Jill Szoo Wilson

By Jill Szoo Wilson
Writer | Theatre Artist | Educator

Triangulation moves the pressure between two people through a third. In narcissistic relationships, that third person can steady a fragile self-image and make one version of events feel publicly true.

At 9:12 the morning after Lena left, her phone lit up with a message from Daniel’s sister. Rachel wrote that Daniel was devastated and had spent half the night crying. He had told her that Lena packed a bag while he was trying to calm an argument, and Rachel wanted Lena to call him.

Lena read the message twice. Rachel had been home asleep when Daniel blocked the doorway, so her understanding of the night came from a frightened man on the telephone. She cared about her brother and stepped in after hearing him cry. By breakfast, the argument had a third person in it.

You may recognize Daniel and Lena from the earlier essays in this series. Daniel had formed an internal version of Lena and gradually trusted that version more than the living woman. When Lena moved outside the role he had given her, splitting allowed him to replace the woman he admired with one he experienced as cruel. Triangulation gave that devalued version of Lena an outside witness.

The Third Person Enters

Family therapist Murray Bowen described a triangle as a three-person relationship system. A relationship between two people has limited room for emotional pressure, so rising tension often draws in a third person. The triangle feels steadier because the pressure can move among its three sides, even as the original conflict remains unresolved (Bowen, 1978; Kerr & Bowen, 1988).

Bowen developed this idea as part of a broad theory of families and emotional systems. Triangles can form wherever people live closely together. This essay concerns a more persistent use of the triangle inside narcissistic relationships, where the third person becomes part of the way a fragile sense of self is maintained.

Triangulation sits outside the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). Its relevance comes from the work it can perform for narcissistic self-regulation. Carolyn Morf and Frederick Rhodewalt describe narcissism as a system in which a grandiose yet vulnerable self repeatedly seeks affirmation through the social world. Other people become part of the machinery used to build and defend that self (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001).

Daniel’s call to Rachel gave him comfort, and her sympathy supported his preferred version of himself as the loving partner who had been abandoned. Once she accepted his account, Daniel’s innocence seemed to exist in another mind as well as his own.

The process may grow from deliberate choices or familiar habits. Daniel uses another person’s response to settle something inside himself and then allows that response to carry pressure back toward Lena. He may believe his account completely, since the triangle is defined by what it does inside the relationship, regardless of how carefully he planned it.

The Triangle Before the Crisis

Rachel’s message revealed a structure Daniel had been building since the first year of the relationship. Triangulation often becomes visible during a crisis, though its foundations may be laid during courtship, when attention looks like devotion and influence grows through ordinary family life.

Daniel made himself useful to the women in Lena’s family. He called her mother after a medical appointment and remembered the specialist’s name. When Lena’s sister faced a difficult job decision, he listened closely and sent her an article the next morning. They began to experience Daniel as attentive and dependable. His opinions soon carried weight in family conversations.

During the same period, he began shaping their view of the other men. Daniel wondered aloud why Lena’s brother left so much of their mother’s care to everyone else. He described her sister’s husband as someone who enjoyed praise more than responsibility. The remarks sounded like concern, which gave them room to settle quietly into the family’s picture of those men.

Daniel’s particular method followed gender lines. He cultivated trust with the women in Lena’s family while reducing the standing of the men. Another narcissistic person may arrange the people differently. A coalition forms around the narcissistic person while competing voices lose credibility. Over time, his account rises above the rest.

Research on narcissistic status pursuit helps explain the pattern. Sander Grapsas and his colleagues describe two routes toward higher status: self-promotion and other-derogation. Their model presents narcissism as a stable pattern in which a person seeks opportunities to raise his own position or reduce someone else’s (Grapsas et al., 2020). Daniel’s behavior gives that pattern a quieter family form. His attentiveness raises his standing, while his criticism lowers the standing of other men. The result is a hierarchy with Daniel’s judgment at the top.

Daniel may genuinely enjoy helping Lena’s family. The triangular structure grows through what the help accomplishes inside the group. Trust gathered in one relationship is used to reorder another, and his quiet criticism makes his judgment seem especially reliable. To the family, his influence feels earned because they have experienced his care.

By the time Lena begins challenging him, the hierarchy is already in place. Daniel has become the man the women call first and the one whose version receives the benefit of the doubt. When he says Lena’s brother is selfish, his history of helpfulness lends the claim authority. When he later says Lena has become cruel, that authority gives his story a head start.

For Daniel, triangulation began during courtship and continued through separation. A colleague could stir jealousy during the relationship. Later, relatives could carry his version of the breakup. Daniel remained at the center, assigning meaning to the people around him and becoming the voice everyone else had to answer.

The crisis activated a triangle built over years. By the time Daniel called Rachel, he already understood how to become the trusted interpreter of another person’s motives. His pain arrived first, and his explanation became the family’s starting point.

A Witness for Daniel’s Version

Rachel’s message placed a task in Lena’s hands. If she wanted Rachel to see her fairly, she would have to explain the blocked doorway and establish the reality of the night before someone who learned about it afterward. Her account began at a disadvantage because Daniel had already supplied Rachel with an explanation and a role as witness to his pain.

This is one of the quiet powers of triangulation. A private interpretation begins to feel like social proof. Daniel can tell Lena that Rachel understands him or that she agrees Lena was cruel. The third person’s agreement gives his version greater weight, even though the third person received that version from him.

Rachel’s sincerity makes the arrangement more effective. She loves her brother and believes she is helping during a crisis. People recruited into triangles often enter with good intentions, and their care makes them willing to carry a message that belongs to another relationship.

Daniel’s account also follows the split described in the previous essay. It casts him as a patient partner injured by a cold woman who walked away. As Lena absorbs more blame in Rachel’s mind, Daniel’s innocence looks brighter. The triangle gives that contrast a witness.

Lena began typing a reply. She wrote, “You heard one side of what happened,” and then sat with her thumb above the screen. She could already imagine Rachel forwarding the message to Daniel, followed by a conversation about Lena’s character before she had finished her coffee.

That is how one triangle can begin spreading through a larger group. Bowen called these interlocking triangles. The emotional pressure travels outward as more people are asked to take a position, and each new agreement makes the original story feel more settled (Bowen, 1978).

The Rival in the Room

Daniel had used another kind of triangle earlier in the relationship. Elise was a colleague Lena had met once beside an elevator. Her name appeared most often after Lena disappointed him.

When Lena declined a late party, Daniel mentioned that Elise loved spontaneous nights out. When Lena asked him to send an article so she could read it after work, he said Elise had answered his message immediately and called the piece brilliant. Elise’s ordinary interest became a measure of Lena’s affection.

Elise may have said each of those things sincerely. She may have had little sense of the role she occupied at home. Every word could be true. The triangulation came from the way Daniel carried her admiration into his relationship and placed it beside whatever Lena had failed to provide.

The effect on Lena was subtle at first. She began wondering whether she had become dull and whether Elise understood Daniel more easily. Daniel’s attention started to feel conditional, and Lena worked harder to recover the warmth he once gave freely.

Research offers evidence that jealousy can become a strategy in relationships involving narcissistic traits. Gregory Tortoriello and his colleagues found that people scoring higher in grandiose or vulnerable narcissism reported more deliberate jealousy induction. Power and control appeared among the motives, especially for grandiose narcissism (Tortoriello et al., 2017).

Virgil Zeigler-Hill and his colleagues found a related pattern in mate-retention behavior. Narcissistic admiration was associated with benefit-provisioning behaviors, while narcissistic rivalry was associated with cost-inflicting ones (Zeigler-Hill et al., 2020).

Other research describes narcissistic admiration and rivalry as related ways of maintaining a grandiose self. The model begins with a self that seeks approval. Under threat, rivalry protects that self by devaluing other people (Back et al., 2013). By carrying Elise’s praise home and placing Lena beneath it, Daniel could restore the position he wanted.

The same structure appears outside romance when a friend’s agreement is used to settle every disagreement. Sometimes the third point is a whole audience, gathered around a version of events that came from one person.

The third person may remain absent or unaware. Inside the relationship, the reported opinion does the work: Elise thinks I am brilliant. Rachel says I deserve better. The person’s name enters the room and changes where everyone stands.

Support and Leverage

Lena’s friends create an important contrast. They arrived with a car after she decided to leave and helped carry boxes down the steps. A week later, they gave her room to tell the whole story. Lena made her own decision, and her friends helped her carry it out. Any communication with Daniel remained hers to choose.

Healthy support returns authority to the person who lived the experience. A friend can listen and help with safety while leaving the original relationship in the hands of the people inside it. In triangulation, an ally carries someone else’s claim into the relationship and uses her concern to influence the other person.

The direction of the pressure tells us what kind of third-party involvement we are seeing. After her friends arrived, Lena’s judgment remained her own. Rachel’s message brought Daniel’s judgment with it and asked Lena to change course.

A professional opinion can be borrowed in the same way. A person may announce, “My therapist says you are the problem,” handing the partner a verdict stripped of the conversation that produced it. The authority of the unnamed session enters the room, and the partner is expected to answer it.

This helps explain why triangulation can make someone feel surrounded. Lena is trying to understand one relationship, yet she suddenly finds herself answering Daniel’s sister and competing with Elise. Each person seems to confirm a different part of Daniel’s story, which leaves Lena spending more energy defending herself and less energy examining his behavior.

The Third Person Has a Story Too

Rachel remains a person inside this arrangement. She remembers Daniel as a boy sitting on the stairs during their parents’ loudest arguments, waiting for her to come sit beside him. When he cries on the phone years later, that old protective feeling returns before she has heard the whole account.

Daniel knows that Rachel answers and understands which details will bring her close. He has spent a lifetime learning which version of himself she is ready to protect, so the triangle works through a bond that is real.

Rachel may also feel relief when Lena responds. Daniel’s distress has moved into her, and a reply from Lena gives Rachel somewhere to send it. Bowen’s theory helps explain why triangles feel stable: anxiety moves, giving one person temporary relief as another person begins carrying it (Kerr & Bowen, 1988).

Seeing Rachel clearly helps Lena understand the situation. Rachel’s message reflects her history with Daniel along with the story he told her that morning. Her concern arrives braided with Daniel’s pressure.

Stepping Out of the Triangle

Bowen used the term differentiation of self for the capacity to keep one’s thinking and choices intact during emotional pressure. A differentiated person can remain connected to others while allowing each person to carry his or her own feelings (Kerr & Bowen, 1988).

Rachel could step out by returning Daniel’s message to its owner: “I love you, and anything you need to say to Lena belongs in a conversation with her.” That response leaves room for compassion and keeps Rachel from becoming Daniel’s representative.

Lena can step out by releasing the need to win Rachel’s verdict. Her boundary may sound like this: “I appreciate your concern. Any contact with Daniel will be my decision.” Rachel may continue believing her brother. Lena can organize her life around what she experienced.

Safety can require distance and help from others. Returning ownership to the original relationship may mean a direct conversation when the relationship is safe. In a coercive situation, it may mean choosing distance or using an advocate. The crucial question is whether outside help preserves the person’s ability to choose or presses her toward someone else’s desired outcome.

Six months later, Rachel still believed Daniel had been abandoned during an argument. Lena allowed that belief to stay with Rachel. She had already spent enough time trying to make herself recognizable inside Daniel’s version of her.

Triangulation had made Daniel’s story feel larger than one man’s account because other voices began carrying it. Once Lena understood the arrangement, those voices lost their authority over her decisions.

That morning, Lena answered Rachel once: “I appreciate your concern. Any contact with Daniel will be my decision.” Then she set the phone face down beside the open suitcase and finished unpacking.

Daniel, Lena, Rachel, and Elise are fictional. Daniel and Lena are continued from earlier pieces in this series.

If something in this series feels familiar in your own relationship, confidential support is available through the National Domestic Violence Hotline or by calling 800-799-SAFE (7233).

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Sources and Further Reading

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., text rev.). American Psychiatric Association Publishing.

Back, M. D., Küfner, A. C. P., Dufner, M., Gerlach, T. M., Rauthmann, J. F., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2013). “Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry: Disentangling the Bright and Dark Sides of Narcissism.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(6), 1013–1037.

Bowen, M. (1978). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. Jason Aronson.

Grapsas, S., Brummelman, E., Back, M. D., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2020). “The ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of Narcissism: A Process Model of Narcissistic Status Pursuit.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 150–172.

Kerr, M. E., & Bowen, M. (1988). Family Evaluation: An Approach Based on Bowen Theory. W. W. Norton.

Morf, C. C., & Rhodewalt, F. (2001). “Unraveling the Paradoxes of Narcissism: A Dynamic Self-Regulatory Processing Model.” Psychological Inquiry, 12(4), 177–196.

Tortoriello, G. K., Hart, W., Richardson, K., & Tullett, A. M. (2017). “Do Narcissists Try to Make Romantic Partners Jealous on Purpose? An Examination of Motives for Deliberate Jealousy-Induction Among Subtypes of Narcissism.” Personality and Individual Differences, 114, 10–15.

Zeigler-Hill, V., Cosby, C. A., Vrabel, J. K., & Southard, A. C. (2020). “Narcissism and Mate Retention Behaviors: What Strategies Do Narcissistic Individuals Use to Maintain Their Romantic Relationships?” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 37(10–11), 2737–2757.