Triangulation and gaslighting: the narcissist’s emotional arsenal
Triangulation and gaslighting: the narcissist’s emotional arsenal
Are you really loving, or are you just reliving your wound? What can online therapy do?
In every romantic relationship there is an initial moment that almost has the flavor of magic. It is the meeting of two presences that seem to recognize each other beyond words, two paths that intertwine as if they had always been searching for one another. In that first exchange, something inside settles: you feel whole, as if one less piece were finally missing. In that initial phase, the dominant feeling is often one: completeness. It does not matter how turbulent past relationships have been or how deep personal insecurities are — in that precise moment, everything seems to make sense.
It is in this alchemy that many people recognize love. But what really happens inside us when we enter into a relationship with another? What draws us toward that person, and what does it activate in us at a deeper level?
Romantic relationships are, first and foremost, inner places. Every time we love, emotional needs are activated that reside in our most vulnerable core: the need to feel seen, protected, chosen. We seek attention, care, reassurance. We long to feel safe in a world where the bond with another seems to give us shape, direction, sometimes even an identity.
But it is precisely at this emotional junction that a risk can take root: that of confusing need with love, fear with attachment, fusion with intimacy. Unconsciously, we may enter a relationship not to share our fullness, but to fill an inner void that we have carried within us long before the encounter.
Through a deep reflection on emotional dynamics, this article will help you recognize whether you are loving authentically or whether you are unconsciously trying to repair an emotional wound through another person. We will explore inner signals, the most common psychological mechanisms, and how to begin a path of awareness toward freer, healthier, and more real relationships.
Love or anesthesia? The question that changes everything
There is a moment, in the emotional silence of every relationship, when an uncomfortable but necessary question arises. A question that not everyone is ready to hear, but one that has the power to radically transform the way we experience love:
“Am I really loving this person, or am I unconsciously trying to soothe a wound I carry inside?”
This is not a trivial question. It is a psychological threshold, often painful to cross, because it forces us to look at love not as we wish it were, but for what it truly is in our lived experience.
It invites us to revisit bonds we have turned into ideals, emotions we have made more beautiful than they were, and masks we have worn not to truly draw closer to the other, but to protect ourselves from what we feared feeling.
Very often, without realizing it, we enter a relationship not out of a deep desire to meet the other as they truly are, but to calm an inner discomfort.
The other becomes a symbolic figure: not only a partner, but a refuge, a container, an invisible repairer of our pain. We seek in their arms an attention we did not receive, a presence that was missing, a love we hoped to deserve since childhood.
In these cases, the relationship does not arise from a free movement of the soul, but from a silent need for relief.
The wound that guides this need can take many forms:
– an original emotional deprivation,
– an experience of rejection or abandonment,
– a deep sense of inadequacy,
– the fear of never being enough.
These are experiences rooted in our earliest emotional history and, if not recognized, they tend to repeat cyclically in the present, in the form of dynamics that confuse and exhaust us.
And so it happens that we meet someone and feel an overwhelming, almost magnetic attraction. It feels like “finding ourselves,” but in reality we are often just reliving something familiar, not necessarily healthy.
We mistake familiarity for love. We mistake intensity for depth. And in the meantime, we adapt, we shape ourselves, we hold back our truths out of fear that if we truly showed ourselves, we would be abandoned.
Love, from a space of freedom and mutual growth, slowly turns into a system of compensation.
We find ourselves living relationships based more on anxiety than on conscious choice, more on the need to avoid pain than on the authentic desire for connection.
It is precisely in this scenario that it becomes essential to ask ourselves: “What I feel — is it authentic love, or is it an attempt to soothe a pain I have not yet healed?”
This is not about judging ourselves or labeling our feelings as wrong. Quite the opposite: it is an invitation to clarity, to emotional maturity, to the possibility of choosing how we want to love and from where we want to love.
Because only when we recognize our pain and take responsibility for healing it can we truly meet the other without using them as a crutch.
Only then can love be born not from a void seeking to be filled, but from a fullness that wishes to be shared.
And perhaps that is where true love really begins: not when we ask the other to save us, but when we learn to be with ourselves, whole, and to welcome the other for who they are — not for what we lack.
When love is a response to emptiness: relationships driven by unhealed pain
Not everything we call love is born from freedom, conscious choice, or a genuine desire to share. Very often, what we perceive as “falling in love” is actually the reflection of a deep and unconscious push to fill a void.
An ancient void, dating back to when we learned that love had to be earned, that the other’s presence was inconsistent, or that in order to be seen we had to give up parts of ourselves.
When these wounds are not recognized, they end up infiltrating our adult bonds, guiding them in subtle but powerful ways. In these cases, we do not love for the pleasure of sharing, but to soothe an internal lack that makes us feel incomplete unless we are in a relationship.
One of the most common signs of this dynamic is a constant fear of abandonment or rejection. Those who love from the wound live in anxiety about distance: they fear silence, interpret every gap as a threat, cling to the other as if losing them meant losing themselves.
This fear can lead to a frantic search for reassurance, jealousy, the constant need to know “where we stand,” to have guarantees, promises, reassurances — often impossible to maintain.
Or, on the contrary, unprocessed pain can generate needs for control or total fusion. When one loves from the wound, absence is never neutral: it is experienced as abandonment. Intimacy is confused with symbiosis, connection with dependence. The bond becomes an indistinct unity, in which personal identity dissolves out of fear of being left alone.
These relationships, when observed closely, have an unsettling characteristic: they unconsciously reproduce childhood attachment patterns.
It is not uncommon for those who experienced insecure, unstable, or devaluing attachment as children to bond as adults with partners who — even in different forms — evoke the same pattern.
Our unconscious often guides us toward partners who emotionally mirror our primary childhood relationships, in the often unconscious desire to repair what we lacked back then.
The result? A repetitive cycle that begins with idealization — the phase in which the other is seen as perfect, almost magical, the one who will finally “save us” —
followed by inevitable disappointment, when the partner’s reality shows its imperfections and can no longer sustain the salvific role we assigned them,
and finally pain, which reactivates exactly the original wound from which we started.
This pattern can repeat multiple times, with different partners, but with extraordinarily similar sensations.
If we do not become aware of the pain that drives certain bonds, we will remain trapped in the attempt to be saved by the other, when true integration actually requires an inner journey.
Loving from the wound does not mean the feeling is not authentic, but that it is filtered, contaminated, conditioned by a pain that needs to be recognized.
Only when we allow ourselves to see this mechanism for what it is — without judging it, but with clarity — can we begin to transform it.
And perhaps, for the first time, learn to love not to fill a void, but from the deep desire to share who we truly are.
When love hurts: the silent signs of a wound loving in your place
Suffering in a relationship is not always the result of what the other does to us. Sometimes, the pain arises from within, from an invisible and ancient part that activates every time we come into contact with intimacy. When we love from an unhealed emotional wound, it is as if that wound — and not the adult, conscious, stable part of us — guides the relationship.
And that wounded part, even though it seeks love, cannot maintain balance.
One of the first signs is excessive jealousy, which does not stem from the partner’s actual behavior, but from constant inner insecurity. The wounded person fears being replaced, forgotten, or set aside. Every unanswered message, every smile directed at someone else, every moment of distance is experienced as a threat. Jealousy then becomes a way to keep the other close — but at the cost of mutual freedom.
Another frequent symptom is difficulty being alone. Those who love from the wound cannot find peace in silence or in their own company. The other’s absence generates anxiety, emptiness, restlessness. In these cases, the relationship becomes an emotional crutch: one stays together not by choice, but to avoid the pain of contact with oneself. Solitude, instead of being a nourishing space, is experienced as abandonment.
This is often followed by a sense of emotional dependence. The other becomes essential not only for happiness, but for the daily functioning of one’s emotional balance. One becomes hypersensitive to the partner’s moods, availability, emotional states. When they are present, everything is fine; when they withdraw, everything collapses. Under these conditions, the bond is no longer reciprocal, but unbalanced: one gives, the other holds.
Emotional explosions in response to minimal conflicts are a frequent sign of love guided by pain. A poorly chosen word, a delay, an ambiguously interpreted message is enough to trigger an emotional wave that is hard to manage. Rather than reacting to the present event, one reacts to something that the event has “reactivated”: old wounds, emotional memories from the past, deep fears that were sleeping just beneath the surface. In these cases, the relationship is not between two adults, but between a wounded part and another who may not even realize they have become the target of that ancient pain.
Finally, a subtler but equally important sign: the tendency to want to “save” the other. Those with unresolved emotional wounds often bond with problematic, unstable, “damaged” partners and take on their healing as if it were a mission. This attitude — seemingly noble — is actually an unconscious attempt to redeem one’s own worth through the other. Saving someone becomes the way to feel necessary, important, lovable.
But a love born from the need to fix is never free, and often turns into a relationship of mutual dependence, where no one truly grows.
Recognizing these signs is not meant to induce guilt, but to turn on an inner light, to understand from where we are loving. Only from this awareness can we begin to transform the way we relate: no longer from a wound seeking relief, but from a heart that has learned to be enough and chooses to love from a place of freedom.
From wound to freedom: the path toward a love that no longer bleeds
To truly love means, first of all, learning to look inward with courage. No relationship can become healthy and free if we continue to carry unrecognized wounds, repressed emotions, or unconscious expectations into it. The first step toward mature and conscious love is not asking the other to love us better, but asking ourselves from where we are loving.
Emotional healing always begins with an act of clarity: recognizing one’s original wound.
It may be a fear of abandonment, developed in a childhood marked by absence or instability.
It may be a sense of not being enough, derived from years of feeling invisible, judged, or rejected.
Or it may be linked to experiences of emotional invasion, in which we learned that to be loved we had to renounce our authenticity.
Whatever form the wound takes, naming it already begins to disarm its power.
Awareness of the wound opens the path, but it is the authentic listening to the emotions that feed it that makes transformation possible. Anger, fear, shame, need, sadness: these are inner voices we often learned to silence or, worse, to project onto others. When we deny these emotions, we end up making them even more powerful, and relationships become the stage on which they manifest uncontrollably.
Welcoming an emotion is an act of balance: it means allowing it to be heard, without letting it become the master of our choices or our identity.
At this point in the journey, an active and transformative process opens: working on oneself.
This can happen in many ways — through therapy, which helps restructure inner dynamics; through journaling, which allows us to give voice and form to our inner world; or through practices such as mindfulness, which teach us to remain present and grounded.
Working on oneself does not mean becoming perfect or “fixed,” but acquiring tools to inhabit one’s emotional experience without being dominated by it.
One of the fundamental aspects of this inner work is learning to stay in the “here and now” of the relationship. Many of our most painful reactions do not arise from the present, but from what the present awakens within us. A tone of voice can evoke ancient family dynamics, a small gesture can reopen the wound of childhood exclusion, a silence can bring us back to the emptiness of abandonment.
Staying in the present means not being dragged by the script, but responding to the other for who they are, not for what they represent.
It is choosing to love with awareness, not with automatisms.
The healing path is not a straight line, but a circular movement, made of falls, insights, recoveries, and small changes. But every step taken in this direction — toward self-truth, emotional freedom, authentic love — brings us closer to relationships in which we no longer try to save ourselves, but simply to meet each other.
Love that chooses, not compensates: the mature face of intimacy
After moving through the dynamics of wounded love, need, dependence, and recurring pain, there is a different possibility. A way of loving that does not arise from lack, but from awareness. A love that does not seek to fill a void, but offers itself as a gift from a center that is already sufficiently full. This is conscious love. Love that chooses, not love that begs. Love that welcomes, but does not absorb. Love that stays, even without binding.
Emotional freedom is the beating heart of this form of love. It means that I remain in the relationship because I want to, not because I need it to feel whole. I can desire the other’s presence, but I do not depend on it for inner survival. This type of love arises from the ability to be with oneself, from the trust that personal worth is not defined by external recognition, but by an inner sense of stability and dignity.
Mature love is also founded on the presence of healthy boundaries, which allow closeness without invasion. Not rigid boundaries that exclude and defend, but clear boundaries that protect personal identity and allow the other to exist without fusion or intrusion.
Knowing where I end and where the other begins is what makes true intimacy possible: not the kind that erases differences, but the kind that respects and values them.
From this foundation arises the ability to be with the other without losing oneself. It is no longer necessary to mold oneself to be accepted, nor to control in order to feel safe. One can be present in the relationship while remaining faithful to oneself, without hiding authentic parts or sacrificing one’s integrity for love.
In this space, a deeper connection develops, based on freedom rather than fusion. One loves the real person, not the need one believes they should fill.
Conscious love is rooted in reality, not in the ideal. It is not based on the illusion that the other is perfect or will save us, but on mature acceptance of human limits. It recognizes that every relationship brings challenges, but they are faced together, without fleeing or demanding. Realistic love is not less romantic, but stronger: it withstands impact because it is not built on unrealistic expectations.
Authentic communication and mutual respect are finally the pillars of this relational experience. One speaks not to be right, but to understand. One listens not to react, but to make space for the other’s experience. Conflict is no longer a threat, but an opportunity to know each other better. In this type of love, needs are expressed, not hidden; emotions are shared, not suppressed; limits are respected, not violated.
Thus, a relational space is born in which one can trust, open up, and above all be.
Conscious and unconditional love is not free of difficulty, but it is free of illusion. It is a love that does not promise salvation, but presence. It does not offer answers, but true companionship along the path. It does not heal by magic, but accompanies the process.
It is the love that stops asking the other to be everything, because we have finally learned to be there for ourselves.
What can online therapy do?
In a world that moves fast, where we are constantly connected but often emotionally distant even from ourselves, online therapy is emerging as an accessible, intimate, and transformative space. It is not just an alternative to in-person therapy: it is a real opportunity for those who wish to begin a deep path of awareness, healing, and personal growth — including in the way they experience relationships.
Wounds such as fear of abandonment or the belief of not being enough do not disappear: they remain active in the background, conditioning our relationships without being noticed. They manifest as emotional dependence, relational anxiety, inability to set boundaries, or a constant need to please others. Those who love from a wound often do so without knowing it: they mistake need for love, dependence for intimacy, control for protection.
It is precisely in this invisible passage that online therapy can become a turning point.
In a therapeutic space — even a virtual one — a person can begin to observe their dynamics with a new, gentler yet clearer gaze. The therapist becomes a safe mirror in which to reflect one’s attachment patterns, put into words emotions that are often confused or denied, and recognize repetitive scripts that continue to reactivate in present relationships.
Online therapy allows all of this with an added advantage: the possibility of bringing oneself into one’s familiar environment, without having to travel or interrupt daily routines. This makes the process more sustainable and accessible, especially for those living in isolated contexts, with little time, or who struggle to expose themselves physically.
And yet, the depth of the work does not change: words spoken through a screen have the same transformative power as those shared in person, if listening is authentic and the therapeutic relationship is solid.
Through consistent and structured work, the person begins to recognize their wounds without being dominated by them. They learn to stay with emotions, regulate reactions, distinguish what belongs to the past from what is actually happening in the present. This is the heart of change: interrupting the cycle in which pain guides emotional choices, and learning to love not out of necessity, but from free and conscious choice.
In online therapy, work is also done on practical and everyday aspects: from building self-esteem to managing relational boundaries, from processing emotional trauma to assertive communication.
All of this gradually leads to a profound change: the person begins to recognize their own worth, even outside the relationship. And from there, they can finally begin to love no longer with the wound in the foreground, but with an integrated, grounded, and open presence.
Loving without the wound does not mean no longer having pain, but having learned not to let that pain decide for us. Online therapy, with its flexibility and transformative potential, can be the first concrete step to begin this journey.
“When we stop asking the other to heal our wounds, we finally begin to love — free, present, whole.”
Bibliographic references:
- Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. Basic Books.
- Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown Spark.
For information, write to Dr. Jessica Zecchini.
Email contact: consulenza@jessicazecchini.it, WhatsApp contact: +39 370 32 17 351.
