“She’s Not Her Ex, and I’m Not a Fantasy”: When Your Client Is Loving Someone Healing from Narcissistic Abuse

Photo by: Gustavo Fring

As a therapist, I often work with clients navigating the confusing terrain of early relationships. One of my clients—let’s call her Maya—came into therapy recently trying to make sense of a relationship that was both deeply affirming and increasingly destabilizing.

Maya is dating a woman named Alicia. From the start, she described their connection as electric, magnetic, soulful. They could talk for hours. The physical chemistry was undeniable. The emotional intimacy, profound. Maya felt seen, held, wanted—not in a superficial way, but in a way that made her believe in something sustainable.

But Alicia has history. She’s recently out of a long-term relationship with a narcissistic ex. Maya learned that this ex used manipulation, emotional withdrawal, infidelity, and control to keep Alicia off balance for years. Alicia survived it—but not without scars. And now, those scars are showing up in Maya’s relationship with her.

This is where the sessions became layered.

Maya would share how present she tries to be. How she shows up consistently. How she’s not dating anyone else because it doesn’t feel aligned with what she wants to build. She told Alicia about her cancer diagnosis—not for sympathy, but because her ethic in love is transparency. And Alicia responded with compassion. She didn’t run.

Photo by Anna Shvets

But Maya isn’t feeling fully met. “It’s been four months,” she told me one session, “and we’ve had six dates. Six. We talk constantly. We connect. But I haven’t met her friends. I haven’t seen her world. I still feel like an idea. Like I only exist in private, in the safe little pocket she’s carved out between the rest of her complicated life.”

When Maya tries to name this—when she says I’m real, I want to be seen, Alicia sometimes panics. She worries Maya is pressuring her. She says she’s scared. That Maya might turn out like her ex. And Maya spirals—not because she’s done something wrong, but because she’s being asked to carry the emotional weight of someone else’s trauma, while also proving that she’s not the danger.

This is the heartbreak of loving someone who’s survived narcissistic abuse: your healthy behavior can still feel threatening. Your steadiness can be misread as control. Your clarity, mistaken for manipulation. The partner, still in survival mode, confuses care for coercion—because trauma taught them that love always comes with a price.

As Maya’s therapist, I wanted to validate her pain without turning Alicia into a villain. Healing is nonlinear. It’s understandable that Alicia is hesitant. But Maya isn’t asking for a ring or a title—she’s asking for mutuality. For integration. For signs that this relationship isn’t just a private escape but something being built with both hands.

We worked together to name what Maya was feeling:

• That she wasn’t just offering emotional labor—she was offering herself.

• That being misunderstood as manipulative for setting boundaries was deeply hurtful.

• That the line between patience and self-abandonment was beginning to blur.

Eventually, we shaped this into a boundary Maya could express, not as an ultimatum, but as a truth:

“You don’t have to be fully ready. You don’t have to rush. But you do have to step in. I won’t keep offering love from the sidelines of your life. I need to be seen in daylight, not just in the spaces your ex left behind.”

Photo by: Anna Shvets

We also worked through her anger. It had started bubbling beneath her calm exterior—the frustration of doing everything “right,” of being loving and intentional, only to be treated with suspicion. I reminded her: anger, here, isn’t aggression. It’s a signal of self-worth. It’s the part of her that refuses to shrink to accommodate someone else’s fear.

In cases like this, I often remind clients: you can love someone through their healing, but you cannot disappear inside it.

You can offer steadiness, but not at the cost of your own.
You can hold space, but you can’t be their whole safe house.

As therapists, we walk a fine line: supporting the client’s capacity for love and compassion, while also protecting them from unconsciously replicating the dynamics they’re trying to avoid—where one person gives too much, and the other can’t receive it.

Maya is still in the relationship, but with new clarity. She’s still loving Alicia—but now, from a place of grounded truth, not hopeful projection. She knows what she wants: a relationship that exists in the real world, not just in the refuge of someone else’s recovery.

Because love is not just about healing—it’s about choosing. And choosing requires presence, not just longing.