3 Signals Your Unhappy Marriage Could Result in a High-Conflict Divorce Like Mine Did

Educate yourself before your spouse makes you feel crazy.

“You bit the hand that fed you,” says my husband.

I shake my head.

How am I supposed to respond to his words?

He bizarrely views my initiating a divorce as being ungrateful.

I don’t realize it yet but this means ‘game on.’ He’s going to punish me for his perceived notion of ingratitude. Instead of the reality of the last few years of his outrageous behavior while drinking.

“I’m not moving out,” says my husband.

Again, how do I respond to this?

In a perfect world, of course, he wouldn’t have to move out. But this is a divorce and it was my last resort. I attempted to do everything to save my marriage.

I didn’t choose to divorce my husband.

I did it because I had exhausted all of my options.

And all three of our children were begging me to leave their dad because his behavior was upsetting the entire household. My husband didn’t even care when our boys voiced their angst.

So I made the decision to divorce him.

But before I did…

I wish someone, anyone had asked me a very important question.

“What type of personality does your spouse have?”

Not only should I have been asked this question but someone should have told me what the answer would mean. They should have told me what a high-conflict divorce was and maybe said something like the following.

“Your spouse’s personality can tell you a lot about how the course of your divorce will go. It can provide insight into the duration of your divorce, the conflict resolution and negotiations of your divorce, the expense of your divorce, and the potential for bullying, manipulation, and/or abuse.”

I simply thought I was getting a divorce.

I had no idea I was entering into what is known as a high-conflict divorce.

I thought divorce would be sad and unpleasant, not brutal and abusive.

What exactly is a high-conflict divorce?

There’s no official legal definition for the term high-conflict divorce.

It’s generally considered a divorce that is two or more years in duration and extremely contentious. It involves the bad behavior of one or both spouses and can include bullying, control, manipulation, lying, games, and abuse. One or both spouses may attempt to sabotage the divorce process by over-litigating or passive-aggressively ignoring aspects of litigation.

There isn’t a precise percentage of high-conflict divorce.

It hovers somewhere between 15 and 30% of all divorces.

There are clues that can be discovered while still married.

Indicators of what is to potentially come during a divorce. Understanding high-conflict divorce in relation to a spouse’s personality can help prepare and diminish the bad behavior of these types of individuals.

Educate yourself before your spouse makes you feel crazy.

3 Signals your unhappy marriage…

May result in a high-conflict divorce.

1. A spouse with a punishing personality

Punishing people don’t see divorce as a solution they see it as an opportunity.

An opportunity to ‘get back at’ the spouse they believe wronged them.

My husband and I separated for eleven months before I initiated a divorce. There were definite moments of high-conflict foreshadowing. I just didn’t know it.

Again, because I had never heard the term high-conflict divorce.

There was the time he cut off the electricity and claimed he had simply forgotten to pay the bill. There was another time when he froze my debit card. I was out with friends and when the bill came my card was declined so they had to pay for me.

When my friend ran into my husband at the grocery store, he laughed and said, “I was teaching Colleen a lesson.”

My husband was abusive and bullying and punishing.

These were all indicators of a high-conflict divorce.

2. A spouse with a controlling personality

A controlling personality can attempt to regain the control they lose over you.

Controlling people have a compulsive need to remain in control.

I always say that I was more controlled in divorce than I was in my marriage. While I was married as long as my husband got his way and I didn’t get in his way, there was relative peace.

I’ve warned men and women alike that divorcing a controlling spouse will be brutal. Especially since during the marriage that spouse typically got their way.

Before I ended my marriage my husband used to say, “Everything will be fine if you just go back to being the way you were.”

This was code for allowing myself to be controlled.

I no longer had a need to keep the peace.

I was tired. It was exhausting. It was thankless.

It was also the exact moment my marriage became endlessly unhappy. Our dynamic no longer worked. He was still passive-aggressively controlling.

I had outgrown the capacity to be controlled.

I used to say my husband didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do. He was extremely controlling although he appeared laid-back because it was passive-aggressive control where he would sabotage things that were important to me or that he didn’t want to do.

Passive-aggressive controllers are unpredictable.

My husband’s behavior was unpredictable during our marriage.

It was far more controlling and unpredictable during our divorce.

An extreme controller is a potential indicator of high-conflict divorce.

3. A spouse with an extreme personality

A spouse with an extreme personality can make divorce unbearable.

My husband would do things and I would often ask myself, “Who does that?” He would step far outside of societal norms and boundaries and also do incredibly unkind and cruel things if he was mad at me.

The Christmas I woke up with no presents under the tree and watched him shamelessly open the dozen presents I had bought him. The night he showed up drunk two hours late to a fundraiser I had worked on for the better part of a year.

The birthday he made me cry throughout dinner at a thankfully dimly lit New York City restaurant despite our two friends being there with us. The night he got mad and left me in a restaurant and another couple had to drive me home.

The honor I missed being recognized by a charity because he didn’t rent a tux and was asleep on the couch when I came home to pick him up. The surgery where I was a high risk for blood clots and he never even showed up at the hospital.

The time I was in a car accident with our three children and he huffed and puffed like a spoiled child because he had to cancel his trip to go to a football game.

I happened to leave a diagnosed empathy-lacking narcissist.

Individuals with a personality disorder have a high conflict divorce probability.

But a spouse doesn’t have to be a narcissist to have an extremely difficult personality. It can be a spoiled spouse, an immature spouse, a vindictive spouse, a bullying spouse, a controlling spouse, a manipulative spouse, or a lying spouse.

Any extreme personality or personality tendencies can foster a high-conflict divorce.

Because these are people intent on inappropriate and/or negative behavior in order to get their way and achieve the desired outcome they wish.

Extreme personalities increase the likelihood of a high-conflict divorce.

When you're married to a spouse who is incapable of negotiating or conflict resolution, it typically spills over into a divorce.

This is why high-conflict divorces last two or more years.

There’s no satisfaction in resolving the divorce.

These types of spouses want retribution, not resolution.

The payoff is they get to control and punish you for their unresolved anger and they prolong the divorce to attempt to get exactly what they want.

I wish someone had asked me, “What type of personality does your spouse have?”