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Join Megan Hunter and Bill Eddy as they discuss the five high conflict personality types and how they behave in romantic relationships in this episode, part one in our series on Dating Radar.
There are people you shouldn’t marry, have children with, or have a financial entanglement – people with high conflict personalities. They blame, gaslight, lie, deny, make false allegations, and some will seek to destroy you or your reputation.
These are relationship destroyers – the people who can ruin your life and make you wish you’d never had children with them.
So why do we get involved with them? Why does the brain say ‘yes’ to people who will make your life a living hell? It’s because we don’t have good dating radar and we don’t think we are so stupid that we’d fall into such a horrible relationship.
Megan and Bill discuss the five high conflict personality types and how they behave in romantic relationships, including:
Caveat: Not everyone with these personality disorders has a high conflict personality, but some do. How can you tell? They are the blamers, and they’re no fun in relationships. Listen in as Megan and Bill start this four-part series on Dating Radar.
BOOKS
DATING RADAR TEST & SURVEY RESULTS
ARTICLES
Submit a Question for Bill and Megan
All of our books can be found in our online store or anywhere books are sold, including as e-books.
You can also find these show notes at our site as well.
Note: We are not diagnosing anyone in our discussions, merely discussing patterns of behavior.
Hosted by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. and Megan Hunter, MBA, It’s All Your Fault! High Conflict People explores the five types of people who can ruin your life—people with high conflict personalities and how they weave themselves into our lives in romance, at work, next door, at school, places of worship, and just about everywhere, causing chaos, exhaustion, and dread for everyone else.
They are the most difficult of difficult people — some would say they’re toxic. Without them, tv shows, movies, and the news would be boring, but who wants to live that way in your own life!
Have you ever wanted to know what drives them to act this way?
In the It’s All Your Fault podcast, we’ll take you behind the scenes to understand what’s happening in the brain and illuminates why we pick HCPs as life partners, why we hire them, and how we can handle interactions and relationships with them. We break down everything you ever wanted to know about people with the 5 high conflict personality types: narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial/sociopath, and paranoid.
And we’ll give you tips on how to spot them and how to deal with them.
Megan Hunter:
Welcome to It's All Your Fault on True Story FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those with people with high conflict personalities. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host Bill Eddy.
Bill Eddy:
Hi everybody.
Megan Hunter:
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute based in San Diego, California. Now, in today's episode, we are going to talk about love and romance, which is usually a happy topic, but it's really not when we're talking about high conflict people. So instead, we're going to talk about dating radar, who you probably shouldn't marry or get entangled with romantically in any way.
But first, a few quick reminders. We'd really love to hear from you about your high conflict situations. You know, for example, have you dealt with someone with a high conflict personality, or been a target of blame? Or have you experienced violence or abuse from an HCP? Or maybe you simply dread seeing that person again, but you might have to tonight at home or tomorrow at work.
So send us your questions and we just might discuss them on the show. Submit them by clicking the submit a question button at our website, highconflictinstitute.com/podcast, emailing us at podcast@highconflictinstitute.com, or dropping us a note on any of our socials.
You can find all the show notes and links at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast as well. Make sure you subscribe, rate and review and tell all your friends about us. Telling just one person that you like the show and where they can find it is the best way you can help us out and help more people learn about high conflict people. We appreciate that so very much. And now let's talk about dating radar.
True or false? Love is blind. Hmm. What do you think about that? Love is blind is okay unless it makes you blind to people with high conflict personalities. Now, Bill and I have been in the field of divorce and child custody for a combined, I think 75 years or so. Maybe my math isn't right. I'm not so good at math. But a long time. So we've seen it all or heard it all over all these years. And it's a lot of damage, a lot of destruction that are endured by those who are romantically involved with a high conflict partner. You know, being in this industry of family law is challenging because you're involved in the cleanup portion of the relationship. And in most cases, the parties can divorce and co-parent somewhat amicably, but in high conflict cases, they don't. And these are the cases that take the most time, energy, money, and other resources, and especially court resources because they're back in court a lot.
So Bill and I talked and we decided that after training thousands of divorce and family law professionals for a lot of years, that we wanted to be a part of the prevention crew instead of the cleanup crew. So we decided to write this book called Dating Radar based on our expertise with high conflict personalities. And then we also wanted to get data from people who'd been in these types of relationships. So we put out a survey and we have received over 650 responses at this point. And by the way, you can still take the survey and/or read the results. And you'll find all that in the show notes. And the data is in the book.
Now, our goal with the book was to help young people and anyone getting into that big romantic, hopefully lifelong relationship, to know what to look for and who to avoid. Unfortunately, what we found is it isn't those young people that are reading it. Instead, it's read by people who've already been through a high conflict divorce or some kind of high conflict relationship. So they're the ones that are getting a lot of aha moments about what they went through. But hopefully the book is helpful, and hopefully what you'll hear us talk about today is helpful as well.
So we will walk through some of the survey results today. And then in the following episodes, we'll do a little bit more of the survey. And the last episode in this four part series is dedicated to questions and answers. So send us your questions about a high conflict romance.
Now, it may not seem kind to talk about people who should be avoided, and to give a roadmap for avoiding relationships with them. But with HCPs, it's absolutely necessary because they can be extremely destructive and harmful both physically and emotionally in relationships. And not just to their romantic partner, but potentially to children that are involved as well.
So we're going to talk about what a high conflict personality is, and then we're going to break down the five types of high conflict romantic partners before we get into the survey.
So Bill, let's first talk about what is a high conflict person, especially for our listeners who may not know.
Bill Eddy:
What we've identified as is four main features of high conflict personalities. The first one of course is they're preoccupied with blaming others. And so you may get to know them if you're dating, you may hear them talking about other people and how awful other people are and how awful other people treat them, and that they have kind of a pattern of life of people being awful to them. And it isn't because necessarily the other person's awful, but they see it that way and they blame other people like that. So blame is first factor.
A lot of all or nothing thinking. It's all somebody else's fault. Or if they have a problem in a relationship it's like you need to leave.
Unmanaged emotions. Not always, but a lot of the time you'll see that, that they're disproportionate to what the situation is.
And extreme behavior. We think of things like domestic violence, like hiding money, keeping secrets. One case I was involved with, the husband was eager to get married. And after the wife agreed to marry him and they got married, that's when she found out that he was $30,000 behind in child support from his prior marriage. And so extremes of behavior, there's a wide range of that; spreading rumors on the internet, et cetera.
So that's high conflict personalities, but then there's five specific types. So when you're ready, Megan, I'll get into those.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. Let's get right into that. So let's start with the narcissistic personality type.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. Some people have heard of that by now.
Megan Hunter:
I think so. It's trending.
Bill Eddy:
Yes. So the thing about narcissistic personalities is on the one hand, most people are aware, they're self-centered, they're self-absorbed, they think they're superior. But the more dark side of that is they have to put somebody down. They want somebody that they tell the world is inferior to them. So in terms of dating, they may charm you at the beginning, say wonderful things, just bomb you with love, love-bombing, all of that. And once they have you, once you've committed to them, then you start seeing, uh oh, they're out in public, you're out in public, and suddenly he's saying what an idiot you are in front of his friends and other people. And they're kind of awkwardly laughing. And things like that.
So a narcissist as a romantic partner often has that turn where you start seeing this dark side of humiliation, inferiority. And also you may find that suddenly they're not available. They're away for the weekend or something like that. And now they're off with somebody else. And they might even be using your credit card to buy flowers for somebody else who they're charming right now. And I know cases I've had in the counseling setting where someone was involved with a narcissist who had three relationships going at the same time. And he was complaining that sometimes they would get angry at him.
Megan Hunter:
Surprise, surprise.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of the surface there with the narcissistic personality. So who do you want to talk about next?
Megan Hunter:
Let's talk about the borderline high conflict personality.
Bill Eddy:
Okay. And by the way, these are related to personality disorders. But don't try to diagnose people. Don't tell them you think you have these characteristics. And they might not have an actual personality disorder, just some traits.
So borderline personalities, the most common traits is wide mood swings from very friendly to very depressed, sad, and then suddenly angry out of proportion. So the mood swings and especially the disproportionate anger. But when you're dating, they can be some of the friendliest people, very charming, very attractive. They might be the life of the party. And by the way, this is men and women. And the narcissists are men and women. So don't identify this just as one gender. You'll run into this with both genders.
So they may be really exciting to be with, very affectionate, just everything's wonderful. It's almost too good to be true. Well, it may be too good to be true because the dark side of this is that anger, if they're high conflict people, they need a target of blame. And often their dating partner becomes their big target of blame. And so they'll blame you, maybe they'll hit you. And we see the pattern of a lot of men who are assaultive with domestic violence in relationships, have this borderline pattern. And so they get upset, then there's an explosion of rage, and then they're apologetic and remorseful.
So this is a pattern that may start fairly early or may stay under wraps for say, six or eight months. And then you start seeing the dark side of this come out. So that's the borderline.
Megan Hunter:
And it's kind of fascinating. In one way it can be kind of challenging sometimes to know exactly what kind of behavior patterns you're working with or observing. But one way to kind of tell between the narcissistic and borderline types is that someone with borderline will typically, like you just said, apologize. They might rage and get really upset because of uncontrollable emotions and emotion dysregulation, and then they feel badly later, and you might get that apology in one way or another. Whereas someone with a narcissistic personality, high conflict personality, the only reason they'll apologize is to make themselves look good. They don't truly feel badly, do they?
Bill Eddy:
It seems like they don't. Their emotional connectedness is really at a very low level, because they're so preoccupied with how they look and how everyone rates them. So it's hard to have the more realistic empathy and intimacy with narcissists. Whereas that's another good example with people with borderline personalities, you may be having some real intimacy and some closeness and vulnerability. It's just that the explosions of anger kind of interrupt that from time to time.
And we should say at this point, there's a whole range of how severe this is, and that there are people with narcissistic personalities and borderline personalities who aren't high conflict people. They don't have targets of blame. And it's sad because they make their own lives difficult, but they don't tend to take it out on someone else. Whereas the high conflict personalities have targets of blame. That's the biggest feature. So we're not talking about everybody with personality problems, just the high conflict people.
Megan Hunter:
And there's definitely a difference. And in the book we refer to them like the spiciness of Thai food. If you're at a Thai restaurant and they always ask, "Do you want mild, medium, hot, or Thai hot?" It's kind of the same with the high conflict personality. Some are, I guess maybe not mild, but mild as far as an HCP goes, yes. But then there are some more on that extreme end, and those are the people who are really dangerous to us. And that's why we wrote this book is to help people know what they're dealing with, how to identify this early on, what are those red flags, and how to safely exit or even avoid getting involved with them in the first place.
Let's talk next about the hysteric personality.
Bill Eddy:
And this one is also very exciting, charming, intense, but a lot of intense, superficial emotions, just going from emotion to emotion. They think that relationships are deeper than they are. And they're superficial themselves in many ways. And I think of one example we give in the book where I think a woman met a man on the plane and the woman had this histrionic personality. She's very seductive and the man really fell for her. I don't know, once they got off the plane, how soon they found a hotel somewhere, and just fell madly in love. And it seemed like both of them were totally into it for what, about six months? And then suddenly she leaves a note, "Well, goodbye." It's just...
Megan Hunter:
Moving on.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. And they weren't having obvious conflicts and stuff, but the emotions just moved her away just like they moved her in. And so that can be very shocking, disappointing, and sad. And again, this is both genders. Some research says that there's as many histrionic men today as there are histrionic women today. And that may make sense because men are being more dramatic than ever before and attention-seeking. And that's the characteristics with histrionic, is attention-seeking, telling dramatic stories, just kind of bubbling along, and can be very entertaining, but not really what you're looking for in a close relationship.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. I mean, with any of these, it has to be all about them. And that's really pretty challenging to be in a relationship with someone where you don't get your needs met. And even in the lightest cases of a high conflict partnership, it's challenging to just be the one that gives in all the time or has to walk on eggshells all the time. But in those more extreme cases, you really have no attention because everything has to be about them. So that's why we wrote the book.
All right, now let's talk about the paranoid personality.
Bill Eddy:
The paranoid personality doesn't really trust people, but falls in love also, and likes to get involved. But then they become suspicious. And pretty soon, "Who did you have lunch with at work?" "Who's that man, I saw him in the workplace. He's really handsome. Are you having lunch with him?"
And so they really suspect betrayal, infidelity, and that they can't trust you. They may stalk some, they may stalk somebody to see what are you really up to. And they may tell other people you really can't be trusted. And it may be really in their head. And that's the thing with all these personalities. There's a conflict going on inside of them that you may not really know about, but they're projecting it onto you. So for paranoid personality, they're projecting onto you that you can't be trusted.
They also can bear a grudge. They also fear conspiracies. It's like, "You and your mother must be conspiring against me. I hear you whispering in the kitchen." Or something like that.
Megan Hunter:
"She looked at me, I saw it in her eyes."
Bill Eddy:
That's right.
Megan Hunter:
And then the anti-social personality.
Bill Eddy:
Last but not least.
Megan Hunter:
Last, but definitely not least.
Bill Eddy:
And this may be the most charming personality in the world in dating, in financial affairs, in everything. But in dating, this is the person that will just totally make up their own character. They may say things, "I used to own this company. But I got bored with it. So I closed it down and did this other thing." And you're thinking, well, maybe they weren't bored. Maybe they weren't good at leading a company. And then you do a little background research. You find out that company never existed. It's a total fabrication.
This is also the personality... So this personality will lie a lot, will break the law sometimes, or certainly violate social norms and expectations. Can be very aggressive, which can seem like excitement and love, but it may really be a hustle too, that they want to get to you as quick as possible and get whatever it is they want, whether it's sex, whether it's your credit card, whether it's your reputation, whatever they want to get and be part of. And then they may just move on.
And they're known for being quite promiscuous. So they get a lot of people pregnant. And they don't necessarily do a lot of custody battles, because they're just going to go have a new relationship and have more kids.
So we'll get into in the other episodes about being cautious and taking your time getting to know people, but this is some of the warning signs to look out for as these kinds of characteristics. They're too much of something, so anti-social. Or too charming and too fast. Paranoid can be quite charming, but too suspicious. Histrionic can be also very exciting and charming, but they're not really sticking to you. You're part of the drama. They have a hard time away from drama. People with borderline personality, loving, affectionate, all that, but then you get the anger on the other side, which is sometimes violent. And narcissistic is that dark side that has to humiliate you in public and really doesn't care and maybe on to their next romance before they let you know this one's over.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. What about overlap? Can you have more than one? So we're talking about maybe that full plate. What are all these different behaviors? Is it borderline? Is it narcissistic? So can you have both or can you have more than two?
Bill Eddy:
Absolutely. And so for example, borderline and narcissistic personalities, in terms personality disorder, they seem to overlap, according to one study, about 40%. So you may be with somebody that has wide mood swings and they see themselves as superior and demanding of respect and don't return that. So you may have someone that's both and don't be surprised.
I should mention, I've helped people, of course, get divorced. As Megan said, we've done that for a lot of our work over these years in family law. And I remember helping one man divorce a woman who had at least four of these five. I don't think she had paranoid, but she was antisocial, lied a lot, manipulated, borderline mood swings, anger and rage, histrionic. And she was very histrionic in court, and that was appealing to the judges because she'd be very dramatic. And I caught her lying at one point. And the judge says, "Looks like Mr. Eddy is right here." And the woman bursts into tears. And he's like, "Oh, okay, let's just go to the next subject." So you can get the whole package sometime, but not even know it at first.
Megan Hunter:
And it's unfortunate because so many people don't understand who they're dealing with or what they're dealing with. So that judge or the friends who've heard all these terrible lies about you or terrible things about you from your partner, believe them because they're so persuasive. And as we talked about in the last episode, emotions are contagious. And you want to believe the stories and you want to protect people. But you really have to investigate and understand the full story before you act.
So let's move on to the survey now that we've discussed the five types. And we'll talk more about them in the coming episodes. One of the questions was, did changes happen overnight? In other words, did these high conflict behaviors happen overnight, or did they occur over time or later in the relationship?
And at least at the time we wrote the book, the answers to the survey said 11% changed overnight. And I actually expected that one to be a little bit higher because of the charm factor in the beginning of a lot of high conflict relationships. 39% said the changes happened over time. 16% said the changes happened later in the relationship. And then 33%, which is pretty high, said it was other. So what did you think about that data?
Bill Eddy:
I also thought, because we got a lot of feedback about people saying they changed overnight, like as soon as you made a commitment. I remember reading a couple of the survey results saying it was the wedding night that suddenly the person said, "I never was into bird watching after all. I just said that I was." Things like that.
And also domestic violence. People say it's a sudden turn that really surprised them. Say it's six months into the relationship and suddenly the person starts becoming physically abusive. So that it's hard to say, because we don't have timeframes here, but just saying over time versus overnight, what that over time period was, one thing that we've said and we'll say it probably each time is to wait at least a year because the shift, the turn often happens within a year, but not necessarily within a first month or two or three.
And let me add to that something that I think is important is people say, "Well, why we have to be waiting a year or really on our toes about this? My grandparents got married after they knew each other for two weeks and they've had a wonderful 50 year marriage." Well, the reality is we seem to have more high conflict people now. And they may be higher incidents in the younger age groups like twenties and early thirties. So nowadays you do really need to watch out for these warning signs.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah, things are not the way they used to be. So some of the comments that came in with the survey to this question, from those who saw major change immediately after committing, which might have been moving in together or getting married or having a child together or getting pregnant. "He seemed to change most after our engagement, and changed even more dramatically than that immediately after getting married. It was during our honeymoon, those three days following our wedding, that his behavior took a turn for the worst and I realized I just made the greatest mistake in my life."
Another said, "I knew on our honeymoon."
Another said, "It started on our wedding night. He told me he was on his best behavior while we were dating. And now that we were married, he could let his true colors show." So I always say high conflict people tell you who they are. This one did, a little too late though.
"I thought he was being sarcastic. He was not."
And then those who said that it had switched sometime during their year together. "Within weeks, she started to get very needy."
"He flipped about six months into the relationship. Then things got worse when I became pregnant with our first child."
Another one said, "Changes occurred over time, but as it progressed, she became more and more self-focused and demanding. Within a year, I was beginning to feel uncomfortable within the relationship, but my conditioning was that once you commit to a relationship you follow through with it."
And then just a couple more, that some took more than a year. "The most obvious changes revealed themselves after the first two years of marriage and with the birth of our two children. The day I was in labor with our first child, there was a big change. After that, there were small changes until he was in control of all aspects of our lives."
And another one, this one's kind of interesting. "After a previous relationship with a sociopath, I waited for three years before I married him." So this one actually waited. "He knew about my shame around of divorce. And once we were married, his behavior changed significantly. For example, he suddenly became grumpy with me and rude to my children. He also had high expectations of me to bring home the bacon and cook it, and very low expectations of himself. When I finally got up the nerve to question him, he would cross his arms and angrily ask if I wanted him to leave." Most people don't do that.
And a few people said there were signs from the start. "The behaviors were always there. I just didn't realize what was going on until I was totally in love with him." And that's the problem, isn't it Bill? It's a lot of times too late.
Bill Eddy:
Well, that's what we'll talk about next time is how they jam your radar. Because in many ways, you may see some hints of warning signs and yet you tell yourself, "Oh, it's nothing. Or, "Oh, I can manage this." Or, "Oh, he'll change." Or, "She'll change." And so we'll get into what we found in the survey for what jams your radar.
Megan Hunter:
And then, we've talked a bit about the charm and seduction, and not every one of them presents with charm in the beginning, but a lot of them do. And so we asked the question about what were the qualities that attracted you to this person? And charm was the number one answer. It was 80% of respondents said that was the biggest quality that attracted them. Overtly sensual and sexual was 47%. And we find that I think a lot, particularly with histrionic and borderline personality types maybe more than the others, would that be accurate?
Bill Eddy:
And antisocial. They're also in a hurry, yep.
Megan Hunter:
In a hurry. I love that. Adapted to you as a quality of attraction that they adapted their life to yours; 43%. And we find that's common.
Bill Eddy:
We call that fake compatibility where they adapt to you and they take on your interests and pretend they've always had those interests too, like the bird watching person.
Megan Hunter:
Mm. And extreme compatibility, which is sort of similar, that was 70%. Protective, which seems opposite of high conflict personality, and it is. But 41% of respondents said that was the quality that attracted them.
This one is surprising, but we put it in there. Did aggressiveness attract you? And 10% said yes. And then did assertiveness attract you? 37% said yes, that it did.
So I thought that was pretty fascinating. And it really depends on what's in your own background, what you're going to accept and what you're willing to accept, or maybe you're pretty vulnerable to certain personality types. So you might be attracted to that aggressive type.
And then the last one we'll talk about today is the question, would you have entered into a relationship with this person if you'd known the difficulties ahead? 74% said no, 9% said yes, which, what? And 17% were unsure. And the respondents mostly said it was because they'd had children with this person and they wouldn't have had those children without that relationship. But I think obviously at 75%, shows you that this is not a pleasant relationship.
Bill Eddy:
It also shows how what's happening at the beginning is really different from what happens later on, and how people really fell for someone who's different from who they turned out to be.
Megan Hunter:
Mm. I like this response. "Oh, hell no. It's like dating somebody who has crazy mood swings, vacillates between nice and nasty, inconsistent stories like they're a tornado or torturing you at times. It's absolutely exhausting. They say something, and then when you confront them on it, they act like they never said it or say you got the story wrong. They blame and try to shame you for something that they actually do."
And then I think this next one and I'll close with this, is, "I thought that with time and love, I could help him to feel more secure and confident and be happier. I was wrong. There were times when it looked like I was succeeding, but ultimately things were getting worse."
And that's what we constantly try to repeat is that most high conflict people don't change, and they keep repeating patterns. And you aren't the one to change them because you can't.
Bill Eddy:
That's a hard one to swallow, but such an important one because people constantly get stuck thinking, "I can change him. I'm different, I'm special." And you can't change another person and don't count on it.
Megan Hunter:
Right. And your life will be pretty challenging. And at the end of the day, do you really want your children to have this other person as a parent? That's kind of what can stop a lot of people is thinking about that.
So that wraps up this week's episode. And next week we'll talk about how high conflict people can jam your radar, the why behind we are attracted to folks like this and stay in relationships with them. And what is it that causes us to do that?
You'll find a link to the survey and the results in the show notes, along with a link to the Dating Radar book, which by the way, we're very happy to see when we look today that it has five stars on Amazon. And it's also available as an audio book and an ebook.
So until next week in the next episode, take care and please join us again when we talk about the jamming your radar. We'd love it if you do us a favor by rating and reviewing us. We really, really would appreciate it. Until then, keep making peace happen.
It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts at truestory.fm, or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.