The High-Conflict Ex: 5 Tips for Managing Your Partner’s Past by Trisha Ladogna
Dealing with a high-conflict ex can be one of the hardest things a stepcouple faces. It can be difficult to know what to do or where to get the right support. The tension and conflict it stirs up can cause us to act against our natural instincts when it comes to arriving at trusting, open, empathetic responses and managing difficulty.
If not handled well, it can cause us to become edgy and feel defensive—or entirely helpless. These negative feelings and responses can then spill over into our relationships with our partners, children and stepchildren to create chaos in our most important relationships.
This appears to be exactly what high-conflict people want to achieve in the first place.
The San Diego-based High Conflict Institute devotes an entire section of its website to articles and resources about parenting and divorce. The institute describes high-conflict people as often expressing or demonstrating a pattern of behaviors. …To read the rest of this article log in to your account and download the April 2016 issue. Don’t have an account? Click here to subscribe.