that have anger management challenges. They are not one and the same. A well-experienced marriage counselor knows the difference and assesses for this. For those that struggle with domestic violence, the person does not take responsibility for their behavior. They blame-shift... “Well, if you wouldn’t have _____, then I wouldn’t have had to ______.” They minimize the magnitude of their behavior… “You are so dramatic and too sensitive.” Power in the relationship is how they yield their way. In healthy relationships, the power is egalitarian. Both parties must have the ability to “show up and be heard” without fear of repercussions. In anger management, the person has a coping/emotional problem, not a cognitive/heart problem. They tend to show remorse, take responsibility by acknowledging their behavior is inappropriate, and are willing to receive individual help first. In this scenario, the counselor can help couples navigate solutions where one partner can help their struggling partner in these tense scenarios.
If there is the presence of domestic violence, a specialized treatment program specifically designed to address this issue would be recommended prior to the initiation of any work in a couples counseling setting. Other more subtle forms of abuse such as verbal, emotional violence, and manipulation would also be included in this as well. The offended partner would need to work individually in counseling to help establish a safety plan and the ability to create healthy boundaries while the violence is being apprehended.
Unaddressed Pattern of Substance Abuse
Mood-altering chemicals such as alcohol, marijuana, etc. that are used habitually, as opposed to recreationally, can replace a person’s natural personality, motivation, and willingness to reach for their partner. When you use these “mood-altering” chemicals, the pre-frontal cortex is temporarily disengaged, numbed, and off-line. When you are not in your front-brain, you can no longer access your reasoning skills, your conflict-management, your problem-solving skills, or your ability to make choices consistent with your spiritual/moral/ethical belief sets. This influences a quicker “back-brain” response of self-protection seen as fight, flight, or freeze. The use of substances, in many circumstances, can be traced consistently in the couple’s negative cycle of arguments. Rigid and chronic patterns of negative interactions begin to be developed. Fight is the escalation of self-protection in the face of a potential threat, flight becomes the unwillingness to stay present to work through potential difficulties, and freeze becomes the inability in the moment to move through discussions of threat. Overcoming this pattern would require a time of sobriety of the use of the chemicals prior to the couple addressing this as a core issue in the marriage.
Many times, couples in this scenario demonstrate that one person is doing most of the work in the relationship emotionally, cognitively, and physically. This makes for a distinct disproportionate amount of work and responsibility in the marriage. Again, this negatively impacts the ability to create a safe and secure bond in the marriage.
Unaddressed Underlying Mental Health Issues
Whether the issues are chemical, behavioral, or core belief sets that create biased thinking, individual counseling may be warranted initially to stabilize these challenges. Whereas depression and bipolar disorder, for example, are mood-altering, they can impact the individuals’ ability to work relationally. In the example of personality disorders such as Narcissistic, a pervasive pattern characterized by lack of empathy, or Borderline, a pervasive pattern of lack of emotion-regulation, preliminary work of the negative communication cycle could be unsuccessful, and at times unsafe. Thinking challenges, such as misogyny characterized by an inequality core belief toward women, would also be an example where the real work of vulnerability cannot be safe or recommended initially.
The good news in all this, however, is that if these areas of challenge are addressed - and they all can be- marriage counseling can work, be successful, and establish the safe, secure bond within a romantic partnership. In fact, having worked with couples with all these preliminary issues in the past 30 years, I’ve seen it happen. Restoration takes two partners willing to put in the hard work. The first part of marriage therapy involves helping the couple map out how to address these preliminary issues using assessment, structured decision making, treatment planning, and appropriate loving boundaries. Ongoing involvement with the marriage therapist during this phase includes continued support and accountability in a warm, empathic, nonjudgmental environment before the work of re-attachment, healing, and restoration.
If you are ready to take that next step towards reconciliation in your marriage, let’s talk! You can schedule a free 30-minute consultation here with my team here to see if we would be a good fit.