Stop Diagnosing Your Future Exes Over Coffee With Friends

Is either of you their therapist?

I can hear you over the sound of coffee grinds. Yes, you, with the unsweetened almond milk mocha latté.

The diagnosis is fresh and almost as hot as the coffee. It sounds to your friend like you are dealing with a classic narcissist. I mean, he ticks most of the boxes that she found on the internet:

• Excessive need to be admired
• Gaslights like a champion
• Thinks everyone is jealous of him because he is superior

I hear your sigh of relief. The diagnosis makes you feel sane. Like you’re not the crazy one. You’re just the collateral damage. The pawn in his failed chess game.

You are not the problem. He is.

I can also hear you, over the sound of glasses on wood. Yes, your shirt sleeve is sticky because of the beer you spilled on the table.

The diagnosis is less intricate, but it puts things away as coolly as the new round of cold beers that just arrived at the table. Psychopath. There is no other plausible explanation.

• The compulsive lying
• The insane jealousy and manipulation
• The cold-hearted lack of empathy

You were a victim, and still, you had the goodness to stay for a while. Because you were kind-hearted and wanted to see the best in her.

You are not the problem. She is.

After spending my university years studying psychology, I can safely say that I don’t take these labels lightly. Nor do I appreciate hearing them when they are diagnosed over coffee or beers.

Does this mean that I don’t think the complaint has value? That I don’t think the pain of being in a toxic relationship isn’t real?

Absolutely not. The pain is very real.

Intimate partner violence was something I chose to research academically exactly because of its pressing importance. Relationship violence needs to be addressed early on during adolescence when romantic relationships are being formed. It is during this developmental period that the framework of attitudes and beliefs regarding interpersonal relations, as well as abuse of power and control, are formed.

Allowing these negative conflict patterns to be formed and performed only risks their progression into adult relationships, creating a cycle of violence.

Unfortunately, violence is often used to regulate social relationships and is subjective in its legitimacy. So, understanding its moral roots is important.

If we are throwing around labels to band-aid our pain, we will not heal from it. So really, we can’t substitute compassion for violence without deconstructing the violence in the first place.

If we are silencing our traumas or taking them out on our intimate partners, what does that say about the rest of our society?

The Romantic Fantasy of the Hero and the Villian

When you decide to commit to a relationship, you must also decide that you aren’t in a Marvel movie. Or a Disney movie. Or in any movie for that matter. There are no heroes or villains.

Even if you can identify an aggressor and a victim in a particular situation, it is important to remember that there is always a violent dynamic behind it.

It, quite literally, takes two to tango. For every active aggressor, there is a passive aggressor. And for every aggressor and victim, there is trauma.

Let’s break that down.

An active aggressor is triggered by a passive aggressor. And a passive aggressor falls victim to an active aggressor. Do you see the cycle?

The positions we put ourselves in have to do with our traumas. An active aggressor knows how to pick a victim from the onset. And a passive aggressor may not even realize their own passive — and often ineffectively suppressed — emotions.

So, in fact, every person is, to varying degrees, both the hero and the villain.

This by no means justifies bad behavior. Nor does it suggest that people don’t need to be accountable for their actions. It means they need to be. Every single day. Not just when things have escalated out of proportion.

Violence in a relationship doesn’t begin where it ends. It begins in the micro-transgressions that we give and accept in the name of love.

You Are Not Their Therapist

When you are in a relationship, the more you know the other person intimately, the more you lose your objectivity. The very fact that you are involved in the dynamics at play makes you fundamentally inept to make any clear diagnostic, and that is okay.

It is not your job to be your partner's therapist or caretaker. Other people can do those jobs.

It is not your job to decipher, label, or heal your partner. It’s your job to have compassion and to love. That’s what it comes down to.

But love and compassion must begin with love and compassion for yourself. There cannot be one without the other. Not in an authentic relationship. Not in a healthy relationship for both of the people involved.

The worst part about one partner therapizing the other is that their good and loving intentions end up being the opposite of helpful. In fact, they can lead to co-dependency or high levels of criticism, and control.

The most loving thing you can do for your partner is to encourage them to help themselves. Whether or not they choose to is up to them. Whether or not you stay for the ride is up to you.

No, it’s not simple. It’s messy. It’s painful, especially because love is in the mix, and you are often too invested to quit. Or you feel a sense of responsibility, burden, or fear to stay.

But the more you do someone’s homework for them, the more resentful you become. You’ll both end up failing.

Your Friend Is Not Their Therapist

When I say your friend, I mean any third party, really. A family member, a colleague, it doesn’t matter.

The full dynamics of a relationship are not visible from anywhere but within the relationship itself. As well as you may think you are telling the story, you are not telling the whole story.

Am I suggesting that friends, family, and acquaintances should stay quiet when they see that you are in a dangerous, toxic or unhappy relationship? Of course not!

Relationship violence is real, and it is much more prevalent than we talk about. It should and needs to be discussed. Urgently.

But that’s just it. How can you open up a conversation with someone if you’re making assumptions about a situation you aren’t a part of?

How are you helping someone by putting them in the victim's seat? A position of powerlessness and not of agency. A position that does not address how the person arrived there in the first place.

We often focus on the other partner while failing to center on the person in front of us. Because pointing the finger is easier than dismantling an entire dynamic that predates the relationship at hand.

Relationship and power dynamics, consent, psychological security, healthy boundaries, self-esteem, emotional regulation, sexuality, sexual health, and violence should all be discussed as part of everyone’s basic education.

Education can be both a powerful tool or a powerful weapon. If we do not educate for compassion, we cannot expect a world of compassion.

If these conversations are open, accountability is more accessible. If knowledge is shared, support is known and it too is more accessible.

I (And Everyone Else Who Studied Psychology), Am Not Their Therapist

When you study psychology or are a practicing psychologist, you will often get one of two comments:

• “You studied psychology, isn’t this person showing clear signs of (enter mental health disorder here)?”
• “Don’t come at me with your psychological theories!”

You will get more comments like if we can read minds, but for now, let’s focus on the two points above.

I cannot, nor can any other reasonable professional, make a diagnosis of someone we have never met. Or never evaluated properly. It’s unethical. It’s ill-informed. It’s presumptuous. It’s so many things that are wrong and frankly incite a larger issue.

As someone informed on the subject of mental health, it is much more important to understand and empower the person at hand, than it is to diminish the ‘other’ person in the story.

Violence more often than not comes from trauma, which is the pain that we are left to deal with on our own. Everyone is silently dealing with some sort of trauma because trauma isn’t only the most horrendous of situations, it’s any pain that we haven’t processed yet.

“Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside of you, as a result of what happened to you.” — Gabor Maté

So if you are literate in mental health, start there. At the root of the trauma.

A Label Won’t Solve Your Problem

Labeling your partner a narcissist, a psychopath, bipolar, autistic, or whatever else you read or heard about that you think applies, does not solve your problem.

Pinning someone else as crazy or sick doesn’t make you feel less crazy or sick in the long haul.

You will undoubtedly have trauma to deal with if you have been in an abusive, toxic, or violent relationship. You will undoubtedly need to find a way back to safety and security. You will need support. You will need to re-learn love. You will need time to heal.

But you don’t need to label or diminish the other person to get there.

Focusing on your journey, and what the traumatic experience brought forth in you to learn will help you more. It will empower you. It will make you stronger. It won’t make you a victim.

Final Thoughts

We cannot control the actions of others or the environment we were born into. We cannot control our circumstances — our privilege or lack thereof. We cannot control most things in life.

But we can always choose.

So choose to talk about the trauma. Choose to protect yourself without hurting others. Everyone is healing. You don’t need to heal for them or with them. You just need to heal yourself.

So if you feel the need to diagnose your partner, maybe choose instead to ask yourself: “what is the vulnerable part in me that chose to connect to my partner's supposed mental illness?”

If you are in a toxic or abusive relationship, do not stay silent. Reach out to someone you can trust, to a professional, or even a hotline. There is help, and you are not alone. Your pain is valid and you are not expected to endure it in the name of love.