"You don't have to prove that a mental disorder exists in order to have the right to set boundaries. Sometimes healing begins when you turn your attention back to your own experience."
Relationships and psychology · Narcissism · Systemic psychotherapy · Psychotraumatology
"Is my partner a narcissist?"
It is a question that comes up more and more often in conversations about relationships. People read articles, watch videos, recognise certain behaviours and try to understand what is happening in their relationship.
Maybe your partner never accepts being wrong. Maybe they turn every discussion in their own favour. Maybe they constantly need attention, but when you need support they become distant, critical or indifferent.
Or maybe things are less obvious.
There is love, there are beautiful moments, there is closeness. But there are also arguments that leave you confused, situations in which you end up apologising without knowing exactly what for, and moments when you wonder whether you might be the problem.
In trying to make sense of this experience, the word "narcissist" can seem to finally offer an explanation.
But is every selfish person a narcissist? Does every partner who avoids responsibility have a personality disorder? And, above all, if we manage to find the right label, will we automatically know what to do?
The answers are more complex than they seem.
When one word becomes the explanation for an entire relationship
In recent years, psychological language has become much more present in everyday conversation. We talk about trauma, attachment, manipulation, toxic relationships, gaslighting and narcissism.
It is valuable that people are becoming interested in how the mind and relationships work. Sometimes, discovering a psychological concept helps them recognise experiences they previously could not describe.
But there is also a risk.
When a clinical term is used to explain any unpleasant behaviour, it begins to lose its meaning.
A partner who forgets an anniversary is not automatically a narcissist. Someone who withdraws during conflict is not necessarily manipulative. A person who finds it hard to admit a mistake does not, simply because of that difficulty, have a personality disorder.
At the same time, repeated behaviours that cause suffering should not be minimised just because there is no diagnosis.
This is where an essential distinction appears: a behaviour can be harmful without the person displaying it having a mental disorder.
And conversely, a person who has a personality disorder is not defined entirely by their diagnosis and is not inevitably abusive.
A label can sometimes describe part of reality. But it cannot replace understanding it.
What is narcissism, really?
In psychology, narcissism does not simply mean excessive self-love.
To some extent, every person needs to feel valuable, important and appreciated. We need our achievements to be recognised, to be seen by the people who matter to us and to feel that our existence counts.
These needs are not pathological. They are part of developing a healthy self-image.
Difficulties arise when personal worth comes to depend excessively on other people's admiration, on comparison, superiority or on the inability to tolerate criticism.
Psychiatrist and researcher Elsa Ronningstam, in Identifying and Understanding the Narcissistic Personality, describes narcissism as a complex phenomenon that can include both functional traits and pathological forms associated with significant difficulties in regulating self-esteem and relating to others.
This means we cannot equate self-confidence, self-centredness and narcissistic personality disorder.
A person can be ambitious, competitive or concerned with their own image without having a personality disorder.
By contrast, when we talk about narcissistic personality disorder, we are referring to a persistent and pervasive pattern that involves, among other things, an exaggerated sense of self-importance, a need for admiration, difficulties with empathy and impaired interpersonal relationships.
Diagnosis requires a clinical assessment and cannot be made from a video, a popular questionnaire or by interpreting a few couple arguments.
Narcissism does not always look like superiority
The popular image of a narcissistic person is that of someone arrogant, self-assured, concerned exclusively with themselves and unable to recognise the worth of others.
Sometimes, certain people with narcissistic traits may display such behaviours.
But there are also presentations in which, behind the intense need for validation, lies a pronounced vulnerability of self-esteem.
The person may become extremely sensitive to criticism, may interpret disagreement as rejection, may experience an intense sense of shame or may withdraw when their self-image is threatened.
The specialist literature discusses grandiose and vulnerable expressions of narcissism. These are not two separate diagnoses and they can coexist or fluctuate within the same person.
It is important to understand this because, sometimes, visible behaviour does not express what is happening inside.
Someone who appears superior may be defending against a deep sense of inadequacy.
But this possibility does not mean that every arrogant person is hiding a trauma, nor that inner suffering justifies hurting others.
We can try to understand why someone behaves in a certain way without considering any behaviour acceptable.
From a systemic perspective: the problem does not exist in a relational vacuum
In systemic psychotherapy, a person is not seen merely as a set of individual traits.
We are also interested in the relationships in which they developed, the explicit and implicit rules of the family, the way emotions were expressed, the way conflicts were handled and the roles each member learned.
Salvador Minuchin, one of the founding authors of structural family therapy, showed in Families and Family Therapy how important it is to understand the organisation of family relationships, the boundaries between family members and patterns of interaction.
From this perspective, the question is no longer just:
"What is wrong with my partner?"
But also:
"What happens between us when a difficulty arises?"
Let's imagine a couple.
One partner is highly sensitive to criticism. The other wants to talk problems through and insists on getting an answer.
When a disagreement arises, the first feels attacked and starts to defend themselves. They raise their voice, justify everything they did or accuse the other of exaggerating.
The second partner, feeling unheard, insists even more. They want to explain, to clarify, to have their own suffering acknowledged.
The more they insist, the more the first withdraws or attacks.
The more the first withdraws, the more intensely the second feels unimportant.
In the end, both are left feeling that the other is the problem.
A relational cycle can thus form, in which one person's reaction becomes the context that intensifies the other's.
This pattern does not prove the existence of narcissism. It can occur in many relationships and can be maintained by difficulties with emotional regulation, past experiences, communication problems or unexpressed relational needs.
The systemic perspective helps us notice the circularity of interactions, but it does not assume that both partners bear the same responsibility for all behaviours.
If one partner systematically intimidates, threatens, humiliates or controls the other, we are not talking only about a communication problem.
In such situations, responsibility for the abusive behaviour remains with the person who displays it.
Understanding a relational system does not mean automatically distributing blame equally.
What link can there be between childhood experiences and narcissistic traits?
One of the important questions in psychotraumatology is how a person comes to develop certain forms of psychological protection.
A child is not born knowing how to manage shame, rejection, frustration or a sense of helplessness. They learn these things gradually through their relationships with significant adults.
Sometimes, a child grows up in an environment where personal worth is strongly tied to performance.
They are appreciated when they win, when they are the best, when they make no mistakes or when they make their parents feel proud.
In other situations, the child may be frequently criticised, compared with others or may receive contradictory messages about their own worth.
They may be idealised in one moment and devalued in the next.
In such contexts, a child may learn that vulnerability must be hidden and that their sense of self-worth depends on how others see them.
In adulthood, some of these experiences may contribute to difficulties regulating self-esteem, heightened sensitivity to criticism or a need for validation.
However, the development of pathological narcissism cannot be reduced to a single type of childhood. Research points to a complex interaction between individual predispositions, temperament and environmental experiences.
Not every criticised child will develop narcissistic traits. Not every person with such traits has been traumatised. And not every parent who admires their child contributes to the development of a disorder.
What matters is the overall quality of relationships and the way the child comes to build their sense of self-worth.
When shame becomes hard to tolerate
Shame is a deeply relational emotion.
It does not only tell us that we did something wrong; it can be experienced as the feeling that there is something wrong with us.
For some people with pronounced narcissistic traits, criticism can trigger not just the ordinary discomfort of a mistake, but an intense threat to their self-image.
Thus, a relatively simple remark — "The way you spoke to me yesterday hurt me" — may be perceived as "You're telling me I'm a bad person".
Instead of being able to stay in the conversation and acknowledge the other person's pain, they may defend themselves through anger, justifications, counter-attack or withdrawal.
Psychologically, these responses may serve to protect against shame or a sense of inferiority.
But for the partner, the experience is entirely different.
They do not necessarily see the shame. They see that their pain is not acknowledged.
And, over time, they may learn that it is safer to say nothing.
Here we can see how an individual difficulty with emotional regulation can become a recurring relational problem.
What happens to a person living in a relationship where they are constantly invalidated?
Sometimes, discussions about narcissism focus so heavily on the labelled person that we lose sight of the partner's experience.
But perhaps the most important question is a different one:
"How do I feel in this relationship, and what has been happening to me since I've been in it?"
Let's imagine a person who, at the start of the relationship, could express their opinions, voice their wishes and say when something bothered them.
Gradually, after numerous conflicts, they begin to weigh every word.
Before opening a conversation, they try to anticipate their partner's reaction.
They wonder whether the moment is right, whether they will be misunderstood, whether it would be better to let it go.
They end up over-explaining what they feel, justifying their needs and, sometimes, apologising simply for having had an emotional reaction.
From the outside, the relationship may seem to work.
But inside, the person becomes increasingly unsure of their own perceptions.
In some relationships, this state arises in the context of repeated invalidation. In others, there may be systematic manipulation, in which the person's reality is deliberately contested or used to gain control.
The term gaslighting refers to a form of manipulation through which someone comes to doubt their own perceptions or memories. Not every disagreement about an event is gaslighting, and intent cannot always be established from the outside.
What matters is noticing whether there is a repeated pattern of denial, distortion and undermining of self-trust.
When the body starts experiencing the relationship as a threat
From a psychotraumatology perspective, prolonged exposure to threats, humiliation, intimidation or unpredictability can affect the sense of safety and the capacity for emotional regulation.
The person may become hypervigilant, constantly attentive to their partner's tone of voice, facial expressions or mood changes.
Sleep difficulties, muscle tension, agitation, concentration problems, fatigue or digestive symptoms may appear.
These manifestations are not specific to a relationship with a narcissistic person and can have many causes, including medical ones. However, when they appear or intensify in a context of persistent relational stress, they are worth investigating.
Judith Herman, in Trauma and Recovery, explains the importance of safety, relationships and regaining the capacity for choice in the process of recovering from traumatic experiences.
In situations of repeated interpersonal abuse, a person does not suffer only because of isolated events. Their very sense of having control over their own life and of being able to trust others may be affected.
And perhaps one of the hardest moments is when a person starts to believe they must constantly adapt in order to keep the peace.
They no longer ask "What do I need?", but "How should I behave so they don't get upset?".
They no longer seek only emotional closeness, but also the avoidance of conflict.
And this change, sometimes very slow, can go unnoticed for years.
Why is it sometimes so hard to leave a relationship that hurts us?
Seen from the outside, a painful relationship may seem easy to leave.
"If they don't respect you, why do you stay?"
"If they make you suffer, why don't you leave?"
But people do not stay in relationships solely on the basis of a rational analysis of pros and cons.
They sometimes stay because they love, because there are children, because they depend financially on their partner, because they fear the consequences of separation or because they hope things can change.
At other times, the difficulty of leaving is also connected to their emotional history.
Someone who grew up in an unpredictable environment may be used to paying close attention to other people's moods.
A person who learned that love must be earned may end up investing enormously in trying to win the affection of an unavailable partner.
Someone who was responsible for their parents' emotional state may feel, as an adult, that it is their duty to save or change the other person.
These are possible ways of understanding, not explanations that apply to every relationship.
Moreover, in abusive relationships, the alternation between periods of closeness and periods of intimidation or rejection can help maintain the bond and fuel emotional confusion.
This dynamic is sometimes discussed through the concept of trauma bonding, but the term should not be applied automatically to every difficult relationship that someone struggles to leave.
The difficulty of leaving a relationship is neither proof of weakness nor confirmation that the person "wants" to be hurt.
We need to understand both the emotional history and the real constraints of the present.
Can a person with narcissistic traits change?
This question often comes up when someone is trying to decide whether they can still invest in the relationship.
Change is possible, but it cannot be produced solely by the partner's love, patience or sacrifice.
Psychotherapist Wendy Behary, in her book Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed, discusses how people with narcissistic patterns can be understood and the importance of boundaries, empathic confrontation and personal responsibility.
In psychotherapy, working with pathological narcissism may involve understanding defence mechanisms, regulating self-esteem, developing the capacity for mentalisation and recognising the impact of one's own behaviour on others.
But change requires the person's willingness to look at themselves critically and to tolerate the discomfort this process involves.
It is not enough for someone to say "I'll change" after every conflict.
Observable changes sustained over time are more relevant.
Can the person admit a mistake without turning the conversation into an attack?
Can they listen to their partner's pain without minimising it?
Can they respect a boundary even when it doesn't suit them?
Can they accept that their own needs are important, but not more important than everyone else's?
Change does not mean the absence of all conflict. It means developing different ways of responding to conflict.
And, very importantly, the fact that change is possible does not create an obligation for the partner to wait indefinitely or to endure behaviours that hurt them.
Can couples therapy help?
In many relationships, difficulties are maintained by repetitive communication patterns, differences in emotional needs and incompatible ways of handling conflict.
In these situations, couples therapy can offer a space in which partners observe what happens between them and learn different ways of interacting.
The systemic perspective does not aim merely to establish who is right and who is wrong. It tries to understand how a particular relational pattern is built and maintained.
However, there is an important distinction.
When a relationship involves violence, intimidation, coercive control or a real fear of the partner's reactions, standard couples therapy may not be appropriate and, in certain situations, may increase the risk for the person being abused.
In such cases, the priority is a safety assessment, individual support and, if necessary, the involvement of specialised services.
Not every relationship problem is solved by improving communication.
Sometimes the problem is not that one partner hasn't found the right wording, but that the other does not respect their right to have boundaries.
How can you tell whether your relationship is healthy without diagnosing your partner?
Perhaps, instead of constantly searching for signs that your partner is or isn't a narcissist, it would help to start with a few questions about your own experience.
Can I say what I feel without fearing the consequences?
In a healthy relationship, conflicts can be uncomfortable and partners can react imperfectly. But expressing a need or a complaint should not repeatedly lead to intimidation, humiliation or punishment.
Is there room for both of our needs?
A relationship does not require every need to be met immediately. But it does require recognising that both partners are entitled to different wishes, boundaries and perspectives.
What happens after a conflict?
Are there sincere attempts at repair? Can both partners acknowledge their share of responsibility? Does anything change, or do the same situations recur without any change?
Do I feel freer to be myself, or increasingly careful not to cause trouble?
This question can reveal a great deal about how the relationship works.
Can I keep my relationships with friends, family and other important people?
Imposed isolation, controlling contacts, monitoring communication and restricting freedom are warning signs, regardless of whether the person displaying them has a diagnosis.
How do I feel about myself since being in this relationship?
Have you become more insecure, more withdrawn, more afraid to make decisions? Have you started constantly doubting what you feel and think?
The answers do not establish a diagnosis, but they can be a starting point for understanding your own experience.
From "What is wrong with them?" to "What is happening to me in this relationship?"
Sometimes, searching for a diagnosis for one's partner is an attempt to find order in a confusing experience.
If I can name the problem, maybe I'll understand what happened.
If I understand what happened, maybe I'll stop blaming myself.
And maybe, finally, I'll be able to make a decision.
But healing does not necessarily begin the moment we find the right label for the other person.
Sometimes it begins when we manage to turn our attention back to our own experience.
When we can acknowledge that a situation hurts us, even if we cannot explain it perfectly.
When we understand that we don't have to prove the existence of a mental disorder in order to have the right to set boundaries.
When we can look at our own emotional history without blaming ourselves for the way we learned to love, to adapt or to seek safety.
Psychotherapy can help explore these patterns, understand how past experiences influence present relationships and rebuild trust in one's own perceptions and choices.
From a systemic perspective, change often also involves shifting the position we occupy in relationships, the boundaries we set and the responsibilities we take on.
From a psychotraumatology perspective, an essential aspect is recovering a sense of safety and the ability to choose without being constantly driven by fear.
We will not always be able to change the person beside us.
But we can begin to understand what happens to us in the relationship and what we need in order to live with more safety and dignity.
Instead of a conclusion: beyond the question "Is my partner a narcissist?"
Maybe your partner has narcissistic traits. Maybe they have significant difficulties with emotional regulation, maybe they learned to defend themselves through criticism or withdrawal, or maybe there is a relational pattern between you that causes a lot of suffering.
Sometimes these realities can overlap.
But not every painful behaviour is an expression of narcissism, and not every difficult relationship can be explained by a diagnosis.
Understanding a person's history does not mean justifying all their behaviour. Looking at a relationship systemically does not mean ignoring individual responsibility. And having empathy for someone's vulnerability does not require giving up your own safety.
Perhaps the question "Is my partner a narcissist?" is only the beginning of a deeper attempt to understand something.
Perhaps behind it lies another question, harder to put into words:
"Why have I come to doubt so much what I feel, and what do I need in order to find myself again?"
And the answer to that question is worth seeking, regardless of the other person's diagnosis.
If you recognise yourself in the situations described and want to better understand how your experiences and relationships influence your life, individual psychotherapy can offer a space for exploration, clarity and change. I offer individual and couples psychotherapy at my psychologist practice in Iași and online.
Key takeaways
- Narcissism is not a synonym for selfishness. There is an important difference between narcissistic traits and narcissistic personality disorder.
- A diagnosis cannot be made from a distance. A partner's behaviours must be understood in context, and diagnosis requires a clinical assessment.
- Emotional history can influence behaviour, but does not justify it. Difficult experiences may contribute to certain defence mechanisms without explaining every case.
- The systemic perspective analyses relational patterns; it does not automatically distribute blame equally. In abusive situations, responsibility for the abuse lies with the person who commits it.
- You don't need a diagnosis of your partner to recognise that a relationship is harming you. Your own safety, your personal boundaries and the impact of repeated behaviours matter in their own right.
- Change is possible, but it requires responsibility and commitment. It cannot be sustained solely by the other partner's patience or sacrifice.
Bibliography and recommended reading
Elsa Ronningstam — Identifying and Understanding the Narcissistic Personality (2005, Oxford University Press). A specialist work on the complexity of narcissism, self-esteem regulation and the difference between narcissistic traits and pathological forms.
Wendy T. Behary — Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed (3rd edition, 2021, New Harbinger Publications). A practical perspective, drawing among other things on schema therapy, on relating to people who display narcissistic patterns.
Salvador Minuchin — Families and Family Therapy (1974, Harvard University Press). One of the foundational works of structural family therapy, relevant for understanding boundaries, roles and interaction patterns within the family.
Judith Lewis Herman — Trauma and Recovery (1992; revised and updated edition, 2015, Basic Books). An important work for understanding interpersonal trauma, psychological safety and the recovery process.
American Psychiatric Association — Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR, 2022). Reference for the clinical diagnostic criteria of narcissistic personality disorder.
This article is for information purposes only and does not replace psychological or psychiatric assessment or psychotherapy. If you are in a relationship involving violence, threats or control, your safety comes first. In immediate danger, call 112.
