The Narcissist Relationship Cycle: Why They Get Bored and Repeat It

What if the reason they keep coming back to you has nothing to do with love — and everything to do with boredom? 

In this episode, Dr. Kerry and Lynn Strathdee break down the internal clock that drives narcissistic relationship cycles. How pathological partners idealize, withdraw, only to circle back. This isn’t about the victim—it’s about the dysfunctional nature of the abuser.  

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LYNN STRATHDEE is a UK-based psychodynamic psychotherapist specializing in echoism, narcissistic abuse recovery, and the unconscious patterns that keep survivors stuck in repeating relationship cycles. A former educator turned therapist, Lynn brings both clinical training and lived experience to her private practice, where she works with clients online and in person. Her approach goes beyond surface-level psychoeducation to the deeper identity work that creates lasting change.  

WEBSITE: https://echoismrecovery.com/ 

Resources

• The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources
• First Steps to Leaving: Online self-paced digital course
• Toxic-Free Relationship Club: Live coaching & community support

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Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D., an author and educator, helps listeners decode toxic dynamics, recognize manipulation, and rebuild self-trust.

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This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice, nor does listening create a doctor-patient or therapist-client relationship. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call 911 or contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 (US/Canada).

Transcript

"You can have a PhD in it and still miss it"

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You can know it. You can have a PhD in it. And you can still go, no, it can't be happening again. There's absolutely no way that this could be number five out of five. Well, I'll just have a little bit of this and then I'll get out.

Dr. Kerry 0:14

Were you under the assumption when you got into the relationship that relationships last because both couples put in equal energy and that that makes it last? I'm really really thinking that lately. That there's maybe for some relationships, there's actually a cycle to it that's driven by the more the pathological person than really actually what's happening between the two people in the context of the relationship.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Yeah, I think I think that your previous relationship history is going to really impact how you how you see those things. Because if you've been with several pathological personalities, you're going to be quite familiar with the idea of a relationship cycle, aren't you? But in a kind of healthy relationship, there isn't really a cycle. There's kind of movement and progression and development and deepening, or even maybe stagnation. It doesn't, I'm not saying that every long-term relationship progresses and deepens because many don't. But the cycle thing, I think, is in itself like a bit of a worry, isn't it?

Dr. Kerry 1:18

It is. I got to thinking about that because when it came to Brad and my relationship, when we were in the beginning, we weren't very close. I mean, yeah, you get close because of infatuation and the sense of, oh my goodness, I'm in love with somebody. But when you really started the relationship, there was a period in which we had to grow together that we didn't naturally think of each other, but we had to sort of learn to prioritize each other, learn what it meant to share life, share finances, share resources. And that was quite a bumpy curve for us. But the relationship, I kept seeing it kind of move through periods of increased intimacy as we came to grow safer and know each other and to rely on each other. But what I recognized in that pathological relationship was that I could feel that there was like a clock running that had nothing to do with me. It had to do more with where he was and how he was feeling versus where we were and how we were doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Yeah. And of course, if you don't have any of that insight at the time, you probably spend a lot of time thinking about what was creating what you could sense internally, but not really having the information about what's going on. Why does this keep happening? And then you apply your sort of normal thinking patterns to it, which of course don't work.

Dr. Kerry 2:37

In fact, I realized that the reason we met when we met was because that was when he was typically looking for relationships. He even had a

Hunting season: spring restlessness, autumn contrition

Dr. Kerry 2:45

like windows of time that he was, let's say it crudely, hungrier for connection than other times. And it was those times that he tended to find people more actively in those periods, that those windows. It would be spring and into the summer, and then the fall, he would move into more of a guilty with contrition, you know, feeling bad. He sort of make new vows to work harder that would last into the new year. And then as spring started to come, then there would be this restlessness, dissatisfaction, and he'd cycle back into looking for more of something.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

More of you or more or more because there was other stuff going on.

Dr. Kerry 3:33

More people, novelty, more relationships, more. He started he, you know, he called it hunting, you know, he started hunting more actively in those. I think he always was, but I think he was hunting more actively in those certain periods of time. I but I could feel it that was like governing the relationship. Certainly left me feeling extremely unsafe.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Yeah, but but it's such a good point because I think it's difficult to admit this, or but I think it's about kind of energy and resource, isn't it? I think these types of personalities have a genuine, I'm not saying it's uh legitimate, but it's a genuine need for uh the emotional energy that comes from attention and gratification and uh drama and all of that. And I think there's like a depletion that goes on. It's almost like it's that it's just not something that they can seemingly help. Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Kerry 4:30

I do, I do, I agree. I it there's there's like this internal flatness or emptiness that

The fairytale hunger underneath the boredom

Dr. Kerry 4:37

seems restlessness that seems that seems to create a lot of boredom and restlessness, and then they seem to need more energy. And it's interesting because I think, and I'd love to know what you think, I think this is tied into the degree that they overly rely on idealization as a way to perceive that they have this almost it's not Pollyanish in the sense that it's believes in the good of everything, but it's as if they believe that the fairy tale, it's so it's not Pollyanna, it's more of a fairy tale, as if a fairy tale existence exists out there and they're looking for it, and they seemingly think other people have it and they're envious of it, so they go seeking for it. Yeah, they want the dream car and they want the dream life and the dream house and the right relationship, and they're supposed to be the right sexual experiences, and you know, every holiday is supposed to be this this incredible experience, is this unrealistic idealization that seems to go on.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah, it's incredibly immature because I mean we all probably have a bit of that when we're younger, you know, that sort of, oh, this is what falling in love is and this is what relationships are, and then you quite quickly learn that that isn't real, and any decent relationship is not going to survive on that. But there's a phase of that which ideally we kind of grow out of. And I just feel like there's something about things very quickly getting boring, you can sense when they're getting bored. And one of the things that I found so destructive, I don't know if you sensed that too at the time, that when you can sense that kind of boredom pattern kicking in, that you're often kind of provoked. Obviously, you guys were married, so it's slightly different, but you're provoked into spotting it yourself. I was provoked into spotting it, reacting, stepping out because I could sense something was going wrong. And then of course, essentially that was kind of giving him like a holiday time off. Because he knew what he was like, he's bored, he needs a kind of pink ticket to kind of go out and do whatever. But I would kind of facilitate that by going, Oh, I can sense you're being weird, you're finding fault a lot, you're being really difficult, I tell you what, this isn't working for me. And then I would withdraw, which is like an absolute chef's kiss, isn't it? Because then you get your freedom, but you also get to say, Well, I didn't end it, she did. You know, then I would feel really guilty. And then of course, when it all rolls back around again and the cycle starts again, that idealization thing starts again. Because you get to go, right, we're back together, we got it wrong, we should never have split up. I think what's so difficult about figuring out cycles is that they have all the information of all the other lives, and we don't we don't always have it. What do we do when we don't have it?

Dr. Kerry 7:22

Yeah. Or or how about this part, when we don't even know the other lives exist.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Exactly. Exactly.

Dr. Kerry 7:29

So I know that I was being gaslit and it I didn't consider it gaslighting because I didn't know it was gaslighting. Because I thought that he was telling me the truth.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Of course. Because you just think no one does that sort of thing.

Dr. Kerry 7:43

No, I know. Nobody keeps, for example, images of broken he he worked on a uh in a manufacturing setting and they had machinery, and he would have broken you know, machinery that need to be fixed, and that he was recycling these as the excuse for why he's gonna be home late for that night.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Okay.

Dr. Kerry 8:01

And they weren't real, it didn't just happen. He just cycled through from another time.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

So you're thinking he's out working, he's gonna be late, but actually there's a whole load of stuff going on.

Dr. Kerry 8:13

Exactly. And I had no clue that he's lying about that, that that was actually the misleading, deliberate deception, and that it was just so that he could have a night to himself to do whatever he wanted to do.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Don't you think though that afterwards is when we do all that kind of putting the pieces together a bit? You know, when it's all over and you kind of go, Oh, hold on a minute, hold on a minute. Now I see what was happening there. Now I get it. But at the time, not so much.

Dr. Kerry 8:41

No, no. How it would happen for me with back to you'd have sort of like you'd step out, and then that gave him a freedom. Or sort of I call it get out of jail free card, you know, that's what essentially yeah. But what it happened for me is I would book a weekend away and thinking that we could rekindle our connection by just the two of

Buying back his interest with weekends away

Dr. Kerry 9:00

us being off by ourselves doing something fun. So I'd people who read the stories like you guys were traveling all the time. Yes, we were. That was my effort to sort of recapture his interest in the relationship. Because every time I'd feel this restless, disappearing, uh, low energy, or even worse, the contempt. It came up more like disgust or like he was putting up with me. That's what I felt like. He was putting up with me. That I would like, oh, we need to we need to get away. We need to do, we need to infuse this with something new and go somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Did you find that during those weekends away it was actually worse?

Dr. Kerry 9:35

No, they tended to be better, actually. That's why they were so reinforcing. Like, well, it worked, let's do it again. But what but what's happening is I'm spending money we really actually didn't have, nor could we afford. And going away is exhausting. There's a lot of work to pack and unpack.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

It's incredible, isn't it? Because uh yeah, whatever level he knew he what he was doing, when he got bored, he could kind of express enough dissatisfaction to get you working behind the scenes to sort of start and try and fix things or put more effort in or whatever.

Dr. Kerry 10:07

Yeah. I remember when I met him and I heard the history of his relationship. So how it went roughly, and maybe I'm slightly wrong. I'm sure if he was listening, he's like, No, that's not correct. But the first marriage lasted roughly two years. The second marriage lasted 17, and I think there's reasons why he was working on a green card with the United States. That's a big reason to stick something out. And they had a son together, he was very proud of that child. But they have a lot of breakups in that really a lot of big separations. I think they separated at least a minimum of three times in that period. So it was a very rocky relationship, and he worked hard, he was not home much. Next relationship, I think, lasted maybe six to eight months, maybe nine. And it's because she found out she caught him and then just was done. And then the last relationship lasted two years. So in my head, I had a thing that said, this is gonna be about two years long. If I could get past two years, and guess what? We were done at two years, it was over. Wow, almost to the day.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Yeah, patterns. It's I think so much more important than like you were saying at the beginning, individual behaviors. Once you start seeing patterns, it's usually really worth taking notice because there shouldn't be really obvious repeating patterns in relationship. That's the whole point, isn't it? It is meant to be something that evolves and progresses. I I don't know if you agree with this, but I think that's in part one of the reasons why a lot of these individuals don't have social media, not like genuine social media, like with their real friends and real, they don't tend to have somewhere where people can gather and start talking to each other.

Dr. Kerry 11:48

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, his relationships online was very bizarre. Um, he had a he had a family group text thing, and he was very frustrated with it. So he was in therapy the entire time we were together. In some ways, I think that definitely got weaponized and it didn't make anything better. But I also think that there was some interesting observations. So one of them was that he felt like it was just frivolous conversation. It was so superficial and shallow that drove him nuts. He actually one time took the thread, cut everything out that was a meme because they loved to sub memes to each other, and there was almost nothing left. Hi, how are you? Good night, hi, how are you? Good night. That was all that was all that was left of that conversation thread was that. And he was mad about that. He's like, we don't talk to each other. But I'm thinking, but you don't want anyone to talk to anyone. Yeah, but he was not on social media, not at all. Nice, and but I think he was running so many double lives and scams, and that's how he got found out, by the way, was from my Facebook page. One of the girlfriends searched him and found him, and then contacted me. Wow. From my page.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

I was listening to um Peter Salerno

Should you warn the next woman?

SPEAKER_00 12:55

early on today, which is such a fabulous book, Traumatic Cognitive Dissonance. And he was talking about the temptation that I definitely had to try and reach out to the new person to try and say, like to warn them. And it's so tempting to do it. But he's in that book, he's sort of saying, Don't, don't, not until you're well. You can't save anybody else until you're really well. And in fact, it sort of keeps you attached to the abuser in a sort of weird way. And I I remember thinking actually this could be potentially quite a danger, you know, like we've got to think about our well-being as well. But I think what's so difficult about tracking their patterns based on their history is the lack of reliable information because you only know what you're told. And unless you're gonna go and actually check that, which I think some people do do now.

Dr. Kerry 13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Is the background check thing an American? Like is that an American thing?

Dr. Kerry 13:56

I think a lot of us do it. There's online services that you can use. I don't know if they exist in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

I don't know either, to be fair. I think there's there's definitely a sort of um police one that you can do if you think there's like a a risk. But I yeah.

Dr. Kerry 14:10

If you know what county they're in, and that's not awfully hard to figure out, if you know where they live, you can then search what is the state and county. You can then go to the county, you need to know every place that they lived. You can go on and log into the court system and then run a check to see if there's been any filings against that individual. Then you'll find out if there's any criminal or civil cases that they've had or in divorces as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

And they don't get informed that you've done that and you've never known that.

Dr. Kerry 14:37

It's public record. That's what's called public record, so it's public knowledge. So anything that's uh legally related is public knowledge here. Okay. Pretty good. Yeah, but there are PIs you can hire, and I I did do that on this guy, by the way. I did hire somebody, but there is services, and the services to me are kind of iffy, how good they are. I'm not for sure. I think the information sometimes is old and not always up to date. Yeah, I just think it's always not always up to date. If they have phone numbers that they're using, like um voice over internet VoIP services, then it doesn't really show up very well. They need to have a traditional cell phone plan or a traditional nobody these days has landlined anymore. So it it gets really kind of challenging to do a big search on that. But here's the thing that I wondered is that I I wonder if if the other way we can spot

Idealization vs. falling in love: telling them apart

Dr. Kerry 15:27

the pattern is to get more familiar with what idealization feels like. I think we often confuse that. Let's kind of go back to the early part of the relationship when you first meet and you're falling in love and there's this big lots of soupy feeling uh neurotransmitters happening, dopamine and there's a lot of oxytocin that's happening. There's just a lot of like really feel-good uh feelings happening that makes us not very sane in that period of time. But it's easy, I think, to miscue idealization from that just feel-good experience.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Absolutely. Yeah, and because it's so powerful, we can have all of that kind of knowledge before we start something. But when you've actually begun it and you guys are getting close and there's physical intimacy and all of that, it's almost like no amount of telling yourself that in the moment is going to switch those feelings off. I think it's incredibly difficult, and it I think it's also incredibly difficult when if you've got the kind of personality, and not everybody does, but if you have the kind of personality that you tend to match someone else's energy rather than kind of go in with your full chest, as you know, the youngsters like to say, and you go in really out there yourself and kind of um being pretty strong, you're tending to take the lead from somebody else and therefore sort of matching their pace rather than being really clear about setting it. It's almost like you have to sort of decide to set it before it really gets going. Do you know what I mean, Kerry?

Dr. Kerry 17:04

I do, I do, and I do tend to match people's energies and pat match their pacing, even when I'm unhappy with the pacing.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Kerry 17:13

You're right, that's very problematic. But the other thing that I realize as I look back is that, you know, if I compare Brad to my second relationship, Brad didn't love bomb me. I was in love with him, crazy in love with him, but I didn't feel love bomb. I didn't feel like, you know, he thought really well of me, but I definitely wasn't being idealized. I don't think so. Whereas the second relationship, yeah, I felt sort of like I walked on water and I liked the feeling of it. And I never once said to myself, and it's interesting because I'd been trained clinically to be careful and observe that in the office with patients. And I even can notice it when it happens to social media, when there's this glowing, you know, sort of this lots of lavish compliments and flattery happening, I end up thinking, ooh, this is idealization. They're putting me on a pedestal. Don't fall for this, because you know, I've learned way back in the day from one of my early teachers in the internship is that the nugget of gold, if all this flattery and praise will turn into a piece of shit. So that then that's exactly how he phrased it. So he said, watch for that. If you're becoming the gold, the shit is following right behind it.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Absolutely. And you know that I really love Jungian psychology, and that's a kind of key idea, is that if there's the all of this positivity, then there will be an equal amount of something of its inverse, just maybe it's not being led with, it's being sort of hidden back there, you know. But if there's a heavy, like it's exactly what you just said, if there's a heavy amount of kind of leaning into how wonderful everything is, that's kind of excessive. But I think what you said at the just a second ago is even more important, which is that you can know it, you can have a PhD in it, and you can still go, well, you know, no, I think I know enough about this stuff. I think I I think I would know how to get out before it got too problematic. Or I'll just have a little bit of this and then I'll get out, like when it starts to become do you know what I mean? I know, just just a dash of sugar in that coffee. Yeah, just have a little indulgence.

The gambler's fallacy: "it can't be five out of five"

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Yeah. And there's the other piece that definitely was for me about oh, it can't be another one. No, it can't be happening again. Like, no, nobody has this that number of times in a row. Do you know that kind of gambler's fallacy of oh, there's absolutely no way that this could be number five out of five. So you you just won't allow it.

Dr. Kerry 19:43

Yeah, you can you sort of say I can't roll a good number again. Yeah, I just rolled a good number. So how could it be happening again?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Yeah, or a bad one.

Dr. Kerry 19:50

Yeah, a bad one in this case, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Exactly. I think that's a big thing. And there was one other thing I was thinking about as I was sort of preparing for this, which is I don't know if the clients that you've worked with um ever talked about this, but I I think about this all the time. How no matter how many red flags are seen, we can still completely ignore them and then say afterwards, I saw them, I definitely saw them, and I know I did that. I know I saw lots of red flags.

Dr. Kerry 20:18

Oh, I even wrote about them. You can pick up my book and read them, and people were like, Why are you doing that? Exactly. Well, because it the the idealization was so intoxicating and being chosen was so important to me, and I wanted to be in another relationship, and so I kept thinking this is fixable, it's fixable. That's what I was doing. It's fixable. We'll just work on it.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Do you think you could be idealized again? Do you think what would happen if that happened again?

Dr. Kerry 20:44

Well, I I don't allow it, never allowed it in the office. I was able to sort of admit see it immediately and sidestep it and then keep the treatment relationship on level ground. And so I knew that it was manipulation when it happened. That's what I would say. Oh, this person's manipulating me. What's what's going on that was creating this kind of insecurity that they feel they need to do this right now? Or be careful, something's happening with them. This says something to me about their psychology. I need to understand that and be see this as a risk. That's what I would do when I would hear it. No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Have you had like the chance or how has it kind of come up in your sort of thinking that actually there's this narrative about intensity, speed, idealization, kind of locking you down? But I also think there's a real danger with things that go incredibly slowly. And because of the internet and the way that abusers are learning that we're learning, and they definitely are kind of bright enough in when it comes to what they want to hone their skills. I think that one of the ways that they're kind of getting around it is to slow everything down so much that you don't really. Get a chance to get to know them. Rather, there's so much time passing that by the time you actually spend enough time with them to see anything really significant, you're like a long time down the road. Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Kerry 22:14

I do, but I haven't seen it personally because I'm not trying to meet anybody. But I can see that I can see that because that's another way to be hidden, stay hidden.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Exactly.

Dr. Kerry 22:25

Just like that, starting an argument with you is kind of a deal. This is now using time as a way to hide.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Exactly. And of course, if you've been in an abusive relationship and you go into one where things are going incredibly slowly, it's really logical to think, oh, this is wonderful. This is great. There's no pressure to spend loads of time together, there's no demands, there's no intensity, and you're going tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, when in fact, that person knows that they can behave themselves for a couple of days at best. So things need to be spread out over a long period of time so that that kind of mask dropping can be as far enough in the future as possible.

Dr. Kerry 23:03

Yes. Yeah. I yeah, that makes I I'm not surprised because what I've seen is that they all tend to hone their skills. This is very much a that they see it like an art of war, generally. And and they just get better at the combating, you know, the fighting.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Kerry 23:21

So do you think you'd fall for the idealization again if you ever felt it? Do you think you'd recognize it?

SPEAKER_00 23:27

I I'd love to say no. I think I'd recognize it, but I think I did recognize it. Like we were saying, I think that's the trouble. It's not the recognizing it, it's the kind of actually I it did happen again recently, but I had to have it pointed out by a girlfriend. So I got out before I got in, if you know what I mean. But if I'm really honest, it was only because I was saying to this girlfriend, oh no, but he's really nice. And I was giving her all of these things he was doing, and she went, No, no, no, no. That is and she just rattled off all the things that I wasn't seeing. And that was only six months ago.

Dr. Kerry 24:06

Here's the part that I love though. You were listening.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I didn't even go on a date with this person, but I nearly did it again.

Dr. Kerry 24:14

But you listened, and many of us are like, it feels so good we won't listen.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Oh no. I mean, I don't know about you, K. Well, I do know. Of course I know. We can't go through this again. It would kill, it would kill me.

Dr. Kerry 24:26

Oh yeah, no, I'm not, I don't want to do that either. In fact, so would I recognize it? And I said, Yes, I think I would. I would really like it. It would feel great. I wouldn't want it to stop. I but I think that it I would be scared enough of it repeating that I would be reaching out and getting help.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Yeah, and you'd be on the phone to your girlfriends. Yeah, to you and to other people that I really trust. Absolutely. Because it's hard to see it, isn't it? It's really hard to see it. It's hard to see, especially if you're, you know, which we can be, especially coming out of one of these things, you can be really bruised for a long time and then you start to want to live again. The idea that you've got to be that careful can feel really like, really disheartening. And you just want to have a nice time, meet someone nice.

Dr. Kerry 25:08

Here's why I don't like the one that the

Why "no pressure" is the newest trap

Dr. Kerry 25:10

example you just gave that you think that they're doing, because I think it plays into our vulnerability. And the vulnerability is that after we get an out of one of these relationships, we're very risk-averse. So we deliberately trust slower. We don't like fast-moving relationships most of the time. We just are more vigilant and hesitant. And this plays into it. It looks like somebody who respects all of that instead of realizing they're weaponizing it.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah.

Dr. Kerry 25:36

That's what I don't like when I heard you say that like, ooh, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

And I only shared it because I think it's, I mean, I've seen it happen, and it was a very powerful device for the very reasons that it plays into someone being really cautious and thinking they're being incredibly judicious and they're not leading with their heart, they're not leading with desire, they're leading very much with their head and self-care. I think that's why it's so important that if you have a traumatic relationship history, you have to be the one setting the pace and setting the direction, not matching the pace and matching the direction.

Dr. Kerry 26:16

I agree. I agree. So let's jump over the podcast extra and talk about practically what does that look like? Because people may hear us say that and say, that sounds great, but I'm not for sure what you're actually advocating. So I'd love us to be able to talk about that. Okay.