Therapy Shorts 90: Not Every Difficult Ex Is a Narcissist. Sometimes You Were Just Addicted to Chaos

This article challenges the habit of labelling every difficult ex as a narcissist and explores whether the deeper issue may be an attachment to chaos. It examines codependency, emotional intensity, nervous system familiarity, and the tendency to mistake instability for connection, chemistry, or meaningful love in adult relationships.

We should never doubt that there are people in this world who do real psychological damage to others through entitlement, manipulation, lack of empathy and control. However, not every painful or dysfunctional relationship can or should be, placed under that heading of narcissism. Sometimes the label is accurate but often it is vastly overused. What this kind of labeling does is hide another aspect which is quite uncomfortable for people to look at. That is, that they might have contributed to the dysfunction in a chaotic way.

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This means that they might not have been trapped by a narciisist at al but maybe caught in their own attachment and addiction to chaos. For many people with codependent tendencies, emotional intensity can feel far more thrilling that emotional steadiness and consistency. Uncertainty feels like chemistry and inconsistency feels like depth. The codependent who is kept on their toes can strangely feel alive and the relationship becomes consuming, not because of love, but because of dysregulation.

When that happens, people often search for reasons outside themselves that keeps the focus on the other person’s pathology. It’s often easier to say “they were a narcissist” than face ” why did I stay so long in something that activated my nervous system and called it love?”. This question is more difficult because it opens up patterns

Codependents are not usually drawn to healthy love because that feels unfamiliar. It doesn’t produce the same rush, the same obsession, or the need to feel chosen by someone who has no intention of doing so, or will on their terms. Calm and consistency can feel flat when the nervous system has been organised around earning connection through struggle. Given that, chaos becomes addictive, familiar enough to find it very compelling.

This doesn’t excuse any behaviour from the other person. They may well have been selfish, emotionally unavailable or cruel. However, that doesn’t automatically make them a narcissist and labelling them so sometimes becomes a way of avoiding the deeper work of looking at one’s own relational issues.

Recovery is not helped by turning every difficult ex into a diagnosis. It is helped by asking what felt so compelling in the first place. Until that is understood, the face may change, but the pattern often does not.