Will Talking About High Conflict Relationships Enable Abuse?

How Abuse Functions And Why We Must Talk About All Kinds of Relationships

I'm a psychologist who writes and talks about healthy relationships, high conflict relationships, and abusive relationships. Although it's easiest to talk about these three types of relationships as completely distinct from each other, in reality they operate on a spectrum, with totally safe, healthy relationships on one end, abusive relationships that systematically disempower one partner on the other end, and high conflict relationships without power and control dynamics somewhere in the middle.

As always, remember you can self-assess your own relationship via my free mini-course, Red Flags & Red Lines.

It would, quite honestly, be a lot simpler if I stuck to just abusive relationships or just totally safe relationships. We like clean boxes. The opposing ends of the spectrum feel clean and tidy.

High conflict relationships are inherently messy. They're not totally emotionally safe, because how could you feel emotionally safe when you're having intense, frequent, poorly resolved fights? But they also do not involve coercive control, the hallmark of abuse.

Because I delve into messy, nuanced topics, I get a fair share of strong reactions to my work. And today, I want to explore one type of comment that comes up not too infrequently:

"Your work really dangerous and could be weaponized by abusers"

I know some commenters are seeing an isolated video out of context that hits a personal nerve. I certainly hope that anyone who sticks around for the body of my work will see that I put a lot of care into abuse detection and prevention as well as healthy relationship education.

But I think this type of comment shows an understandable but fundamental misunderstanding of how abuse works. The messed up reality is that all content can be weaponized by abusers. And that even includes content that is explicitly created to support victims of abuse.

Today, I'm talking more about the nuances. Because it is factually true that some of my work is likely used by abusive partners to justify their behavior. But because I understand how abuse works, that is not going to stop me from continuing to educate about high conflict and other "middle of the spectrum" relationship problems.

Let's dive in (like, way in).