DARVO

DARVO stands for "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender": a reaction some people show when they're held accountable for something they did.

The longer explanation

Psychologist Jennifer Freyd introduced the idea in 1997. On her page she describes the person Denying the behaviour, Attacking the individual confronting them, and Reversing the roles so they take the victim position and the confronter becomes the alleged offender. A 2017 study by Harsey, Zurbriggen and Freyd found DARVO was commonly used by people who were confronted, and that more exposure to it went with more self-blame in the person confronting. The research focus is accountability, especially sexual offences, not dating slang.

Example

You say it hurt when they cancelled. They say it never happened, that you're attacking them, and that you're the one who makes them feel unsafe.

What it is not

Being defensive, getting upset when criticised, or disagreeing with an accusation isn't DARVO. People who really are falsely accused will deny and push back too.

Online use vs research use

Online, "DARVO" is often used for any defensive argument. Freyd's use is specific to responses to accountability for wrongdoing, and she describes it as a pattern of response, not a diagnosis.

Avoidant or narcissist?

Defensiveness and shutting down when criticised is common with avoidance: it protects the person from feeling shame. DARVO is a pattern of turning accountability into an attack so the person confronting ends up apologising, which is about control. Avoidance is protection; abuse is control, and both can happen together. We can't tell from one argument, and we don't label the person. The full comparison is in avoidant or narcissist. A 2025 meta-analysis (Mohay et al.) reported that vulnerable ("covert") narcissism links most strongly with preoccupied (anxious) attachment, moderately with fearful, and only weakly with dismissive; grandiose narcissism wasn't linked to attachment style. It's correlational, and it describes groups, not any one ex.

Naming it back. I'm not apologising for noticing.