Covert Narcissism in Marriage: The “Try Harder” Myth That Traps You

Happy Holidays! Want to give your host a gift? Consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show this holiday season. It really helps the show grow. From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy Holidays! Welcome to the covert narcissism podcast. I'm your host, Renee Swanson. I'm not a therapist and you are not a victim. Marriage advice sounds very different when it comes from people who have never lived in your home and for sure who have never lived with a covert narcissist. Today we are retiring the phrase "all marriages are hard" for good because that sentence which sounds harmless even wise until you realize how often it is used to normalize emotional harm, to silence intuition, to keep people stuck in relationships that are slowly erasing them. I believed this myth that all marriages were hard for over two decades. I thought if I was exhausted, confused, lonely, or constantly doubting myself, it just meant that I wasn't trying hard enough. That this was just what commitment looked like. This is what marriage was supposed to be. But here's what I know now and what I want to unpack with you today. There is a difference between a marriage that requires effort and a marriage that requires you to abandon yourself, to make yourself smaller, to wrap your entire existence around this other person, and lose yourself completely. I want to talk about that difference. Welcome back to the covert narcissism podcast, where we separate normal relationship effort from slow, emotionally erosion, and where we're officially retiring advice that sounds wise, but it feels awful. The phrase "all marriages are hard" gets passed around like ancient wisdom, usually by someone who's never lived with covert narcissism or any other type of narcissistic antagonistic relationship. It's often delivered with a gentle head tilt, a sigh, and a confidence of someone who thinks they've just said something very helpful, and to be honest, for many of these people, I'm sure that they believe they are being helpful. I mean, let's face it, marriage can be hard, it is difficult, it does take effort, but what that phrase usually meant in my life was stop complaining and lower your expectations, which this is not actually marital advice, it's more like a silencing tactic dressed up as maturity. That myth kept me in my abusive marriage for way too long. Not because I didn't know something was wrong, I did know something was wrong, but because I kept assuming that the problem was my inability to tolerate normal marriage. I thought if I could just toughen up, communicate better, become a more evolved human, whatever that looks like, that things then would finally click and everything would just magically be okay. So I dug in more and more over the years. I believed I was being strong, I believed I was committed, I believed that exhaustion, confusion, and emotional loneliness were just part of the package. It was like it was the fine print on the wedding certificate that I didn't bother reading, clearly this was something you discover after the wedding. Now what no one clarified was this, hard does not mean harmful. Those words get lumped together way too easily, especially when you're conscientious, empathetic, trying to do the right thing. You see, healthy marriages do have rough seasons, but this is a factor of life. These are things such as stress, grief, financial strain, job loss, dealing with kids, miscommunications. These are normal life seasons more than a rough season for a healthy marriage, because in a healthy marriage, you and your partner are tackling these rough seasons as teammates. Your partner is not causing the rough seasons, but they are there to support each other. They support you and you support them through the rough seasons. Harmful marriages have patterns of rough seasons between the partners. Patterns where you're constantly scanning the room, adjusting your tone, editing your needs, and wondering why everything feels so heavy even when nothing big is happening. If your relationship requires you to stay hyper vigilant just to survive dinner conversation, that's not marriage being hard. That's your nervous system filing a formal complaint, and it is very justified in doing so. Now another favorite line or favorite myth if we're going to call it that is every couple has issues. Every marriage has problems. Well, true, every car has maintenance needs too, but not every car randomly shuts down on the freeway and then blames you for driving it wrong. And healthy relationships issues do happen. We are human and humans do get their feelings hurt, even with people that they love and care about. Their feelings do get in the way sometimes miscommunications do happen. But in healthy relationships, these hurts are addressed. People apologize. Repair happens. There is at least a basic sense of teamwork. This is not true in a covertly abusive relationship. When the hurts happen, they are denied, blame shifted, spun faster than a Ferris wheel, and ultimately swept under the rug out of desperation. The result is that the same issues come up over and over again. Why? Because they never get resolved. And by the way, they always remain your fault. You bring up a concern and suddenly you're accused of being critical. You express your own hurt and now you're too sensitive or too needy. You ask for support and somehow that turns into a lecture about everything you do wrong. That's not normal couple stuff. Remember again, I said in a healthy marriage, there's at least a basic sense of teamwork here. You have a team mate. But when everything's getting turned against you and nothing's getting resolved, that's not every relationship has issues. That's a car that keeps stalling in the middle of traffic, insists that nothing is wrong, accuses you of driving in correctly, and then asks why you keep bringing it up when you're stranded on the shoulder again. Healthy relationships address problems so that they don't keep breaking down in the same place. That's why I like the car analogy. Covertly abusive relationships deny the breakdown, rewrite what happened, and then expect you to keep driving calmly and even cheerfully without asking for their help. At some point, it's not about maintenance anymore. It's about recognizing that you're being blamed for a system that refuses to function. Now there's another myth that's love fixes everything. Oh yes, that love is enough, a beautiful sentiment, but a terrible strategy. Love does not magically create empathy. Love and empathy are not the same thing. Love does not automatically install accountability, and it definitely does not turn someone who avoids responsibility, all of a sudden into someone who says, "Wow, you're right. I really need to work on myself." In fact, in covert narcissistic dynamics, your love often becomes their safety net. I mean, let's face it, why change and put in all the work for, you know, emotional growth when you're going to stay anyways? Why reflect when you'll forgive them without it? Why put the effort into growing when you are already doing all the emotional labor? This is a great deal for them. No growth needed for a wonderful, successful, easy life, for them at least. Love isn't the foundation of a healthy marriage, mutual respect, and emotional safety. That's the foundation of a healthy marriage. Without these, love becomes the thing you keep pouring into a relationship that's got a hole in the bottom, and yes, you keep pouring it in, but you still end up empty. Let's look at another myth, and that is that marriage is 50/50. Now, we love to say that, and it sounds fair, balanced reassuring, but in abuse of marriages, the math does not work here. Math is not mathing. It looks more like 150 to zero, and somehow you're still being told you're not doing enough. You carry not only your share, but theirs too, and you do all the work of trying to grow for two people while being evaluated as if you're failing the course. You're the one reading the books, listening to the podcast, searching for the right words. You're suggesting therapy. You're doing therapy, adjusting your tone, choosing your timing carefully, rehearsing conversations in your head, and bending yourself into increasingly creative shapes to avoid triggering another blow-up. You become fluent in their moons, their tells, their sensitivities, their needs, but hear me when I say this, they typically remain largely unfamiliar with yours, with your moods, your sensitivities, your needs. Sure, they can sense when there's tension in the room like a smoke alarm, yet somehow they remain completely unaware of why it keeps happening. They don't know what actually makes you feel safer unsafe, they don't know what suits you when you're overwhelmed, they don't know what your real fears are, the quiet ones that you carry at night, they don't know what brings you joy, of course, unless it inconveniences them, ask them what you need when you're hurting, and their answers sound nothing like you. Ask them what makes you feel loved, often they'll list the things that they're already doing, but not the things you've been trying to tell them over the years. They might know your schedule, they might know your routines, maybe, they might even know your triggers, not because they care, but because they've memorized which buttons will get the biggest reactions. But knowing your pressure points is not the same thing as knowing you. You're the one doing all the work, trying to know them, but they don't put in that effort, that same effort, to get to know you. They don't know how hard you work, to keep a household together, to keep things peaceful. They don't know how much you censor yourself and bite your tongue. They don't know how often you talk yourself out of speaking up, and sharing your feelings. And the most maddening part is yet they will still claim that they know you better than anyone else. I know I heard those words, and I know many of the people that I work with did too. They claim to know you, but do they really? Now let's circle back to all the effort you're putting in. And yeah, they might attend one counseling session, sitting through it with crossed arms, deciding it's biased or unhelpful, and then mentally check the box labeled, "I tried." They'll bring it up later as evidence of their effort, usually right around the time that you're asking for real change, and their mind, the attempt counts, the outcome, doesn't matter. In a healthy partnership, effort moves back and forth. One person might carry more during a stressful season, and later the roles reverse. There is an understanding that this is temporary, and that support flows both ways. But in abusive dynamics, the imbalance of the effort being put in, that becomes permanent. Your over-functioning becomes a way of life, and it's expected. Their under-functioning also becomes a way of life, and it's actually just excused away. When you're the one tracking the emotional temperature, initiating every hard conversation, repairing every rupture, smoothing over every conflict, you're not in a partnership. You're managing a project, a very sensitive, high-maintenance project that never meets deadlines and still critiques your performance. That's not marriage being 50/50. That's unpaid emotional labor, with an annual performance reviews conducted by someone who refuses to do any of the work. Now I want to look at another myth. If you leave, you didn't try hard enough. This myth keeps survivors trapped in an endless courtroom in their own minds, constantly presenting evidence for a verdict that was already decided. You're both the defendant and the prosecution, replaying all the conversations, rereading messages, cataloging your efforts as if one more exhibit might finally prove that you weren't careless or selfish or unwilling to work on the relationship. You become like this prosecutor that just can't stop trying to prove what's going on in this marriage, but then you also become the defendant trying to prove what all you did and all the work you put in. You tried communicating not once, but a thousand different ways. You softened your tone, you waited for the right moment, you brought things up gently and directly, carefully, directly, eventually, only when absolutely necessary. You tried saying things calmly, saying it clearly, saying it with compassion, sometimes saying it through tears because you're running out of options. You tried therapy, you found counselors, you scheduled appointments, you showed up hopeful even when part of you already knew how this would go. You listened, you reflected, you tried to be honest, you were open to feedback. Meanwhile, they sit there with their arms crossed, correcting your version of events, and later declaring that the therapist was taking your side. And somehow their discomfort becomes proof that therapy doesn't work. Not that accountability is required. You tried patience, so much patience. You waited for stress to pass, for work to slow down, for the kids to get older, for them to finally feel safe enough to look inward. You told yourself this is just a phase, then another phase came, and another, and another, and another. Years went by while you still stayed hoping that timing would fix what effort is not fixing. You tried compassion, you made excuses for their behavior, you connected the dots back to their childhood, their trauma, their stress, their insecurity. You held space for their pain that they still refused to acknowledge. You became their emotional interpreter, their buffer against consequences, their shield from discomfort, while quietly absorbing the impact yourself. You tried lowering your expectations. You told yourself not to need so much, not to ask for reassurance, not to expect emotional presence. You adjusted your definition of good enough until it barely resembled a relationship at all. And when that still didn't work, you tried shrinking your needs entirely, because needing less felt easier than being disappointed yet again. And somewhere along the way, you tried becoming easier, easier to live with, easier to please, easier to ignore, easier to disappoint. You learned which part of yourselves caused friction and you slowly packed them away. You edited your personality for compatibility, but you reduced your humanity to avoid conflict. Do you hear all the effort here? Leaving is not failure. It isn't quitting. It isn't giving up too soon. Leaving is the moment you stopped auditioning for basic decency. It was the moment you realized that no amount of effort on your part could create mutual respect if the other person has no interest in offering it. Choosing yourself is not selfish, but it is long over to you. And if you were the one who finally walked away or if you were the one listening to this considering it, this myth tightens its grip even more. You become the one who gave up, the quitter, the person who didn't fight hard enough for the marriage. From the outside, it looks like you were the one who ended it, but here's the part that no one sees. They gave up long before you left. They gave up when they stopped being curious about your inner world. They gave up when repair was replaced with defensiveness. They gave up when accountability felt like an attack and empathy became optional. They gave up when your pain was treated as an inconvenience instead of as a signal that something needs attention here. You didn't end this marriage. You simply acknowledged that it had already ended, that it had already been abandoned. Sometimes the hardest truth to swallow is this. Some people were never fully in the marriage to begin with. They were in the benefit, sure. The image, the stability, all the work you put in, the role that you played in regulating their life, but they were not in the emotional work, the mutual vulnerability, the shared responsibility that actually sustains a healthy partnership. You stayed and tried to fix what only two people could repair. They stayed physically present, but emotionally checked out, opting for comfort over connection. So when you finally stopped trying to resuscitate something that had no pulse, you weren't quitting. You were speaking your truth. Walking away was not about abandoning the marriage. It's about acknowledging that you've been carrying it alone. Now let's reset the baseline here. Healthy marriage is not perfect communication, constant harmony, or Instagram level bliss. Healthy marriage includes conflict and repair, accountability without defensiveness, emotional safety, even during the hard conversations. Growth that actually happens, not just gets promised. In a healthy marriage, your nervous system learns to relax more and more. You don't rehearse sentences in your head. You don't brace yourself before bringing something up. You don't feel like love is conditional on your compliance. Marriage can be challenging. Yes, there's no doubt, but it should not feel like an emotional obstacle course where the rules change daily. The myth that all marriages are hard kept many of us trapped far longer than we should have been. So did the myths about love, effort, sacrifice, and strength. But myths, they lose their power the moment you name your reality. I do want to say that some of these myths do carry some truth. And in the right situation, they can be quite helpful, but they do not apply to a marriage with a covert narcissistic person. If something in these words made you laugh and went at the same time, that's usually truth knocking at your heart. You are not broken. You were conditioned. And you are allowed to choose clarity over endurance. Your story matters and you deserve to be heard without judgment. If you're ready to take the next step toward healing, check out my coaching services at covert narcissism.com. I currently have a discount code for 25% off of the individual healing program. That code is all capital letters, the word refuge, R-E-F-U-G-E 2025. So refuge 2025, no spaces. That discount code does expire on December 31st, 2025. So jump in there and take advantage of it while you can. Don't forget to subscribe for more empowering episodes like this one. I wish you so much peace on your journey of healing. You have been listening to the covert narcissism podcast where we break apart the insidious nature of these incredibly destructive and infinitely frustrating individuals. If you are caught up in this crazy-making relationship and drowning in self-doubt, guilt, or rumination, please reach out to me anytime. I offer individualized live coaching in both group and individual settings. We can find the right program for you. You do not need to go through this alone. You can find all of that information on my website at covert narcissism.com. You can also reach out to me by email at renay r-e-n-e-e. I had covert narcissism.com. I do look forward to hearing from each and every one of you. Remember, I am not a therapist and you are not a victim. I am a coach and you are a survivor. The information provided by Renee Swanson, covert narcissism podcast, and C&G Life Coaching is for educational purposes only and is not to be used for diagnosis purposes. It is not intended to be a substitute for clinical care. Please consult a health care provider for guidance specific to your case. This material discusses narcissism in general. Renee shares stories from her personal experience as well as from those that she has worked with for several years. Her material does not claim that any specific person has narcissism and should not be used to refer to any specific person as having narcissism. Permission is not granted to link to or repost this material to support an allegation or support a claim that any specific person is a narcissist. That would be an unauthorized misuse of the material and the information provided. Thank you. Happy holidays! From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas every one and a happy holiday. Did you grow up with a juggle and hide parent? The kind you had to tiptoe around just to keep the piece. So did I. I'm therapist Tori Wixel. Every Tuesday on my podcast, you're not crazy. I talk about what it's actually like to grow up with a toxic parent. We dive into the reality of what it means to be a cycle breaker and an emotionally healthy adult when all you saw growing up was what you didn't want to do. If you're ready to stop questioning your own sanity, tune in to you're not crazy wherever you listen to podcasts.