Divorce from a High Conflict Person
If your husband has a Cluster B personality disorder (Borderline, Narcissistic, Histrionic or Anti-Social / Sociopathic), he will likely make divorce costly, lengthy and painful. He may SAY he wants to do this quickly and spend as little as possible, but the reality is he won't behave that way.
Three years ago, I could not have imagined that my husband, who constantly professed his love even as he was screwing prostitutes on a regular basis, would be as unfair and uncooperative in a divorce as he has been. Prior to my filing, he agreed with me that divorce was necessary under the circumstances. Once I said I wanted to separate, he became incredibly unstable, to the point I carried Mace with me because he had purchased a gun and I didn't know what he might do. I've tried to document everything he has said and done since then. Fat lot of good that has done me. After more than two years, I still don't have a divorce and not one single signed legal document on support or custody. Make sure you READ this stuff and absorb it. This is real. If you think getting through grief and making the decision to divorce is difficult, that's just the beginning. If you're a stay-at-home mom with kids and he has all the financial power, you have a truly rough road ahead.
Attorneys refer to difficult people as High-Conflict (HCPs). Not all HCPs have full-blown personality disorders, but they share many of their traits such as:
emotional reasoning,
all-or-nothing thinking,
minimizing the positive while maximizing the negative,
chronic blaming and
an inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for their actions.
A California attorney, William Eddy, LCSW, Esq, has written two helpful books about divorcing an HCP, also known as a "Persuasive Blamer":
High Conflict People and the Never-Ending Divorce
High Conflict People in Legal Disputes
SPLITTING: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing a Borderline or Narcissist
You can find links to articles written by Bill Eddy on his website
http://www.billeddy.com/articles.htm
According to Eddy, High-Conflict People, Borderlines, Narcissists, Persuasive Blamers—whatever you want to call them—are driven by 4 primary fears:
the fear of being ignored
the fear of being belittled (includes the fear of public exposure)
the fear of being abandoned
the fear of being dominated (includes the fear of losing control—control over you, control over money/assets and control of himself)
ClaudiaBroome.com on HCPs & the Neverending Divorce
High conflict people have distorted thoughts, emotions, actions and reactions. They will not accept honest or helpful feedback from others. They believe that they are the injured parties. They are and were wronged and in their opinions nothing will change that. They continue to see themselves as the victims. Even when the issues that created the problems in their lives leave the scene, their personalities keep conflict in the present.
Have you ever heard the expression, “He would cut off his own nose to spite his face?” There you go!
Think about your marriage and or your divorce. Is your ex or soon-to-be-ex a person who sees life as black and white… all or nothing? Is this person unable to be flexible or compromise?
I have often written about the fact that divorce is not unlike death and that there is a grieving process that must be experienced if one is to move on with life. In case you missed those posts, the healing process must go through stages of grief including:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
An emotionally healthy person is able to come to peace after his or her divorce. This person still feels the pain but the pain doesn’t control his or her life. So why are some people unable to let the divorce be finished?
Stuck in Anger
High conflict people get stuck in stage two of the grieving process. They continue fight in an effort to prevent the feeling of loss. Sometimes and often times, these people continue the battle for years and even the rest of their lives. Many times there were abandonment issues from their childhoods and these can be the foundation for penetrating emotions that cause them to relive the original pain over and over again.
In many cases, high conflict people may become involved in extreme behaviors. They may seek revenge. They may prolong the divorce process. They may stalk the target of their blame and or spread rumors and lies about the target in an effort to prove that they are the real victims.
What can the blame game do for high conflict people? It can help them feel better about themselves because they feel stronger and they feel better about the negative effects of their own behavior. It can help them to remain unaware of the negative consequences of their own behaviors.
Sadly, high conflict people remain in conflict with the assumed target of blame and their actions have a negative impact on everyone in their lives. By attracting negative advocates to help in blaming the target (you), the high conflict person avoids facing the results of his or her own behavior.
You may want to read this article in Psychology Today.
Another article:
http://claudiabroome.com/high-conflict-people-never-ending-divorce/
This particular discussion comes from a website for MEN who are divorcing High Conflict women. Shrink4Men: for men who are recovering from relationships with abusive women and the non-abusive family and friends who love them. The information is written by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, and I find her information just brilliant. The only difficulty I have with the website is that you have to translate the gender if you are a woman dealing with a male HCP.
So, I'd like to take a couple of excerpts and rewrite them from the female perspective (changing pronouns):
Divorce is the ultimate narcissistic injury and ultimate abandonment....
The divorce process triggers these fears, which explains why many escalate their controlling and abusive behaviors during a divorce. Divorce represents a final loss of control and means that their flaws and faults might be exposed to friends, family, mental health professionals and the court system. Most Cluster Bs fight tooth and nail against having their abusive traits and other nasty qualities exposed. Now that you’re no longer together, you know too much about him and, therefore, must be discredited and destroyed so that no one will suspect that he’s actually the one with the problems. This is his logic.
Whether you or the HCP/Cluster B/Persuasive Blamer initiates the divorce, he will view it as a zero sum/winner take all/destroy the other party battle to the death.
“Not everyone with a personality disorder becomes a high-conflict personality (HCP). Only those who are also Persuasive Blamers seem to become HCPs. Persuasive Blamers persuade others that their internal problems are external, caused by something else or someone else. Once others are persuaded to get the problem backward, the dispute escalates into a long-term, high-conflict situation. One that few people other than persuasive blamers can tolerate” (Eddy, 2006, p. 29).
Not all Cluster Bs are persuasive Blamers, which makes their craziness, distortions and bald faced lies easier to detect, contain and redirect in a dispute. “It’s only the Persuasive Blamers of Cluster B who keep high-conflict disputes going. They are persuasive, and to keep the focus off their own behavior (the major source of the problem), they get others to join in the blaming” (Eddy, 2006, p. 30). This is why many Narcissists, Borderlines, Histrionics and Antisocials effectively employ smear campaign and mobbing tactics when they target someone—be it a spouse, attorney, court evaluator or therapist. By blaming others for everything that’s wrong in their lives they keep the focus off the real problem; themselves. This is nothing more than a primitive ego defense mechanism at play.
Why Do HCPs Drag Out the Divorce Process?
1. “Blamers are not usually good at negotiation and other forms of compromise. They have all-or-nothing thinking, they personalize even the most minor issues, and they may feel that giving in to the other party’s requests is a form of abandonment or threat to their superiority” (Eddy, 2004, p. 36). This type of individual sees compromise as losing and people who are willing to accept a fair compromise as losers. Eddy (2004, p. 36) makes this interesting diagnostic distinction: “Borderlines feel that they must refuse compromise to avoid feeling abandoned. Narcissists feel that they are superior and should receive more.”
The HCP is reluctant to agree to anything because he wants to extract the maximum amount from you.
“When you are negotiating with a Blamer, they will pressure you to give them much more than a court would give them because they were abandoned or are superior” (Eddy, 2004, p. 30). Mediation and other collaborative techniques are difficult for severe Blamers because “they cannot handle compromises, they cannot listen to ideas that conflict with their reality, the abandonment feels too intense, and they cannot handle the combination of physical closeness and emotional distance (ending their lives together while sitting together)” (Eddy, 2004, p.30).
2. The divorce process gives the HCP a new raison d‘être. Rather than concentrating on fairness or the needs of children, annihilating you becomes their new full-time job. Even after you both agree to a settlement, an HCP might have his attorney try to revise and rewrite the terms in an effort to prolong the process and the attention he receives from it, to punish you financially, and to maintain control over you by not letting you get on with your life.
3. High-conflict people feed off of conflict and chaos. It gives them a buzz. For many, the only way they know how to relate to others is through aggression, blame and playing the victim.
4. Oppositional withholding. This is more leftover baggage from your marriage. Many HCPs are "withholding partners. "Meaning, if there’s something you really want, they don’t want you to have it. The more you want something, no matter how insignificant and small, the more the HCP finds reasons that you shouldn’t have it or actively obstructs you from getting it. In this respect, HCPs are like oppositional, defiant toddlers. The more you want to wrap up the divorce; the more the HCP will dig in his heels and tries to delay it.
The Endless Bag of Cluster B Tricks: Derailing and Tangenting.
HCPs may stonewall their exes just as they near settlement. Every time you get close to a settlement, your ex derails, blows up or delays the process by not responding to letters, canceling appointments, making new allegations and demands and/or walking out on settlement talks with mediators, evaluators, etc. This is a Cluster B trait that is appropriately called derailing.
Derailing is an attempt to intentionally try to destroy the progress you’ve made in your settlement talks. For example, during negotiations, you’re able to get through most of the issues calmly and reasonably. The process seems to be going well and you’re hopeful that you’ll be able to resolve the matter. Once you’re close to an agreement, your ex jumps to a hot button topic (e.g., your new boyfriend, your family whom she hates, accusations that you’re hiding money—it could be anything).
“The topic is usually one in which somehow something that you have done, are thinking of doing or [he] believes you have done or are thinking of doing. The rationality of the accusation, despite any information to the contrary, is irrelevant. Then [he] escalates that topic to its worst, going into a rage” (bpd411.com). This may end in the HCP storming out of the session and reneging on items to which he previously agreed. This behavior destroys any progress that’s been made and puts you back at square one.
Tangenting is a less explosive form of derailing, but with the same end result. For example, when you’re just about to reach a solution, your ex will “change the subject, go sideways to a related, but different topic and refuse to return to the original issue. [He] may even project and blame you for obstructing the process, which is just another a side topic to keep you from returning to the original topic and its solution. These side topics are also never resolved.
“There is some logic to the connection between the topics that, on the surface, appears rational.” This second topic is usually a recurring one that makes you the target of more blame. These make convenient side issues when a solution is too closely approached. When you attempt to bring the discussion back to the original topic, [he] will usually accuse you of being too controlling or that you think the world revolves around you” (bpd411.com). Both tangenting and derailing are often used to prolong the divorce process during negotiations and anything else this type of person wants to avoid—like discussing your feelings, your needs or how he hurt you when you were still together.
So What Can You Do?
Attorneys and mediators approximate that they accomplish 5 minutes of work for every hour spent with a high-conflict person. This is all well and good, but legal services aren’t cheap and why should you get stuck footing the bill because your ex has issues?
1. Tell your attorneys what your bottom line is and stick to it. Let him or her communicate with your ex, since it doesn’t seem that you’re able to bring this to a conclusion with him. He is probably too stuck in the role of opposing and punishing you for you to make any headway with him.
2. Maximize any leverage you have. HCPs tend to be transactional in their relationships, so you might want to find something to withhold in order to get a more equitable outcome. Also, stop being so damned reasonable. Being fair and reasonable doesn’t compute for this type of individual. When you’re generous and give away more than you’re obligated, he sees it as a greenlight to push for even more. He doesn’t think, “Wow, he’s being so generous. I’ll take it.” He thinks, “Sucker. I’ll bet I can get even more if she’s willing to agree to this.”
You are probably a very nice person and want to be seen that way. He knows this and is working you. The reality is that no matter what you do, your ex thinks you’re a jerk. When you’re reasonable or make concessions to his demands, he thinks you’re a stupid jerk. No matter what you do, he’s going to see you as the bad guy, so do what you need to do protect your best interests. High-conflict people/bullies only respect people who push back hard. Don’t sink to her level, but it may be time to play hardball, which is also probably best handled by your attorney.
3. Choose your battles. Determine what’s most important to you, but don’t let him know. Remember, most of these types withhold to punish. Pretend like you don’t care about the things you care about most and care about the things you don’t really care about. This doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a shot.
4. Get it in writing. If you finally do reach a settlement via mediation or another process, don’t let him leave without signing something! Don’t give him time to think it over. Whenever possible, get commitments from him in writing right then and there. Verbal agreements from this kind of person are meaningless. Often, their written agreements are also meaningless since many Narcissists, Borderlines, Histrionics and other high-conflict types believe they’re exempt from the rules by which the rest of us mere mortals abide. At least if you get something from him in writing you’ll have some legal recourse if he later tries to obstruct or make new demands.
5. Practice emotional detachment. As for dealing with your emotions and not reacting to his verbal jabs; don’t engage (easier said than done, of course). Read the following articles on no contact and emotional detachment and try to put the techniques into practice:
The No Contact Rule: Ending an Abusive Relationship
The No Contact Rule: Committing to It and Making It Work
Emotional Detachment: When the No Contact Rule Is Not an Option
Bad Relationships: Change Your Role and the Rules of Engagement
More on Emotional Detachment: Surviving an Ongoing Abusive Relationship
