If Nothing Ever Changes, Are They Really Listening?

Accepting Influence in Relationships and Why It Matters More Than You Think

By Danielle Roxborough, LMFT | Love Is a Verb Counseling

You explain what hurts. Your partner explains why it shouldn’t hurt.

You ask to revisit a decision. They tell you it has already been made.

You have the conversation, receive the apology, and agree to move forward. But a week later, you’re carrying the same responsibility, having the same argument, or adjusting to another decision you weren’t included in.

If nothing ever changes, are they really listening?

Sometimes your partner understands what you’re saying. The missing piece is whether they allow that understanding to affect their behavior.

In couples therapy, this is called accepting influence: allowing your partner’s feelings, needs, and perspective to meaningfully shape your choices and your shared life.

We spend a lot of time talking about communication in relationships. We spend less time asking what happens after someone communicates.

Does their perspective change the plan? Does their discomfort lead to consideration? Can they disagree with you and still have a meaningful voice?

At Love Is a Verb Counseling, I help couples explore these questions through trauma-informed, Gottman-informed couples therapy, with particular attention to attachment, ADHD, and neurodivergent relationships.

Because a relationship needs more than the opportunity to speak. It needs room for what you say to matter.

What Is Accepting Influence in Relationships?

Accepting influence means considering your partner’s perspective with a genuine willingness to reconsider your response, adjust a decision, or make room for their needs.

The Gottman Institute describes accepting influence as openness to your partner’s ideas and opinions. You can disagree while still recognizing that their experience deserves consideration.

For example:

“I assumed we would spend Sunday with my family. Hearing how exhausted you are, I want us to rethink the plan.”

You still value your family. Your partner’s needs also affect what happens.

Accepting influence might involve changing your mind, asking more questions, slowing down a decision, or developing an alternative together.

It does not require automatic agreement. It requires genuine openness.

If your partner’s input never changes anything, how much influence do they actually have?

Why This Relationship Skill Gets Overlooked

Influence can sound abstract until you look at how daily decisions happen.

Whose schedule determines the week?

Who adjusts when the children need something?

Whose preferences shape spending, intimacy, social plans, or household routines?

Whose discomfort leads to a change—and whose discomfort gets explained away?

A couple can communicate politely while one person holds most of the decision-making power. Someone can say “I understand” while continuing an arrangement that consistently benefits them.

Accepting influence requires deliberate attention because familiar arrangements can start to feel unquestionable. The person doing most of the adapting may become so accustomed to it that neither partner notices the imbalance.

A useful question is:

“When was the last time something my partner shared genuinely changed how I approached our relationship?”

What Fight Right Teaches Us About Zero-Sum Relationships

In Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection, Drs. John and Julie Gottman encourage couples to move beyond a win-or-lose approach to conflict and toward understanding and collaboration.

A zero-sum mindset in relationships treats one partner’s gain as the other partner’s loss.

It can sound like:

• “If I apologize, you win.”

• “If I change my mind, I’m giving you control.”

• “If your needs matter, mine matter less.”

• “If I validate your feelings, I’m admitting your entire account is correct.”

This mindset can turn an ordinary disagreement into a struggle over whose reality gets to count.

Imagine one partner wants a busy weekend with friends while the other wants rest. The argument quickly becomes about who is boring, demanding, selfish, or antisocial.

An influence-taking conversation gets more curious:

“What does this weekend mean to you?”

One person may be craving connection after feeling isolated. The other may be exhausted and worried about starting another week depleted.

Understanding those needs creates more possibilities: one shared outing, separate activities, an earlier departure, or protected recovery time.

Some decisions still involve real tradeoffs. Healthy collaboration gives both people a meaningful role in making them.

What Does Gottman Research Say About Accepting Influence?

The Gottman Institute’s research overview identifies men accepting influence from their wives as a predictor of happy, stable heterosexual marriages. Its account of a longitudinal study of 130 newlywed couples connects that willingness with greater marital happiness and a lower likelihood of divorce.

These findings come from particular research samples and cannot predict the future of an individual relationship. They also do not mean that only men need to practice this skill.

Mutual influence is a useful therapeutic goal across genders and relationship configurations.

The practical lesson is that sharing power deserves attention alongside communication techniques. A softer tone helps, but both people also need a meaningful place in deciding what happens.

What Happens When Your Partner Accepts Little Influence?

Repeated dismissal can leave someone feeling powerless inside their own relationship.

Low influence may look like:

• Asking for your opinion after a decision is already final.

• Treating your feelings as a problem to correct.

• Expecting you to accommodate plans without consulting you.

• Agreeing to change while repeatedly leaving implementation to you.

• Using income, confidence, or expertise to claim the final say.

• Responding to every concern with a defense or countercomplaint.

The Gottman Institute links resistance to influence with escalating conflict and gridlock.

In everyday life, this can become an exhausting cycle. One partner pushes harder to be heard. The other becomes defensive or withdraws. Both leave the conversation feeling misunderstood.

Over time, resentment can crowd out affection. Requests become sharper. Vulnerability starts to feel risky.

Eventually, someone may stop asking.

That silence deserves curiosity. It may mean an issue feels resolved. It may also mean someone no longer believes speaking up makes a difference.

A single disagreement, forgotten task, or request for space does not establish that your partner refuses influence. Look at the pattern over time, especially after concerns have been clearly discussed.

Why Is Taking In Influence So Difficult?

Your partner’s request may touch something more vulnerable than the immediate issue.

“I need more help” can land as “You’re failing.”

“Please check with me first” can land as “You’re being controlled.”

“That hurt my feelings” can land as “You’re a bad partner.”

When feedback activates shame, fear, or an old attachment wound, defending yourself can feel urgent. You may start explaining your intentions before understanding the impact.

Accepting influence requires enough emotional regulation to stay curious while uncomfortable. It also requires tolerating the possibility that your preferred approach needs to change.

Useful questions include:

• What am I assuming this request means about me?

• What part of my partner’s experience have I not understood?

• Where can I be flexible?

• What boundary or need do I still need to communicate?

• What action would show that I considered their concern?

You can acknowledge impact while remembering an event differently. You can change a plan without agreeing with every criticism. You can decline one proposal and help develop another.

What Healthy Mutual Influence Looks Like

Healthy couples allow each other’s input to affect everyday life.

When one partner feels overwhelmed by household responsibilities:

“I hear that asking me for help is another job for you. Let’s decide which responsibilities I will fully own.”

When a joke hurts:

“I meant it playfully, but I understand that it hurt. I’ll stop making that joke.”

When a purchase affects shared finances:

“Let’s agree on an amount where either of us checks in before spending.”

When one person needs more processing time:

“I want to understand you. I need a break to organize my thoughts. Can we return to this at seven?”

When sensory needs differ:

“I enjoy crowded events, and I hear that they overwhelm you. Let’s plan how long we’ll stay and how we’ll leave.”

These examples show how consideration can become observable.

The benefits include more room for honesty, repair, and workable agreements. Neither person has to escalate simply to become relevant. Both receive repeated evidence that their needs belong in the relationship.

ADHD and Neurodivergent Couples: When Influence Gets Lost in Translation

ADHD couples therapy and neurodivergent couples counseling need to consider both willingness and the ability to carry out an agreement.

The National Institute of Mental Health describes adult ADHD symptoms involving attention, organization, and impulsivity, with potential effects on relationships and daily responsibilities.

Someone may sincerely agree that a change matters, then struggle to remember or consistently execute it.

Their partner still experiences the impact:

“We talked about this. Why am I still carrying it?”

Both experiences need attention. Understanding a difficulty should lead to a more workable plan, while the affected partner needs relief from repeatedly managing the problem.

When Communication Differences Look Like Resistance

Possible mismatches include:

• Interrupting: One person speaks quickly to avoid losing a thought; the other feels overridden.

• Processing time: One partner wants an immediate answer; the other needs time to identify their feelings.

• Sensory overload: A conversation happens in an environment where someone struggles to process what is being said.

• Directness: One partner values literal language; the other experiences it as criticism.

• Different signs of attention: Someone may listen more effectively while moving, looking away, or using a fidget.

These are possibilities to explore, not assumptions about everyone with ADHD or autism.

Autistic researcher Damian Milton’s double empathy problem describes how differences in experience and communication can produce reciprocal misunderstanding between autistic and non-autistic people.

That perspective matters in neurodivergent relationships. One partner’s preferred communication style should not automatically become the standard the other must meet.

Accommodation and Accountability Belong Together

“Just remember” may be an ineffective plan.

A more productive conversation might sound like:

“I understand that reminders from me feel critical. I also need this responsibility off my plate. What system can you own so I don’t have to track it?”

Possible supports include recurring alerts, visible checklists, written agreements, realistic deadlines, or a different division of responsibilities.

The goal is an arrangement that works without making one partner the permanent supervisor.

Likewise, “Look at me when I’m talking” might become:

“Can you tell me what you heard so I know we understood each other?”

The need for connection remains. The way you meet it becomes more accessible.

How ADHD and Neurodivergent Couples Therapy Can Help

At Love Is a Verb Counseling, I offer a neurodivergence-affirming, trauma-informed approach to couples therapy, integrating Gottman Method tools, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and attention to attachment and the emotional load.

For ADHD and neurodivergent couples, our work may include:

• Understanding the cycle beneath repeated arguments.

• Making requests clearer and agreements easier to remember.

• Planning around sensory needs and processing differences.

• Addressing unequal household and emotional responsibilities.

• Practicing repair without shame or a parent–child dynamic.

• Helping both partners communicate needs and maintain boundaries.

The approach is individualized. Gottman-informed tools can be adapted thoughtfully, while recognizing that research on general couples interventions does not establish that every exercise works for every neurodivergent pairing.

Both partners deserve consideration. Neither should have to erase their needs or perform someone else’s version of attentiveness to be taken seriously.

Can You Accept Too Much Influence? Understanding Coercive Control

Healthy influence requires freedom to disagree.

If one person repeatedly abandons their needs because they fear anger, humiliation, threats, or punishment, the concern is coercion and safety.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline describes abuse as a pattern of behaviors used to gain or maintain power and control. Emotional abuse can include intimidation, isolation, monitoring,

and manipulation.

Warning signs include:

• Being afraid to say no.

• Having friendships, spending, clothing, or movement controlled.

• Facing threats or intimidation when you disagree.

• Feeling pressured into sexual activity.

• Having your diagnosis or vulnerabilities used to discredit you.

• Being told that maintaining boundaries proves you do not care.

Therapy language can also be used coercively:

“If you really accepted my influence, you would do what I want.”

Your partner’s wishes do not override your consent.

Shared decisions deserve collaboration. Bodily autonomy and sexual consent remain yours.

When coercive control is present, encouraging the targeted partner to yield more can increase harm. Confidential individual support and safety planning take priority; standard joint communication exercises may be inappropriate.

Responsibility for abusive behavior belongs to the person using it.

Eight Ways to Practice Accepting Influence in Your Relationship

These practices adapt Gottman principles into everyday conversations. Use them when both people can participate freely and safely.

1. Make a Specific Request

Describe the situation, your feeling, and what would help.

“I feel overwhelmed handling bedtime alone. Can you take responsibility for bath and pajamas on Tuesdays and Thursdays?”

A clear request gives your partner something actionable to consider.

2. Reflect Before Responding

Before explaining your position, check your understanding:

“You need more predictability, and last-minute changes leave you feeling unimportant. Am I getting that?”

Let your partner clarify. Understanding their experience does not require agreeing to their proposed solution.

3. Find One Point You Can Acknowledge

Look for something you honestly recognize:

“You’re right that I committed our time before checking with you.”

Allow that acknowledgment to stand before moving into your own perspective. This follows the Gottman emphasis on finding genuine openings to accept influence.

4. Take a Break When You Are Flooded

When you are too overwhelmed to listen, request a pause and agree on a time to return.

Gottman guidance on self-soothing recommends at least about 20 minutes; some people need longer.

Use the break to settle through walking, resting, or another calming activity. Check in if the return time needs to change.

5. Explore What the Issue Means

Ask:

“What feels most important about this?”

“What are you worried would happen if we did it differently?”

This draws on the Gottman Dreams Within Conflict approach. A disagreement about spending may involve financial safety. A disagreement about holidays may involve belonging or family loyalty.

Understanding the meaning gives you more to work with.

6. Identify Essential Needs and Flexible Preferences

Individually consider what you need to protect and where you can adapt. Compare your answers when calm.

This adapts the Gottman Art of Compromise exercise.

For example, keeping a financial cushion may be essential. The destination or length of a vacation may be flexible.

7. Turn Consideration Into an Action

Complete this sentence:

“Because of what you shared, here is what I’m willing to change.”

Then clarify who owns the action, what support is needed, and when you will review it.

For ADHD couples, written agreements and external reminders may help translate a meaningful conversation into reliable follow-through.

8. Check Whose Needs Are Shaping the Relationship

Once a week, ask:

“Where did you feel considered this week?”

“Where did you feel left out?”

Choose one adjustment together. Focus on understanding the pattern rather than tallying who has conceded more.

Couples Therapy in Orange County and Online Across California

Perhaps you keep having the same argument because neither of you feels understood. Perhaps one person does most of the adapting. Or perhaps ADHD, sensory needs, and different communication styles have made collaboration exhausting.

Couples therapy offers space to understand those patterns and practice different responses.

I’m Danielle Roxborough, LMFT, founder of Love Is a Verb Counseling. My work focuses on trauma-informed couples therapy, attachment, relational repair, and neurodivergence-affirming care.

Whether you are looking for couples therapy in Orange County, ADHD couples therapy, neurodivergent couples counseling, or online couples therapy in California, we can explore what keeps your relationship stuck and what meaningful change could look like for both of you.

Contact me to schedule a free consultation and discuss whether my approach fits your relationship.

You deserve a relationship where both people can say:

“What matters to me matters here.”

Intent vs. Impact in Relationships: What Women and Men Can Misunderstand About Each Other

By Danielle Roxborough, LMFT | Love Is a Verb Counseling

You can know that your partner hurt you without knowing exactly why they did it.

That distinction matters.

Perhaps your partner forgot something important. Didn’t follow through on an agreement. Offered a solution when you wanted comfort.

You know what happened. You know how it felt. Then comes the explanation:

He knew what I needed. He understood how this would affect me. He chose not to care.

Sometimes a partner knowingly dismisses a need. Sometimes they forget, misunderstand, or fail to pay attention. These possibilities call for different responses, even when the hurt is real in each case.

The difficulty begins when an explanation becomes a certainty before there has been a conversation.

When we talk about what women can misunderstand about men, the question deserves more care than a list of gender stereotypes. One useful place to begin is with the assumption that your partner’s mind works like yours: that they notice what you notice, make the same connections, and attach the same meaning to the same moments.

They may not.

That does not make your needs unreasonable. It means understanding your partner requires asking about an internal experience you cannot directly observe.

“If he cared, he would”: When hurt becomes a story about intent

“If he wanted to, he would” can feel clarifying when you have spent a long time explaining what you need.

It can encourage you to stop overlooking behavior that hurts you. But as a universal explanation, it leaves little room for the differences between caring, understanding, remembering, and following through.

Consider a hypothetical example: Your partner agreed to arrange something important. They did not complete it, and you had to take over.

The observable fact is straightforward: an agreement was not kept.

The impact might be disappointment, loneliness, or the exhaustion of carrying another responsibility.

Then comes the interpretation:

He left it because he knew I would do it.

That interpretation may fit a larger pattern. It may also leave out information you do not yet have.

You can separate what happened from what you believe it means:

“We agreed you would handle this, and it wasn’t done. I felt unsupported. I’m interpreting it as you leaving the responsibility with me. What happened from your perspective?”

This leaves room for an answer without giving up accountability.

Curiosity about intent does not require uncertainty about your own hurt.

You can be clear that something needs to change while remaining open to understanding why it happened.

Does your partner actually think the way you do?

Imagine one partner is discussing what an incident means across months or years: the planning, reminders, previous disappointments, and fear of carrying that responsibility indefinitely.

The other is responding to the immediate event: what happened today, what they remember agreeing to, and how to fix this particular problem.

One is asking, Do you understand the pattern?

The other is answering, I understand what happened this afternoon.

They are addressing different questions.

It can be tempting to describe this as women thinking broadly and long term while men focus on the here and now. Research gives us a more specific picture. Some average differences are relevant to relationships, but they do not establish how every woman or man thinks—or why a particular partner acted as they did.

Recognizing emotion is different from understanding its meaning

A 2025 meta-analysis covering 1,011 studies and more than 837,000 participants found that girls and women, on average, were more accurate than boys and men at interpreting emotional cues. The difference was small, with substantial overlap between groups.[1]

That finding is relevant to the assumption, He must have noticed I was upset.

But recognizing an emotional expression is different from knowing what caused it, what someone needs, or what they want you to do.

A direct question gives both people more information:

“Did you notice I became quiet? What did you understand was happening for me?”

The other partner can also take initiative:

“You seem upset. Would you like me to listen, help with something, or give you some space?”

Nobody has to carry the entire responsibility for translating the relationship.

Thinking ahead is also work

Research on cognitive household labor offers useful context for the feeling that one partner is holding a wider view.

Cognitive labor includes anticipating needs, identifying options, making decisions, and monitoring whether things get done. In sociologist Allison Daminger’s 2019 qualitative study, women performed more of this work overall, particularly anticipating needs and monitoring outcomes. Decision-making was more equally shared.[2]

This finding describes a division of responsibility in the households studied. It does not establish that women are naturally long-term thinkers or that men cannot anticipate needs.

It does help us ask a better question:

“Are we both taking responsibility for thinking ahead, or is one of us responsible for noticing while the other waits for instructions?”

One partner may be discussing an unfinished task. The other may be discussing the ongoing work of making sure nothing gets missed.

Both need to understand which conversation they are having.

Who pursues change—and who withdraws?

Research on heterosexual couples has often documented a pattern in which women press for discussion or change while men withdraw.

However, a study comparing heterosexual, gay, and lesbian couples found that differences in how much change partners wanted predicted who pursued and who withdrew. The roles were connected to partners’ positions in the disagreement, rather than explained by gender alone.[3]

That makes this question useful:

“Who needs something to change, and what happens when they try to discuss it?”

Withdrawal alone does not establish whether someone is overwhelmed, avoiding responsibility, or experiencing something else. Pursuing a conversation does not, by itself, establish a motive either.

The pattern deserves attention. Its meaning needs to be explored.

Make room for three conversations

When a disagreement feels impossible to resolve, ask:

“Are we discussing this incident, the history behind it, or what we are afraid it means for our future?”

You may need all three conversations.

The partner focused on today needs to understand that resolving one incident may leave an accumulated burden untouched. The partner focused on the larger pattern needs room to describe that history without claiming access to the other person’s thoughts.

Your partner’s thinking deserves to be understood directly. So does yours.

When the mental load makes an assumption feel obvious

If you routinely anticipate appointments, school needs, household supplies, and changes to the family schedule, you might think:

I notice these things because I care. If my partner cared equally, they would notice them too.

That conclusion uses your own process as a measure of your partner’s intentions.

There is another question worth asking: Who has actually taken responsibility for noticing, planning, and completing the work?

A reminder system will not resolve an agreement that leaves one person responsible for managing everything. Assigning a malicious motive will not establish what prevented follow-through, either.

A more useful conversation examines the agreement:

• What did each person agree to own?

• Did ownership include anticipating and planning?

• What interfered with completion?

• What will the responsible partner do differently?

You do not need to prove that your partner deliberately burdened you to ask for a more equitable arrangement.

And if you missed a commitment, you can take responsibility without agreeing that you intended to hurt your partner.

Do partners owe each other anything?

“Your partner doesn’t owe you anything” needs careful unpacking.

Being in a relationship does not give either person ownership over the other’s body, thoughts, affection, time, or consent. Love does not make another person permanently available on demand.

A partner can decline a request. They can disagree. They can need solitude. They can have limits that disappoint you.

But autonomy exists alongside commitment.

When you freely make an agreement, your partner has a reasonable basis for relying on it. If that agreement no longer works, you can renegotiate it. Simply invoking independence does not address the consequences of breaking it.

Consider the difference between:

“You’re my partner, so you have to give me what I want.”

and:

“This is something I need in a relationship. Are you willing and able to build it with me?”

The second statement respects both people’s agency. It also allows for an answer you may not want.

You cannot compel someone to become the partner you need. You can communicate your needs, assess their response, and decide what you are willing to participate in.

Likewise, your partner’s freedom to say no does not obligate you to remain satisfied with the relationship as it is.

A request allows an answer. A commitment creates accountability. A boundary clarifies your choices.

This distinction makes room for care that is freely chosen, with agreements both people take seriously.

Intent vs. impact in relationships: Why explanations can feel dismissive

There is an equally important responsibility on the other side of this conversation.

When someone describes feeling hurt, their partner may respond by explaining:

That wasn’t what I meant.

I wasn’t trying to upset you.

You’re misunderstanding why I did it.

Those statements may be accurate. But when they arrive before acknowledgment, they can leave the hurt person’s experience unanswered.

One person is describing what happened to them. The other is explaining what happened inside them.

Both accounts matter. The explanation becomes a problem when it is used to close the conversation about the impact.

A more connected response might sound like:

“I hear that when I didn’t follow through, you felt alone with the responsibility again. I’m sorry I left you with that. I forgot rather than deciding it didn’t matter, and I need a better way to keep this commitment.”

This acknowledges the hurt, clarifies intent, and takes responsibility for change.

Acknowledging impact does not require accepting an inaccurate accusation:

“I understand that my silence felt rejecting. I was overwhelmed and needed time to think. I should have told you that and agreed on when we would return to the conversation.”

Similarly, describing impact does not establish intent:

“I felt unimportant” describes an experience.

“You wanted me to feel unimportant” makes a claim about someone else’s motive.

Impact deserves acknowledgment. Intent deserves inquiry. Repeated behavior deserves attention.

You can hear an explanation and still need something to change.

A neurodivergent perspective: Caring and follow-through are different questions

In ADHD and neurodivergent relationships, it is especially useful to examine the process between a commitment and its completion.

ADHD can involve difficulties with attention, organization, time management, planning, and remembering daily tasks.[4] Someone can sincerely intend to follow through and struggle with the skills required to do so.

That does not make the resulting burden imaginary. It changes what needs to be addressed.

If remembering is the difficulty, repeating “You would remember if you cared” does not provide a memory support. If one partner has been carrying the consequences, saying “I have ADHD” does not create a sustainable division of responsibility.

Possible supports to explore include written agreements, reminders owned by the person responsible, clearer deadlines, and smaller steps.

The relevant question is whether the support helps this particular person follow through.

Neurodivergent partners can also discuss their communication preferences: direct wording, written follow-up, fewer competing demands, or time to formulate a response. These are questions to ask each person rather than preferences to assume from a diagnosis.

Neurodivergent women belong in this conversation, too. A woman may be managing her own executive functioning challenges while also carrying extensive household or relationship responsibilities. Her ability to compensate does not mean that compensation is effortless or sustainable.

Neither gender nor a diagnosis tells the whole story.

Understanding a difficulty should help a couple build a more workable agreement—one that considers both people.

How to repair after conflict: Gottman Method tools

Understanding the disagreement matters. Couples also need ways to interrupt escalation and return to the conversation.

The Gottman Method includes softened start-ups, repair attempts, physiological self-soothing, and structured conversations after a fight.[5][6]

A softened start-up describes a concern without assigning character or motive:

“I’m overwhelmed by how much planning I’m carrying. I want us to review who owns what.”

A repair attempt might sound like:

“That came out harshly. Can I start again?”

Or:

“I want to understand you, and I’m getting defensive.”

If either person becomes overwhelmed, a break can create space to settle. Communicating the pause and agreeing on when to return helps make it part of the repair.

For processing conflict afterward, Gottman’s Aftermath of a Fight approach addresses feelings, each partner’s perspective, triggers, responsibility, and a constructive plan.[5]

Five R’s to help you remember the repair

The following five R’s are a practical organizing reminder for this article, rather than an official Gottman protocol.

1. Regulate

Notice when you need to settle before continuing. Communicate the pause and agree on a return time.

“I want to continue this conversation. I need a break so I can listen and respond more thoughtfully.”

2. Reflect

Summarize what you heard about your partner’s experience. Check whether you understood before explaining your own.

“You felt left alone with something we agreed to share. Am I understanding?”

3. Recognize

Name the impact and distinguish assumptions from facts.

“I assumed you were deliberately leaving it to me. I want to understand what happened.”

4. Take responsibility

Identify your specific contribution and offer an apology where appropriate.

“I agreed to handle this and didn’t follow through. I’m sorry you had to take over.”

Responsibility does not have to be equal to be specific.

5. Respond differently

Agree on a concrete next step: who will do what, by when, and how you will revisit it.

“I’ll manage the planning and reminders for this task. Let’s check in next week about whether the arrangement is working.”

An apology can acknowledge what happened. A practical agreement gives you something to do differently.

You do not have to resolve every disagreement to make a meaningful repair. You do need room for both people’s experiences and a willingness to address your own contribution.

You can stop guessing what your partner meant and start asking what each of you will do next.

Couples therapy and individual therapy in Orange County and California

If your conversations keep returning to “You don’t care” and “That’s not what I meant,” therapy offers a place to examine the pattern together.

I’m Danielle Roxborough, LMFT, founder of Love Is a Verb Counseling. I work with couples and individuals on relationship distress, emotional connection, accountability, and repair, including the experiences of ADHD and neurodivergent partners.

Couples therapy can help you clarify agreements, understand each other’s perspectives, address the mental load, and practice responding differently.

Individual therapy can help you explore your needs, boundaries, and choices within a relationship—even if your partner is not participating.

Reach out through Love Is a Verb Counseling to schedule a consultation for couples therapy or individual therapy in Orange County, or online throughout California.

You do not need identical minds to build understanding. You need room to ask, listen, and take each other seriously.

Research and further reading

1. Gender and Accuracy in Decoding Affect Cues: A Meta-Analysis

2. The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor — Allison Daminger

3. Exploring the Basis for Gender Differences in the Demand-Withdraw Pattern

4. ADHD in Adults: 4 Things to Know — National Institute of Mental Health

5. Managing Conflict in Relationships: Three Essential Blueprints — The Gottman Institute

6. Practices for Making Effective Repairs — The Gottman Institute

All dialogue and scenarios in this article are hypothetical illustrations, not descriptions of clients or therapy sessions.

You Can See Everything: When Love, Control, and Victimhood Share the Same Story

By Danielle Roxborough, LMFT | Love Is a Verb Counseling

An opinion essay about Elizabeth Holmes, Billy Evans, narcissistic relationship dynamics, neurodivergence, and the uncomfortable work of holding more than one truth.

Spoilers throughout. This is my interpretation of the people and interactions presented in Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s documentary, not a clinical assessment of its subjects. The film does not establish that Holmes is autistic, that Evans has a personality disorder, or that their private relationship can be fully understood from what appears onscreen. Specific exchanges discussed from my viewing are paraphrased from recollection rather than presented as a verified transcript.

I wanted to protect Elizabeth Holmes. Then something shifted.

There is something deeply uncomfortable about watching yourself begin to feel protective of Elizabeth Holmes.

You know the public story. You know there was a company, a promise, and a devastating distance between what was promised and what the technology could actually do. You know this is someone convicted of fraud. And yet, while watching You Can See Everything, another story begins to pull at you: a woman whose partner seems increasingly comfortable speaking for her, defining her, and managing how the world encounters her.

As a relational therapist, a woman, and a moviegoer with an avid interest in the psychology of the human issues shaping our culture, I found that pull difficult to ignore.

The concern is understandable. The film’s reported depiction includes Billy Evans posting through Holmes’s X account, discussing his power of attorney, and involvement in making her AI likeness available beyond its original family context. These are concrete reasons to ask questions about voice and consent. They do not, by themselves, tell us every agreement between these two people. [1]

But watching, I felt the imbalance. He seemed so certain that he could represent her. She seemed so available to being represented.

And I found myself wondering: Is this another relationship in which she is being overtaken? Is she misunderstood? Is she unusually trusting? Is the way she communicates making her easier to misread, or easier for someone else to speak over?

Then something shifted.

For me, it happened during the phone conversation involving Amanda Seyfried. In my recollection, Amanda asks whether Holmes knew she would be there, and Holmes responds with uncertainty about whether she knew.

That uncertainty stopped me.

It was a small moment. It was not proof of deception. People hesitate, misunderstand questions, and have imperfect memories. But after so many responses that seemed to leave responsibility suspended somewhere just outside the conversation, I heard that hesitation differently.

I began to wonder whether the relationship I was seeing could be both troubling for Holmes and useful to her.

What if someone can be spoken over and also benefit from the person doing the speaking?

That question, more than any diagnosis, is what stayed with me.

The truth can be visible while its meaning remains unclear

The title You Can See Everything feels almost like a challenge.

We can see an interaction. We can hear a response. We can watch one person answer for another. And still, we cannot directly see the private intention underneath it.

To me, the film exposes the distance between access and understanding. Intimacy with a subject is not the same as certainty about them. A documentary can show us a great deal while still selecting, arranging, and interpreting what we encounter.

That matters because the most emotionally compelling explanation can begin to feel like the most factual one.

At first, the explanation that pulled me in was relational: Billy’s overbearing presence made Elizabeth’s apparent vulnerability more persuasive. His certainty seemed to make her uncertainty understandable. His willingness to speak for her seemed to explain why she might struggle to speak for herself.

Then the same arrangement began to look different. Perhaps his visibility also offered her distance. Perhaps his loudness allowed her to remain comparatively quiet. Perhaps an arrangement that raised concerns about autonomy could also preserve a story in which responsibility always belonged somewhere else.

Those are interpretive possibilities, not established motives. But they are worth examining because they move us away from the urge to decide, immediately and permanently, which person is the villain and which person is the victim.

Feeling compassion for someone does not settle the question of their accountability.

Narcissistic traits: why behavior matters more than the label

Watching Evans, I understood why a viewer might reach for the word narcissistic. In my reading, his presentation often feels entitled, self-important, and unusually comfortable occupying the position of spokesperson for another person.

Still, narcissistic traits and narcissistic personality disorder are different things. A diagnosis requires assessment of an enduring pattern across contexts; confidence, arrogance, or a disturbing scene cannot establish one. Clinical descriptions of narcissism include both grandiosity and vulnerability, sometimes within the same person. Vulnerability here can involve shame, sensitivity to rejection, and an unstable sense of self-worth; it does not mean someone is simply shy or wounded. [2]

The term malignant narcissism is also used in clinical and popular discussions, but it is not a separate DSM-5-TR diagnosis. It should not become a dramatic synonym for a partner we dislike, and the film cannot establish it in Evans.

There is legitimate research behind taking narcissistic traits seriously. A meta-analysis of 437 independent studies found an association between narcissism and aggression, including violence, with stronger associations under provocation. An association across research samples does not establish that a particular person is abusive or predict what every person with those traits will do. [3]

For readers trying to understand their own relationships, I would start with behavior:

• Can you disagree without punishment, humiliation, or retaliation?

• Does your partner ask what you think, or tell you what you think?

• Can you withdraw permission for them to speak on your behalf?

• Does accountability lead to repair, or to an extended explanation of why everyone has misunderstood them?

• Does being loved leave you with more room to be yourself?

These questions are useful even when no diagnosis is available. You do not need a diagnostic verdict to notice that your voice has become difficult to hear inside your own relationship.

What Ramani Durvasula’s work helps illuminate

Clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula’s work offers a useful framework for thinking about the effects of narcissistic relationships. In It’s Not You, she discusses patterns of invalidation, manipulation, self-doubt, and the work of recovering boundaries and a sense of self. Her emphasis on moving away from automatic self-blame can be especially meaningful for people who have spent years trying to prevent someone else’s mistreatment by becoming more accommodating. [4]

I am drawing here on her clinical education, not claiming that she has assessed this couple or published research proving what their relationship means.

Applied as a lens, her work raises a question the film kept bringing me back to: Who gets to define reality in this relationship?

Does each person remain an authority on their own experience? Can one person say, That is not what I meant, and have that correction matter? Or does one partner’s certainty become the version everyone else is expected to accept?

In my reading of the film, Billy’s posture of knowing Elizabeth so completely can look protective. It can also feel invasive. The distinction depends on whether her independent perspective remains welcome, especially when it contradicts his.

There is another complication. A framework that helps us recognize someone’s mistreatment should not automatically persuade us that everything else they say is accurate. A person can be invalidated in one relationship and avoid responsibility in another context. Concern about how

Holmes is represented cannot erase the people affected by Theranos.

That is where I want the conversation to remain: attentive to power, without turning one psychological framework into an explanation for everything.

Love bombing, the rescuer role, and being understood so completely you disappear

The idea that a partner knows you better than anyone can be intoxicating. For someone who has felt chronically misunderstood, it can sound like relief: Finally, I do not have to explain myself.

But there is a difference between feeling understood and surrendering the right to explain yourself differently tomorrow.

Love bombing is a term used for excessive affection or attention that functions to influence or control someone. The concern is not simply intensity, gifts, or a dramatic declaration. It is what happens around boundaries, independence, and the freedom to slow things down. The National Domestic Violence Hotline emphasizes boundary violations when discussing this pattern. [5]

I would not claim that the film establishes the history needed to conclude that Evans love-bombed Holmes. What it invites me to examine is the romantic packaging of authority: devotion that seems to carry permission to represent someone else’s mind.

In my recollection of the later prison conversation, Holmes describes their projects as expressions of love and conveys a sense of knowing each other’s thoughts despite their separation. I hear that as a statement about their perceived closeness, not evidence of literal thought communication or a psychiatric symptom.

Yet it raises an important relationship question. If knowing each other becomes a reason to stop asking each other, how much space remains for consent?

In my reading, Billy can occupy the position of caretaker, hero, and uniquely qualified interpreter.

Elizabeth can occupy the position of the person he alone truly understands. That arrangement may feel comforting. It can also make outside concern easier to dismiss: anyone questioning the arrangement can be understood as yet another person who does not understand their love.

This is the point at which I become interested in the relationship’s structure rather than its romantic language. Who has access? Who makes decisions? Who can correct the public story? Whose uncertainty gets treated as permission?

A claim of deep understanding still needs room for the other person to say no.

The empath and the echoist: useful language, with limits

The popular story of the narcissist and the empath is easy to recognize: one person takes up space, while the other senses, accommodates, explains, and absorbs.

It can describe something readers have lived. But empath is not a psychiatric diagnosis, and empathy alone does not establish a person’s innocence, boundaries, or accuracy about themselves.

Psychologist Craig Malkin uses echoism to describe a fear of seeming narcissistic or taking up too much space, including suppressing needs and treating oneself as a burden. It is a descriptive concept, not a DSM diagnosis, and it is not interchangeable with empathy. [6]

Some moments in Holmes’s presentation reminded me of that self-effacing position: the soft response, the apparent deference, the impression of a deeply hurt person navigating other people’s versions of her. But those impressions cannot tell us whether she is an echoist, whether she feels afraid, or whether that presentation reflects her usual behavior.

The word fawning is also often used to describe appeasing someone in an effort to feel safer. I understand why it might come to mind here. Still, a quiet voice or accommodating response does not establish a trauma response. To describe someone as fawning with certainty would require information we do not have.

What interests me is how quickly we attach moral meaning to presentation. Softness can invite protection. Confidence can invite suspicion. Neither tells us the whole person.

If you recognize the accommodating role in your own life, the useful question is not whether you qualify as an empath. It is whether your care for someone else has made your own needs feel illegitimate.

Echoism and mirroring can look similar while serving different purposes

Echoism is not simply repeating someone’s words. It concerns the difficulty of allowing your own needs and significance to occupy space. Mirroring, meanwhile, can refer to matching another person’s expressions, mannerisms, language, or stated preferences. The two can overlap in a relationship, but they are not the same process.

Mirroring itself is ordinary human behavior. In experimental research, Chartrand and Bargh found that people could imitate others’ movements without intending to, and that being mimicked could increase liking and make an interaction feel smoother. That finding concerns everyday social mimicry, not a test for narcissism or deception. [17]

In discussions of narcissistic relationships, people also use mirroring to describe an apparent match of interests, values, or desires that creates a powerful feeling of being understood. When that match is knowingly fabricated to gain trust or influence, the concern is deception. The label alone cannot establish that intention, and shared interests or similar language do not establish manipulation.

There can also be accommodation in the other direction: a partner increasingly repeats the more dominant person’s account, softens disagreements, or leaves their own perspective unspoken. In a relationship marked by self-suppression, agreement may become easier than discovering what one actually thinks. But an observer still needs to ask what that agreement means rather than assuming it is fear, echoism, or willing collaboration.

This is what caught my attention in the film. In my recollection, Elizabeth echoes Billy’s language about their love and mutual understanding while he also occupies the role of speaking for her.

They can appear different in manner while conveying a similar message. His presentation is more expansive; hers seems more unassuming. Yet the narrative can remain aligned.

Is that shared conviction? Familiar language between partners? Deference? A protective accommodation? A public account that serves them both? The film leaves me considering these possibilities without being able to establish which explains their private relationship.

Saying the same thing does not tell us whether two people have equal freedom to say something different.

Autism Spectrum in women: making room for difference without diagnosing Elizabeth Holmes

I also watched the film with a neurodivergent lens. I found myself thinking about the distance between an outward-facing presentation and a potentially complicated internal experience: many levels of thought, careful interpretation, and an effort to communicate something that does not quite land with the listener.

That is a question the film raised for me. It is not evidence that Holmes is autistic. Nothing in the sources cited here establishes an autism diagnosis, and atypical communication, a public persona, or a confusing answer cannot establish one.

The broader educational issue is important, though. Research on late-diagnosed autistic women describes experiences of being missed or misunderstood, including efforts to camouflage social differences. Some women may appear socially capable while relying on imitation, rehearsal, or considerable conscious effort. Interests may also be overlooked when their subject matter appears socially typical. These patterns vary; there is no single female version of autism, and masking occurs across genders. [7]

Research by Laura Hull and colleagues describes social camouflaging as strategies used to navigate social situations, with participants reporting both benefits and costs, including exhaustion and threats to their sense of identity. [8]

For a reader, this distinction matters: an outward-facing mask can be an effort to belong or avoid negative treatment. It should not automatically be interpreted as dishonesty.

At the same time, autistic masking is not synonymous with deliberate image management. We cannot use the concept to explain every public persona, or infer it from the fact that someone presents differently in different settings.

The same care applies to the idea of holding many truths. A layered internal life is not exclusive to neurodivergence, and holding contradictory beliefs is not a diagnostic marker of autism. It is possible to wonder about a person’s cognitive experience while remaining clear that we do not know it.

As a neurodivergent woman, I recognize the work behind a seemingly effortless presentation

This part of the discussion is personal for me. As a neurodivergent woman, I sometimes watched friends who seemed more socially at ease and imitated them to try to fit in with peers. When I did not know what to say, I looked to people who appeared to know how to move through the situation.

From the outside, that might have looked like ease. Internally, there could be observation, comparison, and careful decisions about what to say and how to come across. I could be aware of my own process while also trying to manage how much of that process other people could see.

Descriptions of autistic masking include closely observing others and learning or copying social behavior. A confident outward presentation can coexist with considerable effort underneath it. [18] My own experience does not stand in for every neurodivergent person’s experience, and being neurodivergent does not mean someone is necessarily autistic.

For me, careful observation and adaptation can be strengths. They can help me learn, communicate, and find a way into an unfamiliar social space. Those abilities can also become exhausting when fitting in feels compulsory. I want room to acknowledge both the skill and its cost.

That is part of why I hesitate to equate an unassuming presentation with a lack of self-awareness. Someone may have a richly detailed internal experience while revealing very little of the effort behind their response. They may be uncertain about what to say and highly deliberate about how they say it.

This does not mean they are deceptive. Learning a social script, rehearsing language, or choosing an expression carefully can be a way of communicating sincerely. Authenticity does not require spontaneity.

But self-awareness can include recognizing that a familiar presentation affects other people. If I notice that being agreeable or unassuming helps others relax around me, I can reflect on that effect without condemning the adaptation itself. Am I creating room for connection? Protecting my privacy? Avoiding disagreement? Making it harder to acknowledge something uncomfortable? The answer depends on the moment and the person.

I am interested in that capacity for reflection across neurotypes. A protective habit can become familiar, useful, and sometimes limiting. Recognizing its benefits gives us more choice about how we use it; it does not make the habit inherently manipulative.

Applied to Holmes, this remains a question about her presentation, not an explanation based on presumed autism. Her apparent softness and the alignment of her language with Billy’s make me wonder how much agency, adaptation, and public self-presentation we are seeing at once. We cannot resolve that by assigning her a neurotype.

A person can be socially adaptive and sincere. They can be self-aware and still have blind spots. Neurodivergence does not decide their character for us.

Neurodivergence deserves understanding. It does not provide an automatic explanation for harmful conduct, and harmful conduct should not be used to stigmatize neurodivergent people.

Why some autistic women face heightened vulnerability to exploitation

There is a real concern underneath the online claim that neurodivergent women are easy targets for narcissistic men. But that wording makes the woman sound inherently deficient and implies a specific pairing the research cited here does not establish.

Research does document serious experiences of victimization among autistic women. A small qualitative study of late-diagnosed women described difficulties recognizing exploitation alongside experiences of social pressure and vulnerability. Its findings are important, but its small sample cannot represent every autistic woman. [7]

A separate French online survey of 225 women in the autistic community found high reported rates of sexual violence. Recruitment and self-selection limit generalization; this was not a population estimate, and it did not establish that perpetrators were narcissistic. [9]

These findings support taking safety and accessible relationship education seriously. They do not justify claiming that autistic women inevitably attract narcissists, that autistic women lack judgment, or that vulnerability is their fault.

For some women, experiences such as repeated social correction, pressure to accommodate, difficulty identifying another person’s intentions, or inadequate support may become relevant to how exploitation develops. Which factors apply has to be explored individually. Responsibility remains with the person who exploits or abuses.

This is relevant whether a controlling partner appears grandiose and dominant or wounded and easily slighted. A vulnerable presentation does not make controlling behavior harmless. Equally, insecurity by itself is not narcissism.

In neurodivergent-affirming therapy, I want there to be room for direct language, processing time, explicit consent, and boundaries that do not require someone to decode an implication before they are allowed to have a preference.

You should not have to become an expert at reading someone else’s hidden meaning to have your own meaning respected.

When protection becomes a public voice, an AI likeness, and a power of attorney

The film’s reported depiction of digital representation sharpens all of these questions. Reporting describes Evans’s access to Holmes’s X account through power of attorney, his posting on her behalf, and discussion of an AI likeness initially intended for family use becoming available more broadly. [1]

A power of attorney is not, by itself, evidence of abuse. Delegating communication during incarceration can also have practical reasons. The documentary and reporting do not give us a complete legal record of the scope, limits, or ongoing consent involved.

My concern as a viewer is about the person’s continued authorship of their life.

In my recollection, Holmes expresses a desire not to have other people speak for her again. That sentiment sits uneasily beside the degree of representation the film presents. The tension is the point: how do we interpret someone wanting their voice back while also affirming the person speaking for them?

One possibility is unwanted control. Another is welcome delegation. Another is a complicated combination in which the person wants support, dislikes some consequences, and still benefits from the arrangement.

We cannot settle that from the outside. But in our own relationships, we can ask concrete questions: Is permission specific? Can it be revised? Is disagreement safe? Does the person being represented have a meaningful way to correct what is said?

Love may explain why someone is trusted. It does not answer every question about what that trust permits.

The later conversation changed how I understood the arrangement

In my recollection of the reenacted prison conversation, Holmes appears to affirm aspects of Billy’s representation while also describing his actions as belonging to his own separate process. She conveys closeness and separation in the same conversation: they understand one another deeply, yet his way of handling things is his own.

To me, that is the most psychologically provocative part of the film.

Earlier, his dominance had encouraged me to imagine her as displaced. Later, I began to consider whether his dominance could also function as a buffer. He could remain the visible, outspoken representative while she retained some distance from whatever he said or did.

That does not prove an agreement to manipulate anyone. It does not establish that she knowingly authorized every action. But it changes the question from Why does she tolerate this? to What might this arrangement make possible for each of them?

For him, my reading is that it offers the position of protector, interpreter, and indispensable partner. For her, it may offer advocacy, continued public presence, and distance from the most confrontational parts of that advocacy.

I also wondered about shame. Could the separation between his public actions and her private self-understanding make it easier to avoid confronting consequences? Could the relationship preserve a self-story organized around being misunderstood?

Those are hypotheses about the film’s meaning. I cannot establish that Holmes has psychologically split off shame, dissociated from responsibility, or deliberately arranged plausible deniability. Shame itself is not visible simply because an explanation would make psychological sense.

Still, the arrangement can have a distancing effect without our being able to prove its intent. When one person acts and another describes those actions as separate from themselves, accountability can become difficult to locate.

The fact that a dynamic benefits someone does not prove they freely chose every part of it. The fact that it harms them does not mean it benefits them in no way.

Amanda’s question interrupted the story I was telling myself

This is why that phone exchange with Amanda mattered so much to me.

In the scene as I remember it, uncertainty about whether Holmes knew Amanda would be present echoes the vagueness I had already been hearing around responsibility. Later, Amanda returns to the exchange with Nathan. For me, the moment provides alternative context for the same communication style I had initially interpreted more sympathetically.

I had been considering confusion, vulnerability, and misunderstanding. Suddenly, I was also considering impression management.

Perhaps Elizabeth and Billy were more aligned in their presentation than I had assumed. Perhaps the contrast between his bluntness and her uncertainty was doing something useful for their public story. Perhaps I had supplied a degree of innocence because I felt uncomfortable watching someone else dominate the room.

Again, a hesitant response cannot prove any of that. The responsible conclusion is that my interpretation changed, not that the line exposed a secret plan.

But that is precisely why the moment matters. The film seemed to catch me in the act of confusing a protective feeling with an established understanding.

I did not need to stop seeing Holmes as human. I needed to stop allowing my concern for her to answer questions it could not answer.

The whistleblower’s perspective belongs beside the intimate portrait

That shift also makes room for people whose experience of Holmes extends beyond the film. In his October 19, 2026, opinion essay for STAT, Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz disputes her presentation and challenges the impression that unusual literalness explains her responses. He argues that she continues to mislead. That is his stated assessment, informed by his experience with Theranos, rather than proof of every private intention. [19]

His perspective matters because an intimate portrait can become emotionally persuasive enough to eclipse the people outside its frame. My interpretation is that the film invites a question about public image and damage control: could the apparently misunderstood person also be influencing the filmmaker and audience through that presentation?

I cannot establish that Holmes deliberately used Fielder, or that she and Billy coordinated the contrast between their personas. I can recognize that seeming disarming may affect what an audience questions, excuses, or overlooks. That effect warrants attention whether it is intentional or not.

(as an aside, this tactic also reminds me of good cop - bad cop, one seems the better option juxtaposed with the other).

This is separate from the discussion of neurodivergent masking. Shultz’s criticism does not establish a diagnosis, and social adaptation does not establish deception. The relevant distinction is between how someone communicates and whether the claims they make withstand scrutiny.

As a neurodivergent woman and a clinician, I want us to preserve both forms of respect: respect for communication differences, and respect for the people affected when someone’s account obscures harm. We can examine a particular person’s choices without making their presumed neurotype the explanation for them.

Victimhood, accountability, and the temptation to explain harm away

My impression across much of the film is that Holmes’s emphasis on being misunderstood leaves little space for a sustained encounter with the harm associated with Theranos. That is my reading of her presentation, rather than a claim that I know her private remorse.

The factual legal distinction matters: Holmes was convicted of an investor-related fraud conspiracy and three investor-related wire fraud counts. She was acquitted on the patient-related counts submitted to the jury. Discussion of the broader consequences of Theranos should not turn into a false statement that she was convicted of defrauding patients. [10]

Concern for employees, people who relied on the company’s testing, and investors should remain present even when the film draws our attention toward her intimate life.

In my reading, Billy sometimes seems to take up her grievance as if the public injury belongs to both of them. That can position him as the defender of a woman the world refuses to understand. It can also reinforce a shared account in which criticism becomes further evidence of persecution.

I cannot know how consciously either person participates in that account. But I find its possible function compelling: if being misunderstood becomes the central explanation, what happens to the parts of the story that require ownership rather than clarification?

In therapy, I want room for a person to say both: Something painful happened to me and I caused something painful for someone else.

Those statements do not cancel each other. Neither should be used to silence the other.

Dialectics: compassion and accountability can occupy the same room

This is where the film connects most strongly, for me, with dialectical behavior therapy.

DBT, developed by Marsha Linehan, brings acceptance and change into the same treatment framework. Validation does not eliminate the need for behavioral change; change does not require dismissing the person’s experience. [11]

Applied to this film, a dialectical perspective allows us to consider that someone might experience relational harm and still be responsible for harming others. A partner’s devotion might be sincere and some of their behavior controlling. A viewer might feel compassion and still maintain a boundary around accountability.

This does not mean every claim is equally true. It does not mean responsibility is always shared equally. It means we resist discarding one supported reality simply because another makes us uncomfortable.

The distinction is especially important in couples therapy. Seeing a relationship as a system does not mean making the person experiencing abuse responsible for stopping it. Likewise, noticing that an arrangement has benefits for someone does not establish free consent or equal power.

Dialectics asks us to tolerate complexity while staying anchored in evidence. It is not an invitation to dissolve facts into shades of gray.

Holmes’s conviction is not made less real by our empathy. Concerns about autonomy are not made irrelevant by her conviction.

Survivor guilt, moral injury, and why complexity is not a moral equivalence

My thoughts also went to very different contexts in which suffering and self-judgment can coexist: Holocaust survivors carrying guilt about survival, and veterans struggling with experiences that conflict with their values.

I am definitely not comparing those experiences with Holmes’s circumstances, or equating survival under atrocity with corporate fraud. The connection is narrower: human beings can carry experiences that resist a simple, morally tidy story about themselves.

The VA describes moral injury in relation to experiences that violate deeply held moral beliefs, including perpetrating, witnessing, or failing to prevent acts, or experiencing betrayal. Guilt and shame can be central. But guilt does not itself establish wrongdoing, and surviving does not make someone a perpetrator. [12]

That distinction matters to this essay’s broader question. We need to be able to discuss suffering without presuming innocence about every other action, and discuss responsibility without treating a person as incapable of suffering.

A humanistic approach makes room for the whole person. It does not require us to declare every part of their story harmless.

Are our emotions helping us see, or choosing the story for us?

The final question I was left with concerned reporting, documentaries, dramatizations, and the audience itself.

Can anyone be objective enough that feelings play no role in how they represent another person? And if feelings inevitably enter the process, how do we keep them from becoming the evidence?

Research on emotion and decision-making shows that emotions can shape judgment in both useful and harmful ways. An important distinction is between emotions connected to the decision itself and emotions arising elsewhere that still influence the decision. Feeling something strongly does not guarantee that the feeling accurately identifies its cause or the best response. [13]

Emotions involve bodily changes, appraisals, attention, and action tendencies. Fear can draw attention toward possible danger. Anger can direct attention toward a perceived violation. Compassion can make another person’s suffering harder to ignore. Those responses deserve attention, but the interpretation attached to them still needs examination.

Watching this film, my protective feeling was real. The explanation I initially attached to it remained provisional.

Later, my suspicion was real too. That did not make suspicion proof of a coordinated script.

This is a practical reason therapy can matter. We can learn to notice emotion without automatically handing it authorship of our conclusions. DBT’s concept of Wise Mind offers a way of integrating emotional experience with reasoned attention to reality. [14]

For me, the useful questions are: What am I feeling? What did I actually observe? What am I inferring? What other explanation remains possible? What action fits my values and the evidence available?

The goal is deliberate use of emotion. My compassion can tell me to pay attention to possible vulnerability. It cannot certify innocence. My anger can tell me something matters. It cannot, by itself, establish another person’s motive.

Our feelings are part of how we encounter a story. They do not have to become its final editor.

From the clinician’s chair: couples therapy asks more of us than proving our partner wrong

There is another reason this film stayed with me: it brought me back to the clinician’s chair, sitting across from two people who are each convinced of their own narrative.

Each person can describe what the other does. Each can explain why their own response makes sense. What can be much harder to see is how their responses may also help keep a painful pattern in place, sometimes outside their conscious awareness.

In relationships where both people can safely examine their participation, a dynamic can hurt and still serve a protective function. By serve, I mean that it may help someone avoid something that feels even more threatening: rejection, uncertainty, vulnerability, shame, or the possibility that they have hurt someone they love. That is a possibility to explore together, not a hidden motive a therapist gets to announce as fact.

Emotionally Focused Therapy offers one framework for identifying and changing recurring interaction patterns while attending to the emotional and attachment experiences underneath them. [16] From my clinical perspective, this is part of what makes couples therapy both meaningful and demanding: we look at the behavior, and we become curious about what the person is trying to protect through it.

Consider a hypothetical couple. One partner takes over whenever they feel uncertain. The other steps back to avoid conflict. Taking over offers one person temporary relief from uncertainty; stepping back offers the other temporary relief from confrontation. Both dislike the result, but their immediate relief can help the sequence repeat. Over time, one says, I have to do everything, while the other says, There is no room for me to do anything.

Neither may recognize the sequence while they are inside it. That does not mean both carry equal responsibility, that either wants the pain, or that every relationship follows this pattern. It means there may be more to understand than the explanation either partner arrives with.

Watching Holmes and Evans, I found myself thinking about that gap between the story a person tells and the function an arrangement might serve. The film cannot tell us their unconscious motivations. But it invites the same question I want room to explore in therapy: What does this pattern protect, and what does that protection cost?

The therapist is not there to confirm that your partner is the problem

Some people arrive at couples therapy hoping for a witness who will finally understand how difficult their partner is. The hope is understandable: Once someone else sees it, they will tell my partner to change.

Being heard matters. Harm needs to be named. But couples therapy can ask for something beyond confirmation of the account you already hold.

It can ask you to consider your own behavior while you are still hurt. To notice when explaining your intention becomes a way of avoiding your impact. To recognize when being right has become more important than being reachable. To ask whether a protective response that once helped you is now preventing the relationship you say you want.

This is what I mean by taking responsibility for your side of the street. You own your actions and their consequences. You do not take responsibility for your partner’s abuse, and a therapist should not recast coercive control as a cycle both people caused. Safety and power still matter. [15]

Where mutual reflection is appropriate, though, the work can be confronting. You may discover that you want your partner to change while also feeling unsettled when they step out of the role you know. You may want more closeness and still protect yourself from the vulnerability closeness requires. Those tensions deserve exploration rather than a verdict about who is the better person.

Owning shame without letting shame become the whole self

To own the part, to own the behavior, and to face the shame attached to it requires honesty with yourself and with the person sitting beside you.

That does not mean accepting every accusation. It means being able to stay with an accurate account of your behavior long enough to respond to it: I did that. I can understand that it hurt you. I want to understand what happens in me before I do it again.

The dialectical work returns here. I can understand why I protected myself that way, and I can take responsibility for the harm that protection caused. I can have behaved painfully without reducing my entire identity to that behavior. Acceptance and change have to remain in the room together. [11]

The film helped me reflect on why this is so challenging. If being misunderstood is central to how I explain myself, acknowledging harm may threaten that explanation. If being the indispensable protector is central to my identity, making room for someone else’s autonomy may feel unsettling. These are questions the film raises for me, not conclusions about either subject’s internal life.

Some people are not ready or sufficiently supported to do this depth of work at a particular moment. That readiness can change. It may require a slower pace, individual support, or greater safety before a person can reflect without becoming overwhelmed or retreating into defense.

Difficulty doing the work is not proof of a fixed incapacity for growth.

But meaningful change does require participation. Insight has to become practice: pausing, speaking honestly, tolerating a correction, repairing harm, and choosing a different response when the familiar one feels easier.

For me, quality couples therapy asks each person to refocus on the self in service of the relationship: Who am I becoming in these moments? What am I protecting? What am I contributing? How do I want to act deliberately, even when I feel exposed?

It is one thing to want a different relationship. It is another to practice becoming a deliberate version of yourself within it.

If this relationship dynamic feels familiar

You do not need to see yourself in Elizabeth Holmes’s life to recognize a smaller, more private version of these questions.

Perhaps someone insists they know what you mean even after you correct them. Perhaps a partner’s care comes with authority over your choices. Perhaps you feel loved and diminished in the same relationship. Or perhaps being misunderstood has become such a painful part of your identity that it is difficult to hear when someone is asking you to take responsibility.

Individual therapy can provide space to sort through those experiences: your boundaries, self-trust, patterns of accommodation, responses to shame, and the difference between understanding someone’s behavior and accepting its impact on you.

For neurodivergent women, that space should also allow for communication differences and sensory or processing needs without treating them as defects or excuses. You deserve to be understood as an individual, including the parts of your experience a familiar relationship label might miss.

Couples therapy may help when both partners can participate safely and are willing to examine their own behavior. Where there is coercive control, fear, or retaliation, ordinary joint counseling may be unsafe; confidential individual support and an appropriate safety assessment take priority. The National Domestic Violence Hotline explains why it does not recommend couples counseling with an abusive partner. [15]

You do not have to prove that someone is a narcissist to seek help. You can begin with what happens, how it affects you, and what you want to change.

Couples and individual therapy in Orange County and online across California

At Love Is a Verb Counseling, I work with individuals and couples seeking a clearer understanding of their relationships, including neurodivergent and ADHD relationship dynamics, insecure attachment, codependency, and patterns that keep repeating.

My approach is humanistic, relational, and trauma-informed. I want there to be room for your experience and for honest examination of what happens between you and the people you love.

If this essay brings up questions about control, identity, boundaries, or accountability in your own relationship, we can begin there. Whether you are considering individual therapy or couples counseling, the first conversation can help clarify what kind of support fits your situation.

Request a free consultation with Danielle Roxborough at Love Is a Verb Counseling. In-person therapy is available in Orange County, with online therapy for clients located in California.

What stayed with me after You Can See Everything was how quickly I wanted one explanation to organize the whole person. First protection. Then suspicion. Both felt persuasive.

The work is staying curious without surrendering judgment. Making room for pain without making responsibility disappear. Recognizing that someone can need compassion and still owe it to others.

You deserve a relationship in which being understood does not cost you the right to speak for yourself.

Editorial note: Exact dialogue could not be independently checked against an authorized transcript. This draft therefore paraphrases the author’s recalled exchanges, including the phone call, the love-monument language, the wish not to be spoken for, and the later prison conversation. The discussion of Holmes’s internal experience, Evans’s traits, and the relationship’s possible functions is explicitly opinion. No source establishes Holmes’s autism, Evans’s personality-disorder status, a private coordinated script, or a causal pairing between autistic women and narcissistic men. The draft retains the author’s thematic argument without presenting those propositions as verified facts.

Sources and further reading

Film reporting supports descriptions of what the documentary presents, not independent proof of private motives. Research and clinical resources below support the educational discussion, not diagnoses of the film’s subjects.

1. Ford, R. (2026, October 16). You Can Know Everything About You Can See Everything (Spoilers Ahead!). Vanity Fair. Reporting on X access, power of attorney, AI likeness, and the reenacted prison visit. Some additional scene discussion in this essay comes from the author’s viewing recollection.

2. American Psychiatric Association. What Is Narcissistic Personality Disorder?. Clinical education on grandiosity, vulnerability, and diagnosis.

3. Kjærvik, S. L., & Bushman, B. J. (2021). The link between narcissism and aggression: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 147(5), 477–503.

4. Durvasula, R. (2024). It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. The Open Field. Clinical psychoeducation; cited through the publisher’s description, not as a peer-reviewed study of this film or these individuals.

5. National Domestic Violence Hotline. Signs of Love Bombing. Relationship safety education.

6. Malkin, C. (2019, May 7). Listening to Echoism. Psychology Today. The clinician’s explanation of echoism; not a diagnostic category or evidence about Holmes.

7. Bargiela, S., Steward, R., & Mandy, W. (2016). The experiences of late-diagnosed women with autism spectrum conditions: An investigation of the female autism phenotype. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46, 3281–3294. Small qualitative study; findings should not be generalized to all women.

8. Hull, L., et al. (2017). “Putting on My Best Normal”: Social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47, 2519–2534.

9. Cazalis, F., Reyes, E., Leduc, S., & Gourion, D. (2022). Evidence that nine autistic women out of ten have been victims of sexual violence. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 16, 852203. Self-selected French online sample; the title’s statistic should not be treated as a population estimate.

10. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California. (2022, January 3). Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Found Guilty of Investor Fraud. Official account distinguishing convictions from acquittals.

11. Behavioral Tech Institute. What Is DBT?. Education on acceptance, validation, and behavioral change.

12. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD. Moral Injury. Clinical overview of potentially morally injurious experiences and related distress.

13. Lerner, J. S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Emotion and decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 799–823.

14. Wolbert, R. (2020, March 3). Wisdom in DBT—Finding Wise Mind (Part 2). Behavioral Tech Institute. Practitioner education.

15. National Domestic Violence Hotline. Should I Go to Couples Therapy With My Abusive Partner?. Safety guidance on joint counseling in abusive relationships.

16. International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy. What Is EFT?. Model overview describing work with emotion, attachment, and recurring interaction patterns. The clinician’s reflections and hypothetical example in this essay illustrate possible functions to explore, not universal explanations or findings about the film’s subjects.

17. Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception–behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(6), 893–910. Experimental research on ordinary nonconscious mimicry; not evidence for a diagnostic category of “narcissistic mirroring.”

18. Autism Central. Masking and identity. Educational guidance on observation, learned social behavior, masking, and identity. The author’s first-person account is her own experience, not a generalization to all neurodivergent people.

19. Shultz, T. (2026, October 19). I was a Theranos whistleblower. In ‘You Can See Everything,’ Elizabeth Holmes is still lying. STAT. First-person opinion and criticism of Holmes’s presentation; cited as Shultz’s assessment rather than an independent finding about motives or diagnosis.