The Day the Narcissist Left You on the Mountain!Dr. Ramani

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]I read an article in the New York Times months ago about a guy who left I don't I don't know if it was a girlfriend or fiance or something high on a mountain in the Alps in dangerous conditions without adequate gear.

[00:00:15]He was a very experienced climber. She apparently was skilled but not at his level.

[00:00:22]The conditions were worsening and that was clear even when they were at lower altitude.

[00:00:26]And good judgment would indicate that he the more expert climber and that together they would have turned around long before. Like I said, his level of training would indicate that he would have known to do that.

[00:00:40]There were some I mean almost haunting images of them cuz they were wearing those like lights you put on your head making their way up the mountain.

[00:00:48]And he he had to go to court and face charges.

[00:00:51]He said that she became exhausted and she couldn't go any longer.

[00:00:56]The allegations against him state that she was left unprotected on the mountain pretty high altitude while he alleges that he went to seek help.

[00:01:07]She then died.

[00:01:10]He was ultimately This didn't happen in the United States. He was ultimately found guilty of gross neg- negligent manslaughter. He got a suspended sentence and a small fine.

[00:01:21]Okay? What was very interesting in this particular case allegedly an ex-girlfriend of his I think even shared as part of the proceedings that he did the same thing to her.

[00:01:33]So this phenomenon of one partner taking another partner up into the mountains and only one comes back has been termed Alpine divorce.

[00:01:48]Folks on social media are now talking about how this has happened to them in various ways. Maybe not as treacherous as high in the Alps under these conditions, but in various ways.

[00:01:59]Sadly, as I'm going sorting through all this, arguments have also been made about actually this relates to personal responsibility.

[00:02:06]Whoever you are, if you go up into the mountains, you better know what you're doing, and if it goes wrong, it's on you, not the other people in your hiking party or your hiking companion or partner, whatever.

[00:02:20]Which kind of to me carries an undercurrent of it's kind of on the woman who died.

[00:02:26]But let's take this apart a little bit, okay? Now, I don't know anything about the relationship. That was the disposition of the case. That's just what I've read in the news.

[00:02:34]But the New York Times recently ran a new article that had the that was titled If he leaves you on a mountain, end the relationship.

[00:02:44]It's like, okay. Well, now, in this particular story, obviously this man's partner didn't have a chance.

[00:02:50]But the article went on to list multiple stories where strained relationships culminated in a hike gone wrong.

[00:03:00]Some died, some didn't.

[00:03:03]One case they talk about in this article was about a woman who was badly hurt after falling off a bike, like one of those bikes that go fast, e-bike or something like that. Her partner had ridden ahead after they had an argument.

[00:03:18]She fell, she was bloodied up, people were helping her. And when he came back and saw her hurt, like I said, and saw someone was helping her, he screamed at her for ruining the vacation.

[00:03:29]In one case in Hawaii, a man apparently was allegedly angry at his partner, I think she was having an affair or something like that. He tried to throw her off a cliff in Hawaii.

[00:03:41]He was found guilty of attempted manslaughter, and it ended up that she lived, so she was able to share what happened. It becomes a plausible scenario. Hiking or climbing or riding in dangerous places is dangerous.

[00:03:55]And it's possible that people can slip.

[00:03:58]And unless the person who is trying to be thrown away, we never know.

[00:04:03]Obviously, if they die, we don't know.

[00:04:04]But even if they live, the conditions of a hike or a climb or a ride make it difficult to prove. Now, the article made me think a lot about narcissism and the danger of doing high-risk activities with a narcissistic partner.

[00:04:20]It also made me realize that there's a sort of well, obviously, if a person leaves you on a mountain, you should break up with them.

[00:04:29]But frankly, even under those circumstances, being left on a mountain, trauma bond's going to trauma bond.

[00:04:38]And a person may think, well, they did eventually go get help for me when it wasn't easy, or maybe it's my fault for not being in better shape. Or I'm the one who agreed to go.

[00:04:53]So, even in what feels like the black and white circumstance of being left behind on a mountain, and the idea that if you're left on a mountain, you need to be done, is not always so. Which means that everybody else who is not having this big big bad black and white experience of being left on a mountain, but instead is having more of the usual smaller scale death by a thousand cuts, millions of subtle things going wrong in a narcissistic relationship, it almost feels like nobody has a chance at having really, really solid clarity on whether to leave one of these relationships.

[00:05:37]And the other undertone of the article saying that if he leaves you on a mountain, then end the relationship, is that okay? Like, well, if you're left on a mountain, sure, then the world is going to get behind you and support your breakup cuz I mean, you were left on a mountain. But otherwise, you're left with the world wondering, well, did you give it enough of a chance? Did you really try to communicate?

[00:06:07]Did you compromise?

[00:06:09]Did you have date nights?

[00:06:12]Was it just your fault for being avoidant? So, maybe you actually have to be left on a mountain so the world will give you buy-in on wanting to end it.

[00:06:20]So, let's go back though to this being left on the mountain issue cuz I have to tell you it really haunted me.

[00:06:28]Listen, we'll never know the truth of the situation wherever the hell it was.

[00:06:32]I think it was Austria or something like that where the woman died. We'll just never know. She's dead.

[00:06:37]Or even in a lot of these other stories, we're just never going to know the full truth. But when you think about it, all the stuff, this idea of personal responsibility of anyone who decides to go on a mountain, and maybe it is partly the responsibility of the person who died for not sort of assessing the conditions, it actually all those sorts of judgments fly in the face of everything we know about narcissism and narcissistic relationships and psychological safety and attachment and trauma bonding. So, let's start with basics.

[00:07:11]Narcissistic people, I'm going to tell you now, if one group is most likely to leave people on mountains, it's them.

[00:07:18]And narcissistic people, especially when it comes to extreme physical pursuits, in general, forget the physical pursuits, narcissistic people are competitive, selfish, impatient, impulsive, entitled, grandiose. So, if they have a hiking or climbing or biking or I don't know, scuba diving partner, whatever their high-risk sport is, the narcissistic person is going to be much more centered on having the experience they want, rather than having any regard for their partner's discomfort, safety, or risk tolerance.

[00:07:56]The narcissistic person, they're going to push.

[00:07:59]And if the partner can't keep up, there's not going to be much empathy for that. In fact, the narcissistic person may very well shame or criticize or blame the partner. Why aren't you in better shape? Why can't you keep up? I won't let you slow me down. We're not going to get to the summit or the top or whatever the hell they're trying to get to in time because of you. You're ruining this day. You're ruining my hike. You're ruining my climb.

[00:08:27]Narcissistic people chronically test limits in relationships. So, in the example of physical limits, they're not only going to push their own physical limits. That's their choice. That's that grandiosity. They're going to expect that of others with little consideration for the safety or just even the sense of comfort that the other person is having.

[00:08:49]Well, then there's the other person in one of these relationships.

[00:08:53]This whole rhetoric, and it was interesting. You could hear it in some of the coverage of that case in Austria and and even in some of these other cases, is that, like I said, when you take on a high-risk activity, it's risky. So, be aware.

[00:09:09]But that positioning doesn't account for all of the other dynamics underlying in relationships that are psychologically unsafe and potentially physically unsafe. Again, I have no idea what the hell these people's relationships were like, but it doesn't sound good.

[00:09:27]But in a narcissistic relationship, the partner for the partner, the likelihood of self-blame, self-doubt, I'm not enough.

[00:09:37]That could lead a person to push themselves further than they probably should into dangerous situations to please the partner, to appease the partner, to remain attached to the partner, to impress the partner, to maintain the relationship, and perhaps even to avoid the partner's anger and rage. So, it's not actually a calculated risk.

[00:09:58]The person in the narcissistic relationship may actually be very very aware of the risk of the setting, the weather, the terrain, the time of day.

[00:10:08]But all of that may actually get subsumed or buried under the far more powerful, psychologically powerful sense of I need to stay attached. I need to stay safe in this relationship. I want to stay close to this person. In trying to stay connected, a person may take risks from a very different place, a less intellectually reasoned place. And on a mountain, something like this will be more obvious. In real life, it's not often as clear as the danger of freezing to death.

[00:10:41]Then when you throw in there that in many of these cases, the narcissistic person, because they have to be the best, they'll often have more expertise in the sport, more strength, more more time spent at it, that their judgment should be more sound.

[00:10:58]And this will be the case in most of these cases, like I said, because a narcissistic person probably wouldn't be thrilled to hang in a situation where they feel that their partner is better at the activity than they are. You can see how all of this this together becomes a setup for a very potentially dangerous situation.

[00:11:17]And this isn't unique to just intimate relationships. Narcissistic parents can do this, too. Push their kids in risky sports, hiking, skiing, climbing, endurance sports.

[00:11:31]The parent pushing harder, [snorts] perhaps when the child doesn't feel safe or strong enough, but the child may keep going because A, they trust the parent cuz they have to trust the parent, but they also may be doing it to please the parent and stay attached to the parent.

[00:11:49]This kind of narcissistic parental pressure has ruined sports for many children well into adulthood.

[00:11:56]And let's say then the child can't keep up or doesn't keep up or endure or perform at the sport or the activity the way the narcissistic parent wants, you better believe that child's going to get discarded.

[00:12:10]And sadly, the culture takes this stance of "Look at that parent. They're building toughness in their child.

[00:12:18]That's how you create winners." Rather than this child is so desperate to connect to this parent and that this is the only way to do what the parent wants, how the parent wants, even when it feels uncomfortable to the child. The child is learning that to be close, I have to endure uncomfortable things, unsafe things, and not be heard.

[00:12:46]That's closer to the truth. Unlike those inspirational Olympian reels we watch every 4 years, what there's more likely is a lot of more lot more kids being pushed and shamed.

[00:13:01]Again, the frustration I have with the New York Times article, though I get their stick, that I mean the title of it drew me in to read it, is that if they leave you on a mountain and the relationship is the starkness, the extremity of that example. Because most of us in these relationships aren't left 10,000 ft up on a freezing cold dangerous mountain in a narcissistic relationship. Instead, they didn't leave you on a mountain.

[00:13:30]They left you in a bar.

[00:13:32]They walked half a block ahead of you.

[00:13:35]They were already in the car while you were still thanking the hosts of a party you went to.

[00:13:40]They're on the phone instead of listening when you're sharing something important.

[00:13:46]They walk out of the room when they don't like what you are saying.

[00:13:52]That may not be being left on a mountain, but it's the same idea.

[00:13:58]Listen, it may even be a less treacherous hike or walk. Like just you're just out enjoying the day with a trying to with a narcissistic person where you're doing your best, walking as quickly as you can.

[00:14:12]And when you finally do catch cuz I promise you they will walk ahead of you on a hike, and they've stopped and they've had their water and they've had their snack and they've looked at the view, and you can finally catch up, and you need a break and they're like, "Well, I had my break." And they pop up and they walk on. And so they head on.

[00:14:29]And later on, they will say things like, "We take hikes together." And you're like, "Uh yeah, no, but we really aren't together. We just both happen to be hiking at around the same time in the same place."

[00:14:43]And the indoctrination of these relationship becomes if you don't want to be left, you have to do and say what they want, or you're going to be pushed into this sense of unsafety and can't even make choices from a place of safety. Many people have core wounds around abandonment and rejection from childhood, and as a result may feel compelled to try harder or take uncomfortable risks under these circumstances.

[00:15:09]You know, one of the questions I probably get most about narcissistic relationships are people are always asking me about red flags.

[00:15:18]This actually is a big one. Being pushed to do something you're not comfortable doing physically.

[00:15:26]Sadly, there are so many ways to window dress up this manipulation so that when it happens to you, you're being pushed to do something you don't physically feel comfortable doing that you're more likely to blame yourself or fall for the mockery of or shaming of the narcissist or even of others who've said, "Come on, take a chance." Then to really see it as the unsafe bullying behavior it is. And you might say to yourself things like, "Aha, I'm the one who's out of shape. I need to be more adventurous. I'm weak. I need to toughen up. No wonder they don't think I'm attractive."

[00:16:00]That's not to say that we should never go out of our comfort zone. Trying new things, stretching ourselves a little, it helps us grow. And in a healthy relationship, a partner may want to meet you halfway, may hear you when you say you don't feel safe, but help you find a way to try the activity in a way that feels safe to you or gently says, "No worries. When you're ready, we can try it."

[00:16:27]It may mean that you're out with your partner, you don't jump into the lake because you don't feel like a confident swimmer, but you enjoy the fact that they're going to take the swim and you sit in the boat with a life jacket.

[00:16:39]You know your limits. I can't tell you in the years I've been doing this how many stories I have heard of people who have felt that they actually put themselves in a relatively risky, tricky, or downright treacherous, or unsafe comfortable or under conditions they felt comfortable in, or having a panic attack related to heights, or skiing down a slope far beyond their capacities, or riding on one of those bikes down a trail that terrified them, but they did it to please, impress, or attach to a narcissistic partner.

[00:17:17]and also reported that long after those relationships were done they not only lost all interest in those activities and really a harbored a sense of self-doubt and even a characterizing themselves of like well, I'm not very adventurous.

[00:17:32]To me this concept of if he leaves you on a mountain and the relationship is actually a metaphor for something bigger.

[00:17:40]When your sense of safety is pushed by someone that you were trying to stay close to this is no longer a safe relationship.

[00:17:51]And since most narcissistic relationships escalate and get worse over time the tests and the tactics get worse over time. So in that way the relationship gets riskier over time.

[00:18:06]When examples are dramatic now we're more interested in hearing about them.

[00:18:11]But a trauma bonded person being pushed on a mountain they may still not be able to see what this relationship's about.

[00:18:19]That is how powerful and frankly dangerous that these dynamics are. And the world sees the person in the relationship who went up the mountain and died or got hurt. They see them as the problem and will often have more empathy for the narcissistic person who got you into this mess in the first place.

[00:18:42]Narcissism and risky activities and sports let me tell you they are a bad combination in a relationship and can be very dangerous for people who may not have the same abilities in the sport or trying to keep up or even trying to learn it for the first time.

[00:19:00]It is actually crucial that you listen to your body and give yourself permission to turn back when it doesn't feel good whether on a mountain or not. Interestingly cuz I'm kind of like a mountaineering kind of a nut. Skilled mountaineers Skilled mountaineers are not impulsive.

[00:19:18]They have rules. They have turn back times. So, even if they're close to the top, close to a summit, dangers such as thunderstorms or turns in the weather mean that you honor that and you turn around even if you're within spitting distance.

[00:19:33]So, let's take a page out of the mountaineers' books. Figure out what those turn back rules are for yourself.