Do You Have a 'High Conflict' Partner?

POV:

You've had a really busy day, Mumming, running errands, working, whatever. The house is in a bit of a state because you haven't had time to tidy it up and your partner comes home. You feel a little 'guug' in your throat as he pulls into the driveway. He comes in and goes to the kitchen, which is kind of a mess, and he start tidying up loudly and sighing. he's banging pots and clanking things so loud that it kind of seems like he's doing it on purpose....

You find yourself tidying up the lounge quickly, but you're walking on egg shells and thinking carefully about what you're going to say before you speak to deescalate his mood so he doesn't get pissed off. 

That.... my lovely, that is a high conflict partner. Insert any other experience here, where you end up walking on egg shells and silencing yourself to keep the peace.

Let’s look at some more:

“He does seem to pick fights a bit, his Dad’s the same, I think it’s just a personality trait” or ”We're both just stubborn, neither of us is good at communicating”.
Except he's not communicating to sort it out, he’s arguing to win. You are not an equal partner whose opinion he respects, you're an opponent to be worn down. And notice nothing ever actually gets solved. It just goes round and round in a circle, until you're too tired to hold the point, so you give in and maybe even apologise just so it’s over. That is intentional, and he's arguing to win, not to solve.

 "He's not really into my friends, so it's just easier to stay home". But it wasn’t like that initially, he came to that conclusion over time, it was a sigh about this one. A cool mood after coffee with that one. A comment about your sister that made the next visit more trouble than it was worth. Maybe he makes a drama every single time you go to see your friends or family. “Your Gym sounds shit, you should just go to mine, yours is too expensive”. He does this one social group (or hobby) at a time, until your whole world quietly shrinks down to the size of him. That's not him “not being into my friends” that is intentional and it’s called isolation.

"I know I can be a lot, I probably brought it up the wrong way." A lot of what? A lot of not wanting to be spoken to meanly? A lot of trying to hold him accountable for the mean things he’s done? A lot of wanting a fair relationship and fair social time? A lot of wanting a holiday or special event to go smoothly without him causing any drama? Because from where I’m standing, thats not a lot, that’s bare minimum. You are not ‘a lot’ you’re not ‘too emotional’ or ‘overreacting’ you are just bringing things up that have upset you and within minutes the problem is turned around to be about YOU. It’s now YOUR issue, and it probably ends with you apologising so next time you stay quiet. That’s intentional and it’s called blame shifting.

“He's not good in the kitchen, he cant even use the air fryer (insert other basic thing to use here)”. Except he’d learn to use one in 2 mins flat if he had to for work right? And he runs a whole department at work, he remembers clients names, deadlines, building code and every grudge from 2019. But the dishwasher, the air fryer? Far too hard to use. And interestingly he only doesn't know how to operate something when the result benefits you. That is intentional and that is called weaponised incompetence. Do it badly enough times, and he never gets asked again.

The WILDEST thing about having a partner like this:

is that you (or your Mum, Friend, sister etc) can explain each of these situations away, quite easily. And in isolation, they’re not a big deal. But… they’re not in isolation are they? No, they're not. They’re a pattern, a cycle. A regular up and down, push you away, pull you back in dynamic. Create an argument or blame you for something to push you away and make you feel shit, and then love bomb you back in. Sometimes within a matter of minutes, although he may drag something out to make you feel shit for days on end. Have you ever had an argument one night and then he wakes up in the morning and acts like it didn’t even happen? Yep. That’s a high conflict partner.

Ok this one is perhaps the most common:

"He can't really help it, it's his ADHD. His mental health's been rough." Last time I checked having ADHD / Anxiety / Neurodiversity / Bad mental health doesn't give anyone permission to be an asshole, to pick fights, to bring his partner down, instead of lifting her up. None of these things give someone permission to repeat this gross pattern of behaviour, making their partner feel like shit, and then love bombing them back up again.

 I know of dozens of people with all these things going on in their lives and they still consistently choose to be a good person. Sure, they have bad days, but they can take accountability, apologise and still choose to lift people up, listen to understand and be kind. Using 'bad mental health' to excuse a partner's pattern of bad behaviour is utter bullshit. It does nothing but enable him to continue. No one on gods green earth ever wants to accept this (I didn’t) but I am here to tell you that if you can relate to the above, if he is arguing to win not to solve, if he is isolating you, blame-shifting, weaponising his incompetence so everything lands on you, using his 'mental health' to excuse his behaviour, monitoring you (your phone, your emails, your location etc) if he is gaslighting you, "No I didn't say that, you're making it up," if he makes you ‘earn’ time away from the home, if he is doing some or all of those things, then what you are experiencing has a name and it is called emotional abuse.

Hard to accept, eh?

That your being emotionally abused by your own partner. It was for me. I didn’t accept that revelation for YEARS. Years I spent justifying, excusing, suffering. You might not be ready to accept it yet, thats ok, we are here when you’re ready.

Despite what he has manipulated you to believe, you are not “too sensitive”. You are not imagining it. You are not overreacting, or “too emotional”, or “not open enough”, you are in fact NONE of those things. What you are is a smart woman who is exhausted and you are having a perfectly normal reaction to what is happening to you. You are not broken. You were never broken. You have been living through something that would exhaust any human being alive, with no name for it and no one telling you the truth about what’s happening and you're still standing, still trying to fix it, still looking for answers. And doing it all alone.

That's where I come in.

I did it alone, and it almost killed me. Don’t do what I did. It’s way too hard to navigate on your own, which is why I built your survival guide. Come check us out — click the link below, scroll around my website, have a look at the membership and see if it's something you need (it is). Inside the SJ Collective are women in your exact situation right now: living with high-conflict partners, figuring out what's going on, sharing wins and getting real advice. It's a little like Facebook, with threads and comments, but we also do masterclasses and live weekly Q&As, so you can come and ask about your specific situation. I'm always in there, so you always have access to me. I've got almost 20 years of lived experience, plus professional training from some of the world's leading experts on exactly what we're navigating. We'd love to have you join us, so you don't have to do this alone.