by Jessica Anne Pressler, LCSW
Couples therapy is often presented as the responsible next step when a relationship is struggling. Friends suggest it. Family members encourage it. Sometimes one partner pushes for it as proof that they are “trying.” And for many couples, it truly can be a turning point.
But couples therapy is not right for every relationship. In some situations, it can do more harm than good. Before we talk about how couples therapy can work beautifully, I want to talk honestly about when it shouldn’t happen at all.
When One Partner Has High Narcissistic or Dark Triad Traits
If one partner has high narcissistic traits or fits the profile of what is called the “dark triad,” I absolutely do not recommend couples therapy.
The dark triad refers to three overlapping personality traits:
• Narcissism: a sense of grandiosity and entitlement, a deep need for admiration, and a lack of genuine empathy for others.
• Machiavellianism: a strategic, calculating approach to relationships, where people are used as a means to an end and manipulation feels justified.
• Psychopathy: a lack of remorse or guilt, shallow emotional responses, impulsivity, and a disregard for the impact of one’s behavior on others.
Not everyone with some of these traits is dangerous, and people exist on a spectrum. But when these traits are strong and present together, they create a person who relates to others through control rather than connection.
How Therapy Becomes a Tool for Manipulation
Couples therapy is built on an assumption: that both people are coming in good faith, willing to look honestly at themselves. A manipulative partner does not come for that. They come to get their own needs met, at the expense of the other partner. Those needs may look like:
• Validation from the therapist. They may be charming, articulate, and agreeable in session, seeking the therapist’s approval and positioning themselves as the reasonable one, despite what is occurring in their home.
• Manipulating the therapist. They may carefully shape the story the therapist hears, framing their partner as unstable, overreactive, or “the real problem,” even pushing them to react in real time.
• A place to report lies. The therapy room can become a stage where false accounts of the other partner are told with an air of professional legitimacy.
• Image management. Sometimes the need is simply to be able to say, “I went to therapy. I’m doing the work. Look what a good guy I am.” Therapy becomes a badge, not a process.
Meanwhile, the other partner is often already worn down, confused, and doubting their own reality. They may cry, raise their voice, or struggle to explain what is happening at home. To an untrained eye, they may look like the volatile one, while the manipulative partner appears calm and composed.
Therapy as Secondary Abuse
If the therapist is unable to see the manipulation of a toxic and potentially abusive partner, therapy can become a form of secondary abuse, abuse by proxy. The therapist unknowingly becomes what is often called a “flying monkey”: someone recruited, without realizing it, to carry out the manipulator’s agenda.
Here is what that can look like. Consider a composite example. A woman finally gathers the courage to describe her husband’s constant criticism and the way he rewrites what happened after every argument. In session, her husband is warm and soft-spoken. He says he’s “worried about her,” that she’s been “so anxious lately,” and that he only wants peace at home. The therapist, seeing a calm man and a tearful woman, begins to focus on her “reactivity.” She leaves sessions feeling more ashamed and more confused than when she arrived. At home, he repeats the therapist’s words back to her: “Even the therapist thinks you need to work on yourself.”
Now the abuse has a new voice, one that carries professional authority. This is how therapy, meant to help, can deepen the harm.
If you are in a relationship like this, individual therapy with a clinician who understands narcissistic abuse and coercive control is a far safer place to begin. Your clarity, your safety, and your healing matter first.
When Couples Therapy Can Truly Work
Now let’s talk about the couples for whom therapy can be life changing. Couples therapy works when both people are willing to:
• Be insightful and look honestly at themselves.
• Acknowledge what they have done to hurt the other person.
• Truly listen, without immediately defending or counterattacking.
• Hold empathy and compassion for their partner’s experience.
• Do the work and make real changes within themselves.
When two people bring that willingness into the room, something powerful becomes possible.
The Fight Is Rarely About the Fight
My starting point with couples is this: a disagreement is rarely only about the disagreement. Yes, it matters what each partner is upset about. But just as important is what each person brings from their past into that moment.
Often, the way two people interact in conflict has far more to do with their childhood wounds, their triggers, and how regulated they are than with the dishes, the money, or the text that went unanswered. The argument on the surface is often an old wound being touched.
Understanding Each Other’s Traitor Within
This is where the framework I developed, the Traitor Within, comes in. The Traitor Within is a misguided, well-intentioned aspect of self that repeatedly leads us down self-destructive pathways. The traitor is primarily formed in childhood as adaptive responses to trauma and dysfunction, in order to feel safe, shaped by the messaging and modeling of those around the child. It originally served a protective function. These patterns persist into adulthood as an inner monologue or state of being that drives repetitive self-defeating behavior, transforming what was once survival into self-sabotage.
In couples work, I help each partner understand their own Traitor Within, and their partner’s. How did each of them keep themselves safe as a child? What did they learn about love, conflict, and safety from the people who raised them? And how did that protective part of them follow them into their adult relationship?
When a partner is triggered, that younger, protective part often takes over. And when we understand that, something shifts: the reaction is not personal. It isn’t really about the partner standing in front of them. It’s about the past.
Breaking the Trigger Cycle
Without this understanding, couples often trigger each other back and forth in a painful loop. Here is a common example.
One partner grew up with a father who withdrew and went silent when he was displeased. As a child, she learned that silence meant danger, that love could be taken away at any moment. Her partner grew up with a mother who criticized and lectured, and he learned to protect himself by shutting down and going quiet until the storm passed.
Now, as adults, he comes home tired and quiet. She feels the old fear rising and presses him: “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you talking to me?” To him, her urgency feels like his mother’s criticism, so he withdraws further. His withdrawal confirms her fear, so she pushes harder. Each person’s protection becomes the other person’s trigger. Neither is the villain. Both are responding to wounds that began long before they met.
When partners learn about each other’s wounds, the cycle can be interrupted. In the moment a partner says something and the other begins to feel dysregulated, instead of immediately becoming defensive, they can pause and recognize: Wait a second. This is not about me. This is about their past.
And from there, they can offer reassurance instead of retaliation. They can gently remind their partner, in words or in presence: I am not your father. I am not your mother. You don’t need to protect yourself from me in that way. I am a safe place.
Healing Each Other
This is a way of learning about each other, and about yourself. It is a way of healing individually while also helping to heal each other. When partners understand the child within the adult they love, they can nurture that part of each other rather than wounding it again.
And when we stop taking things personally, we create room to think rather than react. We can stay grounded, stay curious, and stay connected, even in the middle of a hard conversation. That is the heart of the work: two people, each willing to look within, choosing to become a safe place for one another.
Couples therapy is not a cure-all, and it isn’t safe for every relationship. But when both partners come with honesty, empathy, and a willingness to grow, it can transform not only the relationship, but each person in it.
About the Author: Jessica Anne Pressler, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker who has been a psychotherapist for nearly 40 years. She developed the "Traitor Within" framework to help people name and understand the repetitive self-sabotage that shows up in their adult lives. She is the host of the podcast “Your Traitor Within”, author of “Your Traitor Within: A Year of Journaling Prompts for Healing and Empowerment,” and author of her debut novel, “Traitor Within — How Her Fear of Abandonment Led Her to Abandon Herself.” To learn more go to jessicaannepressler@gmail.com
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