Thriving Your Love

In this edition of Thriving Your Love, we explore the narcissist’s need to win. For someone with strong narcissistic traits, being right can become more important than discovering the truth or understanding another person’s perspective. Interactions can turn into competitions in which they feel compelled to prove that they are smarter, stronger, or superior. Because empathy may be limited, they may give little consideration to the emotional impact of their words. Instead, they may resort to sarcasm, ridicule, humiliation, or personal attacks to discredit the other person and come out on top.

We also discuss the “game” a narcissistic person may draw you into by throwing out bait—disagreeing with you, challenging you, criticizing your character, or simply insisting that you are wrong. Naturally, you may feel compelled to defend yourself, explain your intentions, or prove your point. You may present clear evidence that you are right, assuming the other person is interested in reaching the truth. But if the real goal is to win rather than understand, no amount of explaining will resolve the argument. The conversation keeps going because making you wrong allows them to maintain a sense of superiority while leaving you frustrated, ashamed, or emotionally exhausted. In this episode, we talk about how to recognize this dynamic and, most importantly, how to avoid taking the bait and getting pulled into a cycle that leaves you feeling worse in the end.

In this episode, we explore why power and control are fundamentally incompatible with emotional connection. A controlling partner often seeks to feel significant by positioning themselves above the other person, believing that superiority will bring security or fulfillment. Yet this strategy can never satisfy our deepest human need—the need to feel emotionally connected. When a relationship becomes a competition, both partners lose. Criticism, one-upmanship, and efforts to prove oneself superior create emotional distance, leaving the controlling partner feeling increasingly lonely and disconnected.

We also examine a striking paradox of controlling relationships: the partner who regularly devalues the other often cannot tolerate feeling devalued themselves. They demand respect and may react with anger or defensiveness when they feel criticized, dismissed, or unimportant. At the same time, they continually place themselves above their partner, unintentionally communicating that the other person matters less. This painful cycle fuels disconnection, resentment, and conflict, making it increasingly difficult for either partner to experience the closeness they both long for.

In this edition of our podcast, Thriving Your Love, we explore how couples try to control each other in different ways. You might have heard about the term codependency, which refers to a person trying to change another one who is addicted to something. It can also happen in a relationship when a person is abusive or violent, and the other one is trying to change this person. Each one of them tries to change the other in a different way.

It is hard to accept that we cannot change people, and that wanting to change them creates a vicious cycle in which they become resistant to our efforts. It is frustrating when we feel that the other person doesn't see our point of view and seems not to care about their impact on us. We fight to be heard and cared for, and the more we fight for that, the more controlling we are.

In the previous edition, we discussed the position of the person who controls and who sometimes can be abusive and violent. In this edition, we focus on the person who feels controlled or abused. We explain the intention of the one who controls: to prevent the loss of the loved one. Because the person has difficulty trusting they deserve love, they are afraid of losing their partner and cannot trust in their love.

This becomes a problem for the partner who, despite all the efforts to show love, is unable to reassure their insecure partner. In addition, receiving protests and accusations from their insecure partner causes them to react in ways that seem to suggest they don't love their partner. This creates a cycle that causes suffering to both partners.

In this episode, we discuss a tendency among some partners to control their loved ones. We try to understand the underlying motivation behind their need to control and offer suggestions for overcoming it.

We explain that controlling behavior stems from difficulty believing that one is lovable, which leads the person to doubt their partner. There is a lack of trust in the other person and a tendency to think that the other person doesn't care and wants to abandon the relationship. This causes the person to complain, demand, and control their partner to guarantee they won't lose them. However, this controlling behavior can cause the very loss that the person fears.

Stress not only hurts the stressed person but also those around them. If you are stressed, you can be sure it affects your loved ones. Now you have two problems: your stress and its impact on the important people in your life. Something that can greatly reduce stress is vulnerability. Sharing what you feel brings you closer to your loved ones and helps them empathize with you. As a result, your stress may become a way to get closer to those you love.

One factor that often attracts people romantically is their differences. When these differences are not too extreme, individuals may feel drawn to partners who complement them in ways that are opposite. For example, an introverted person may feel attracted to an extrovert, and someone who speaks little may be drawn to a more talkative partner. However, cultural differences can sometimes create challenges in romantic relationships.

People who grow up with different customs and learn to express love in specific ways within their family of origin may feel unloved or unimportant when their partner shows affection differently. As a result, they may pressure their partner to change to align with their own customs, and wonder why the partner resists. This resistance is often interpreted as a lack of love rather than a difference in emotional expression.

If you have a loved one who has an addiction, you might have realized a long time ago that you feel disconnected from that person. You might seek their attention and protest the distance. However, they resist your plea for connection, and they make their addiction their priority. This causes you to feel secondary, unimportant, and abandoned. You noticed that your loved one prefers the addiction to you.

Addiction is where people go when they feel disconnected. The pain of being disconnected from a loved one is too big for someone to face. To cope with the loneliness caused by the disconnection, people seek an alternative that ends up becoming an addiction. After a while, the person gets attached to the addiction and no longer connects to a human being.

In this episode of Thriving Your Love, we try to help you see that you can find the way back to human connection. Even though you might be afraid of being let down or hurt, nothing will give your life more meaning and purpose than connecting with your loved one. If you look around, you'll notice someone is asking for your attention and feeling deprived of you. They fight for your emotional presence because they love you and they think you're worthy of fighting for.

In our latest podcast, Addiction: The Remedy for Loneliness, we explore the growing epidemic of loneliness and how people often turn to addictions as substitutes for genuine human connection. This pattern often begins in childhood, when children are unable to form secure bonds with their caregivers for various reasons. The pain of loneliness can feel so unbearable that they seek ways to numb it, turning to substances or behaviors that provide temporary relief and serve as replacements for attachment figures. Over time, these substitutes become the primary source of comfort, making it increasingly difficult to build or sustain real emotional connections.

In the latest episode of Thriving Your Love, Trisha and Claudio revisited a powerful question: What is the true cost of being right? Beneath our arguments, our yelling, and our frustration often lies something much more vulnerable—a desire to feel loved, valued, and safe.