Transcription
Hi everyone, I'm Doctor Romani, and welcome to this series, sort of a handbook of narcissistic relationship terminology. This series is really meant to sort of bring everyone on the same page and create a sort of glossary of terms, so everybody has a clear understanding of terms that are often used on online videos and in blogs and all of that. My understanding is that you might be in a better position to manage these relationships and have techniques to understand what you can do, and also to better understand these patterns.
Today, we're gonna be talking about triangulation. Before I get there, I'm always gonna ask you, if you are enjoying this content, please hit the bell and subscribe to this so you can get regular notifications about us releasing not only episodes in this series but all of our ongoing content.
So let's talk about triangulation. Big word, means something actually pretty simple though. Triangulation is, in essence, it's a psychological threesome that you didn't consent to. It is one of the narcissist's favorite manipulations, and they use it to create chaos and harness that chaos to control the situation and the people in that situation. It's a bit like setting a fire and then being the hero that saves the day by putting it out and taking advantage of the chaos.
The most simple and classical triangulation takes place in families, and especially families that have two or more children. So this can happen in only children families, but typically there's two or more kids. A narcissistic parent will often treat their children very differently. It's not unusual. A common dynamic would be one child is often treated as sort of the heir apparent, if the crown prince or the crown princess or something, often called the golden child, while the other child is relatively speaking treated quite poorly. They're often insulted and scapegoated. The simple act of treating children and family members differently within a family is the most wicked example of what we call triangulation.
This dynamic, this triangulated dynamic, fosters alliances, relationships, connections between the narcissist and the people who are being split in different directions. And not surprisingly, it fosters mistrust between all the people in the family system, between all the people in the narcissist's world, because they are all being given different versions of the story. The only one who holds the whole guidebook, the whole playbook as it were, is the narcissist. But all the versions of all the different stories leave the narcissist looking like the good guy or the good gal, or the one who is sort of the puppet master who pulls all the strings.
Certainly, triangulation can happen in an intimate relationship. In that case, the narcissist may compare you to past partners that he or she had, or they may compare you to people that they're friends with or people that they work with. And these comparisons can actually be quite subtle. You may be, for example, talking about something in your relationship, and then they'll sort of casually talk about that friend at work. I'll say, "Ah, there's this woman at work. It's really amazing how she balances this job, like she supervises me and she has family." Or they'll talk about their friend and say, "Oh God, I've this friend. It's amazing. He works like 18 hours a day, but he still manages to get to the gym every day." You feel as though you're pitted against that person, and yet you're not the one who started this triangulated discussion. They just sort of mentioned these little things.
At that point, when the narcissist sort of starts engaging in these triangulated spaces, the narcissist has the power because you might fall for that triangulation. You may feel less than, sort of less than, and in comparison to the person that they're talking about, about the superwoman colleague or the hot personal trainer they're working with.
Triangulation happens when the narcissistic or toxic partner. One example of it is when they're trying to foster jealousy, and it can happen in other ways too, not just comparing you. But for example, in the world of social media, that kind of triangulation may happen when they start liking inappropriate photographs of other men or women, whoever, whatever's more inappropriate on Instagram, over mentioning certain friends or colleagues, referring to the positive attributes of a famous person or someone who might be on television, like, "Wow, look at her body. She is so hot." So even when you don't know the other person that is being used in the triangulation equation, you may still be triangulated into something that doesn't feel good. It definitely creates a sense of discomfort. It creates an imbalance.
And you know, it also takes place in an intimate relationship when the narcissist is very still, very reliant on the opinions of their own family members. So when the narcissist cares a lot about what, for example, their parents think about them, or their siblings think about them, or best friends, you may feel that even though you are discussing an issue that is relevant to your close relationships, you're discussing something with your partner about something that's really only related to your relationship, that your narcissistic partner keeps bringing in the feedback of other family members, of their own parents, of your friends, of their siblings, and will often pick the things that you want, your opinions, your wants, your needs, the things in your relationship that are important to you, against those of what other people in the narcissist's triangulation tribe think, well, at least what they're telling you they think is important.
It starts getting tricky because your relationship, which you assumed was between two people, all of a sudden starts to feel really, really crowded. You may even feel like, "No, I'm actually a person with good self-esteem, but constantly being compared to other people starts getting uncomfortable."
Triangulation is an incredibly common workplace dynamic when there's a toxic or narcissistic leader. Toxic leaders love triangulation. In these kinds of triangulated workplaces, you're gonna see themes like gossip, secret meetings, people somehow being left off of group emails, favoritism, requiring everyone to communicate through the leader because of the mistrust that that leader has fostered in the workplace. People who work in triangulated workplaces become increasingly suspicious and increasingly paranoid because no one can be trusted. It always feels like someone's got a knife behind their back. Coming to work starts to feel like you're in some sort of unsettling spy thriller, and you keep wondering who is going to stick the knife in your back.
These kinds of triangulated workplaces are set up almost deliberately by narcissistic leaders who often thrive on the chaos. They love all the backbiting, and frankly, they love the power that comes from being able to treat everyone like puppets in their own personal game. They also like the idea that people in the workplace fight over them and try to win the narcissist over, much like a dysfunctional family dynamic.
Now, it is the ability of the narcissist to be able to view people as chess pieces and objects that makes triangulation literally like second nature for them. If you play chess at all, you'll understand. You move your pieces around the board, and you try to trap or kill the other pieces and take them out. And it's all very strategic. Chess isn't personal. They're chess pieces. I mean, get checkmate, then you put the king and the queen in the box, and it's all. But in real life, which is not a chess game, it is personal. We aren't pawns and knights and bishops. We are people. And being turned into game pieces for a given narcissist's need to have power and gratification feels really bad, especially when we feel like people are being turned against each other and don't seem to understand the dynamic.
What's interesting is that many times we're not aware that triangulation is happening until we are really deep into the chaos, and we start really questioning ourselves, and we start questioning everything that's happening around us. As triangulation lasts longer and becomes more too protracted and more chronic and more severe, what gets really scary is you may actually start viewing the narcissist as the ally you can trust, while you actually learn to mistrust everyone else. Because that's what the narcissist wants. The narcissist is the one who holds the narrative and sells everyone in the family, in the workplace, wherever, the narrative that each person wants to hear, while turning everyone else in the story into an enemy. In that way, we become bonded to that narcissist in the workplace, much like what could have happened in a family of origin.
Now, anyone, anyone who comes from a narcissistic family understands triangulation like in their cells, like they get it. This dynamic can get particularly pronounced in divorce or separation situations when the narcissistic parent made to engage in alienation or in drawing and and drawing other family members in to gossip about the other spouse, or even worse than gossip, really sort of throwing them under the bus. Another video in the series takes on the the dynamic of flying monkeys, and flying monkeys are really just a twist on this whole idea of triangulation.
In triangulation, what you see is some a narcissist will recruit and brainwash family members who then believe the lies that the narcissistic individual is telling and turn against the narcissist identified victim. This is usually the estranged spouse. And you know, as noted earlier in this video and in other family dynamics, it is those families in which the narcissistic parent treats their children in very different ways that then that's when you see the sort of infighting amongst the kids, scapegoat, golden child, invisible child, that these kids infight to win over the narcissistic parent. This can result in rifts between the siblings who now can't be a united front and give each other information to support each other through this.
Now, obviously, infidelity is a form of triangulation. And what's really horrifying is when the narcissistic individual actually defends their extramarital relationship on the ground that, "Well, you weren't there for me the way I needed you." They literally say the spouse wasn't there for them, and that they didn't feel connected to them, so they had to turn to someone who would give them all the attention they needed. It's as though they're copying to their need for narcissistic supply. But again, when you have an infidelity dynamic, the narcissist has now brought in a third person, a triangle, in a manipulative manner to destabilize you.
So, as always, we're going to ask the why question. Why do narcissists triangulate? Because it gives them the very things they desperately crave. They crave attention and validation and power and control. They almost revel in the chaos that they are able to cause, and that they're able to turn people into their personal puppets, and they can turn the world, their workplace, their families into a chessboard. It leads their sense of control, and the chaos allows them to sort of run the kingdom.
For people who are caught in the midst of a triangulated dynamic, it can really feel confusing, unsettling, and upsetting. And this is really magnified if you were raised in a triangulated family system. Now, what's interesting is that in some ways, triangulated systems are very, very seductive. It's unfortunate, but they aren't. People almost get drawn to them like moths to flame. In a triangulated dynamic, you almost feel like you're being drawn into a secret. And because narcissists are so charming and charismatic and clever and confident, you often feel like you're being drawn into something very unique, and you may not recognize that what's starting to happen is that triangulation may be rearing its head. They may just sort of in a conspiratorial way say, "Here, I kind of tell you something. You're not gonna believe this." Like, listen, everybody loves some gossip. But when the gossip starts to veer into a direction where there is a direct beneficiary of the chaos, the narcissist, it's a good sign that triangulation is afloat. And keeping your nose clean in those situations is one of the best ways to disempower them.
So what's a great way then, building off of that, to block triangulation? It's to not allow the narcissist to cause so much dissent in the ranks. And by that I mean, let's go back to the siblings. If the siblings could just band together against the narcissistic parent, or if the colleagues could band together against the narcissistic leader, or that you start to recognize that when your partner is trying to sort of sow the seeds of jealousy by talking about someone else, that you recognize in all of those cases that you recognize the game that is being played. And ask yourself, "Is this really the dynamic that I want to get stuck into?" This kinds of this kind of gamesmanship is often something people are taught early in these he's trying deleted dynamics. You gotta stop this.
So chaos is the narcissist's ground game. They thrive under it. They love the drama. And interestingly, they often make fun of or criticize drama and other people. That's projection. But drama and chaos can make the narcissist the king or queen of their empire. You'll see that in most companies run by narcissistic individuals, chaos runs the show. So, so until we figure it out and draw together and stop playing their game, this is gonna keep happening. But that's how we can address this. If we could turn their triangle into more of a balanced shape, like a line or a square, or better yet, a circle, it means that we need to understand these patterns and become a united front against them.
Triangles work because you got one pole that holds all the power. But when the people who are being triangulated sort of look around and recognize what's happening rather quickly, they can destabilize the narcissist from their perch. And this can happen even in a family, and it can even happen when you're an adult, when you're grown, and you realize, "Yeah, that's the one who's a golden child, this so I was scapegoat, this one's invisible child." I mean, you could actually have a meeting of the minds and recognize what's done to you. You could actually like this topple the power held by your narcissistic parent. But often that means pushing past old wounds and old hurts and kind of getting out of your own way to be able to reach across the aisle and break those triangulated dynamics. Because for some of us, as triangulated dynamics might have started very early, it can be very, very difficult, and you may recreate those cycles over and over again.
But when you're put in a triangulated space in a narcissistic relationship, and your partner is saying something like, "Oh, come on, you're being too sensitive," or, "Oh, are you really that insecure that you care about the person I'm talking about?" Or, "That's not what a kind person would do." In a healthy relationship, your partner wouldn't even put you in that triangulated space. And if they do, take a step back and wonder about it. Don't gaslight yourself. Don't let yourself be gaslighted. Ask yourself, "Why am I being brought into a triangle?" And recognize like, "Yeah, you didn't sign up for a threesome. You don't want one." And a great way, let's just get off and leave the narcissist to the other person who's stuck in that triangle with them.
I hope this clears up the dynamic of triangulation and all the chaos that comes with it. Again, if you, if you've been enjoying this content and you've been enjoying this series, if you haven't already, I ask that you go ahead and subscribe. Just hit that bell, and you'll get notifications about ongoing content, ongoing series, and ongoing live events we do here on YouTube. Thanks again for tuning in. I'm Dr. Wong, and I hope you enjoyed the next episode of this series.