so I can imagine that the high conflict person doesn't always appear as high conflict in fact this is something that you've alluded to many times already in this conversation and certainly in your book that sometimes these high conflict personalities come in kind of under the radar and that can be confusing to people or they can go undetected for a long time yeah so part of it goes with the specific personalities so I conflict people with borderline personality traits or histrionic personality traits are often more openly dramatic and so they they might really shock you that suddenly they start yelling screaming uh throwing things just because you're having an average conversation very disproportionate but some and it tends to be more of the antisocial personality some narcissistic personalities can look really reasonable on the surface and they've actually had a lifetime of experience at looking good which kind of covers up all the stuff under the surface and I think of of a couple examples so for example and I deal sometimes with domestic violence cases so let's say an abuser says in court says oh well I was helping her because she was so upset I took her keys away and I held her down on the bed cuz I was afraid she would leave and get into a car crash well there may be rare occasions where that's true but that's a common story that we get from domestic abusers um or in court I've seen this uh where they'll be a very reasonable person kind of explaining the situation and their partner more often a woman is just emotional is a mess maybe even in tears and people don't realize about 80% of of divorces in court today people represent themselves and so there's these conversations and the judge is like well this guy's being really reasonable and This Woman's a mess I mean you know I'm I'm going to go with what he's saying and so a lot of stuff slips under the radar that way but gender-wise it could be the reverse and a lot of relationships people get into people make themselves look really good and then the negative stuff comes out weeks months maybe a year later so that's why we say wait a year until you decide to commit because nowadays who knows you may have someone that really is good at covering their bad behavior yeah let's hover on that one particular point because this is perhaps one of the most important takeaways from your work um could you just um spell out this first year principle um and perhaps it's useful for us to also acknowledge that yes there are a great many truly great stories about people who met one weekend two weeks later got married and then we're hearing the story 50 years later when they've got grandkids and great-grandkids they thrived or people me met got engaged 3 months later or you know some cases got pregnant three months later and they have this wonderful marriage and family story to tell we hear these stories and they're really wonderful stories right I mean they they sort of uh affirm your belief in humanity uh when you hear those stories and they are powerful but in discussing a little bit of this with you offline you probably have witnessed more cases where people rushed and the rushing to uh commit or to create led to more problems than it did good yes and that's many many of the high conflict divorces that I've worked on as a lawyer and before that as a therapist and sometimes as a mediator are in my mind kind of the bad luck stories got a decent person usually my client of course but something happened they got together too fast and then all this stuff came out and I really believe in today's world that it it is a matter of luck and that's why you should take a year to find out am I did I draw the Short Straw in this relationship because I got this perfect looking person um great record all these good things but close relationships is where personality disorders come out interpersonal difficulty and the high conflict behaviors mostly close relationships so they might everyone might like them at work but when you're home alone with them they could be really terrible yelling hitting doing all of this stuff so that's why we say wait a year i' I've had a lot of cases where people tell me we just just fell in love it was beautiful and everything was wonderful for about six months and then when I committed to get married all this stuff started showing up but I got married anyway because I figured well time and love will heal everything only it didn't so in today's world there's a higher risk of getting a high conflict relationship I must say and the description you gave is what people often tell me they say my grandparents got married a week after they met and they just celebrated their 60th anniversary they're still in love everything's wonderful your grandparents tended to know who they were marrying in today's world not only don't you know you don't have a history but high conflict people have learned to cover up the full range of who they are and they're not bad people and that's something I want to emphasize they just have a different personality and they may have been born this way but they don't come with with markings you know they don't come with the music like of Jaws do do do they look good and anybody I think is at risk of falling into a relationship like this I definitely want to come back to this point that you made that you're not demonizing these people right you're talking about how to behave with them or how to not behave with them in some cases in order to um try and create the smoothest possible interactions in some cases no interaction but if we could um hover still a bit more on this first year idea my understanding is that no getting engaged or for that matter married no conceiving children and no moving in together in year one is are those the except for the last one is it's really don't commit like getting married within the first year sometimes moving in together is a good way to find out what it's like up close with this person yeah you learn a lot by living with somebody that's right that's right and personality disorders part of the definition is interpersonal dysfunction and that's close that's close relationship so if you haven't had that close relationship you don't see what happens when you leave your socks out or the Caps off the toothpaste and some little thing is some huge storm or when somebody sleep deprived I always say you can you learn a lot about somebody after a bad night's sleep you and them right right you know but the key is patterns of behavior so one thing I want to say is everybody gets angry sometimes that's that's fine everybody yells sometimes everybody you know criticizes sometimes but if they have a pattern like their pattern of relationship is to yell and scream and criticize and all that whoa this pattern is probably going to keep going and as I mentioned earlier I believe with personality disorders it's a narrower pattern of behavior so it's more pattern driven in several different settings family maybe at work when there's close maybe in the community when it's close so these are recognizable patterns as recognizable as alcoholism and addiction once people learn so that's the key give yourself some time see if this stuff comes to the surface I think you're raising a really interesting point which is that although nowadays we have more information about people Available To Us by way of the internet and social media you made the comparison with our grandparents era I'm 49 years old so my grandparents actually my grandparents knew each other from the time they were like in the eighth grade they eloped when they turned 18 boom went and got married I think to the dismay of one side or the other side of parents but then we're married more than 50 years yeah and grandkids obviously I'm one of them Etc and so you have these stories and and we we love these kinds of stories yeah but as you point out they knew each other very very well and had for a long time nowadays one can quote unquote do their research go online and and look for things but would you argue that that's not complete information right I think it can be helpful um you know I tell people Google your partner and find out you know if there's some history there that may impact you but don't don't believe that's sufficient what I say what you really want to talk to is relatives and Friends of this person and what you really want to do is see them in action with reles and Friends relatives and Friends yes cuz that's closer relationships that's the key this is all about close relationships and that's what catches people by surprise they say this person looks good at work some people have worked together for 10 years and maybe they were in other relationships and they both got divorced commiserated with each other they get together and it's like we've known each other for 10 years you know we're going to have a great relationship and they find out this is like a stranger almost because it's it's a close relationship now and that's the difference how people behave in a close relationship often triggers like personality disordered stuff fear of Abandonment fear of looking inferior fear of being dominated fear of of not getting enough attention the personality disorders seem to have excessive fears in these areas is it fair to say that if somebody has a lot of stable friendships over you know long long periods of time that that's uh a good indication um that they can maintain close relationships but it seems to me you'd also want to know like what is a close friend to that person do they actually spend time with them you know um do and likewise with co-workers because some work environments that I've been in are necessarily very um uh non-personal you don't share much right whereas other environments like I know the partners of everyone I work with now at the podcast that wasn't true for my academic colleagues I knew some of my academic colleagues families I would have dinner with them Etc but some of them less so so context matters a lot yes right and and I'd say you mentioned the word stability and that's really a key so if they have close friends they've had for 10 20 30 years that's a really good sign um bad signs are I don't want you talking to my family they're evil people they'll say terrible things about me you can't trust them they'll end up they'll turn on you they'll hate you all this stuff you can't even ever talk to my I can't even let you know who my family is and what their emails and phone numbers are oh goodness that's a warning sign yeah definite warning sign because everyone has conflict with family members at some level but you would hope that one could um would feel comfortable allowing you to like interact with their family yeah and if you if your family is really difficult introduce your partner to your family and let them see this is a difficult family and this is why I had to distance from them because a lot of people to be healthy do have to get some more distance but it's the secretiveness it's the um just secrets in general are not a good thing for relationships you that's that's the biggest piece that's missing in a way compared to 50 years ago when people knew all there it was hard to have family secrets 50 years ago now even though people may be all over the Internet you might not really know their secrets and that's what you need to find out [Music]