Why Do We Stay in Narcissistically Abusive Relationships?
By Michelle Ramsay MBACP | Psychotherapist, Clinical Supervisor and Founder of Anchor of Hope Counselling & Associates
Why do we stay in relationships that are causing us emotional harm?
Why do we continue giving someone opportunities to change, even when experience tells us that things are unlikely to be different?
Why can we recognise manipulation, emotional abuse and controlling behaviour, yet still find ourselves questioning whether things are really as bad as they seem?
These are questions I frequently encounter in my work as a psychotherapist specialising in narcissistic abuse and trauma.
For many people, the journey towards understanding their relationship begins long before they enter the therapy room.
They have spent months, sometimes years, researching narcissism, reading articles, listening to podcasts and trying to make sense of their partner’s behaviour.
They recognise the gaslighting, the manipulation, the emotional withdrawal and the constant shifting of responsibility.
They may even have reached the painful realisation that the person they love is unlikely to become the person they have spent so long hoping they would be.
And yet, despite everything they have come to understand, they remain.
Understanding that a relationship is emotionally abusive and understanding why we have remained in it are two very different things.
And in my experience, the answers are not always found within the relationship itself.
Why Is It So Difficult to Leave?
There are many reasons why someone may remain in an emotionally abusive relationship.
Fear, financial dependence, children, coercive control, emotional attachment and the hope that things might improve can all make leaving extraordinarily difficult.
Narcissistically abusive relationships can also involve periods of affection, reassurance and apparent change, followed by further emotional withdrawal, criticism or manipulation.
This unpredictability can create a powerful emotional attachment, leaving someone caught between the relationship they are experiencing and the relationship they continue hoping for.
But there is another aspect of these relationships that I believe deserves much greater attention.
Something I have observed repeatedly throughout more than twenty years of therapeutic work.
Sometimes the relationship we are struggling to leave is not the first relationship in which we have learned to tolerate emotional harm.
And understanding that possibility can change how we begin to understand ourselves.
When the Present Relationship Is Not Where the Story Began
One of the most significant patterns I have observed in my work with people experiencing narcissistic abuse is the connection between their current relationship difficulties and their earliest family relationships.
Clients often come to therapy focused entirely on their partner.
They want to understand why their partner behaves as they do, why they are continually blamed, why their feelings are dismissed or why attempts to communicate so frequently end in conflict.
Their distress is real, and their immediate experiences deserve to be heard and understood.
But as a psychotherapist, I am also interested in the relationships that existed long before their current partner entered their life.
What was the emotional environment like when they were growing up?
How were their feelings responded to?
What happened when they disagreed with a parent, expressed disappointment or attempted to assert their own needs?
Was affection freely given, or did it depend upon behaving in a particular way?
For some people, these questions reveal childhood experiences they have never previously considered significant.
They may describe a parent who was emotionally unpredictable, highly critical, controlling or unable to acknowledge their child’s emotional needs.
Others recall being blamed for family difficulties, feeling responsible for keeping a parent happy or learning that disagreement would result in rejection, anger or withdrawal of affection.
And interestingly, many do not initially recognise these experiences as emotionally abusive.
To them, this was simply childhood.
It was the family they grew up in.
It was normal.
But what we experience as normal in childhood can become what we unconsciously recognise as familiar in adulthood.
When Familiarity Is Mistaken for Love
Children learn about relationships through the relationships they experience.
Long before we have the emotional maturity to question our family environment, we are developing an understanding of what love looks like, how conflict is managed, whether our feelings matter and what is required of us to maintain connection.
In families where narcissistic dynamics are present, children may learn that love is conditional, that their needs are less important than those of a parent or that maintaining peace requires them to accommodate someone else’s emotions.
They may become exceptionally skilled at recognising changes in mood, anticipating conflict and adjusting their behaviour to avoid upsetting others.
These adaptations can become so deeply embedded that they continue operating long after childhood has ended.
As adults, the same individuals may find themselves drawn into relationships where they are once again managing another person’s emotions, questioning their own perceptions or working tirelessly to maintain a connection that offers little emotional security.
The relationship may be painful, exhausting and deeply confusing.
Yet the emotional dynamics themselves can feel strangely familiar.
Not because someone consciously wants to be mistreated.
Not because they enjoy conflict or emotional instability.
But because their earliest experiences may have taught them that love involves uncertainty, emotional responsibility, self-sacrifice or the constant effort to gain another person’s approval.
Familiarity is not the same as emotional safety.
And sometimes what feels familiar is precisely what we need to begin questioning.
Why Recognising Narcissistic Abuse Is Not Always Enough
One of the things I frequently observe is how knowledgeable people have become about narcissistic abuse before they seek therapy.
They can identify gaslighting, projection, blame-shifting, manipulation and emotional invalidation.
They understand the terminology and can often describe their partner’s behaviour with remarkable accuracy.
This knowledge can be incredibly validating, particularly for someone who has spent years doubting their own experiences.
But understanding the behaviour of the person causing harm does not necessarily explain our own responses to that behaviour.
Why do we feel overwhelming guilt when we begin setting boundaries?
Why do we feel responsible for another person’s anger or disappointment?
Why do we continue explaining ourselves to someone who repeatedly refuses to listen?
Why can the thought of putting our own needs first feel selfish, frightening or even wrong?
These are the questions that can lead us towards a deeper understanding of our relational history.
For someone who grew up with an emotionally unpredictable parent, constantly monitoring a partner’s mood may feel entirely natural.
For someone whose childhood involved being blamed or criticised, accepting responsibility for relationship difficulties may be an automatic response.
And for someone who learned that love depended upon pleasing others, establishing boundaries may provoke an intense sense of guilt or anxiety.
These responses are not necessarily conscious decisions.
They may be deeply established patterns of relating that developed at a time when the individual had very little choice about the emotional environment in which they lived.
The Relationship That Brings Us to Therapy Isn’t Always Where the Story Begins
This is an important part of how I understand and approach psychotherapy.
When someone comes to me because they are experiencing narcissistic abuse, I recognise that their immediate relationship is often the source of considerable distress.
They may feel confused, emotionally exhausted, frightened or increasingly disconnected from themselves.
My role is not to dismiss those experiences or immediately redirect their attention towards childhood.
The therapeutic relationship must first provide a space in which their experiences can be explored, understood and taken seriously.
But I also hold an awareness that the patterns we experience in adult relationships may have developed much earlier in life.
The timing of exploring those earlier relationships matters.
For some people, the connection becomes apparent quite quickly. For others, it emerges gradually as trust develops and they begin to feel able to reflect upon experiences they have never previously questioned.
And for some, exploring childhood relationships may initially feel uncomfortable or entirely unrelated to the difficulties they are experiencing today.
After all, it can be difficult to recognise unhealthy family dynamics when those dynamics formed the foundation of everything we understood about relationships.
A parent may have provided financially, maintained a respectable family image or appeared loving and attentive to the outside world, while being emotionally unavailable, critical or controlling within the home.
Recognising these contradictions can be challenging.
It can also bring feelings of grief, loyalty, guilt and confusion.
This is why the therapeutic process requires sensitivity, patience and an understanding of the complexities involved.
Sometimes, the most significant discoveries in therapy are not about the person who has caused us harm in adulthood, but about the relationships that first shaped our understanding of ourselves.
Understanding Ourselves Rather Than Continuing to Understand the Narcissist
There is an enormous amount of information available about narcissism.
Articles, books, podcasts and social media content explore narcissistic traits, manipulation tactics and the behaviours associated with emotionally abusive relationships.
Much of this information can be useful, particularly in helping people recognise experiences they have struggled to name.
But I believe there is a point at which continuing to study the narcissistic person can keep our attention focused on someone else’s behaviour rather than our own emotional wellbeing.
We can spend years trying to understand why another person behaves as they do.
Why they cannot acknowledge our feelings.
Why they refuse responsibility.
Why they appear unable to offer the emotional connection we have repeatedly asked for.
Yet the more important therapeutic questions may eventually become:
Why have I learned to accept so little for myself?
Why do I feel responsible for maintaining relationships at the expense of my own wellbeing?
Why does disappointing someone else feel more uncomfortable than disappointing myself?
And where did I first learn that my needs were less important than somebody else’s?
These questions are not about blaming ourselves for the abuse we have experienced.
Responsibility for abusive behaviour belongs to the person choosing to behave abusively.
They are about understanding how our earliest relational experiences may have influenced what we have come to tolerate, expect or believe we deserve.
And that understanding can be profoundly important.
When the Past Begins to Make Sense of the Present
One of the most meaningful aspects of my work is witnessing the moment when someone begins to recognise connections between their childhood experiences and their adult relationships.
What once appeared to be separate experiences begins to form a recognisable pattern.
The fear of conflict.
The overwhelming sense of responsibility.
The difficulty saying no.
The need to explain, justify or defend perfectly reasonable feelings.
The tendency to prioritise another person’s emotional needs while neglecting their own.
Behaviours that once seemed like personal weaknesses begin to make sense when understood within the context of someone’s early experiences.
For many, this can bring an enormous sense of relief.
They begin to recognise that these responses did not develop in isolation.
They were shaped by relationships, experiences and emotional environments that existed long before their current difficulties.
And importantly, what has been learned through relationships can begin to be understood, questioned and changed through the therapeutic process.
This does not mean that everyone who experiences narcissistic abuse has grown up in a narcissistic family, or that childhood experiences are the only reason someone may remain in an abusive relationship.
But in my clinical experience, exploring those early relational patterns is often an essential part of understanding why certain dynamics have become so deeply familiar.
Moving Beyond Understanding the Abuse
Recognising narcissistic abuse can be an important turning point.
It can help someone make sense of years of confusion, emotional distress and self-doubt.
But recognising the behaviour of another person is only one part of understanding our experience.
The deeper therapeutic work often involves turning our attention towards ourselves, not with criticism or blame, but with curiosity and compassion.
Understanding the relationships that shaped us.
Recognising the emotional responsibilities we learned to carry.
Questioning beliefs about love, acceptance and our own worth that may have developed long before we were able to challenge them.
And beginning to recognise that the relationship patterns we have known throughout our lives do not have to determine the relationships we continue to experience.
Because sometimes, the most important question is no longer simply:
“Why does my partner treat me this way?”
But rather:
“Where did I first learn that this was what love felt like?”
Michelle Ramsay MBACP is a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and founder of Anchor of Hope Counselling & Associates, based in Hereford. With over twenty years of therapeutic experience, Michelle specialises in narcissistic abuse, trauma and complex family relationships, supporting individuals to understand their experiences and the relational patterns that have shaped their lives.
Anchor of Hope Counselling & Associates
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