How to Identify Toxic People & Partners Early | Bill Eddy & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | So, I can imagine that the high-conflict person doesn't always appear as high-conflict.

00:00:07.600 | In fact, this is something that you've alluded to many times already in this conversation

00:00:12.920 | and certainly in your book, that sometimes these high-conflict personalities come in

00:00:17.960 | kind of under the radar and that can be confusing to people or they can go undetected for a

00:00:22.760 | long time.

00:00:23.760 | Yeah, so part of it goes with the specific personalities, so high-conflict people with

00:00:30.000 | borderline personality traits or histrionic personality traits are often more openly dramatic

00:00:37.240 | and so they might really shock you, suddenly they start yelling, screaming, throwing things

00:00:45.080 | just because you're having an average conversation, very disproportionate, but some, and it tends

00:00:51.120 | to be more of the antisocial personality, some narcissistic personalities can look really

00:00:57.280 | reasonable on the surface.

00:01:00.000 | And they've actually had a lifetime of experience at looking good, which kind of covers up all

00:01:06.320 | the stuff under the surface.

00:01:08.600 | And I think of a couple examples, so for example, and I deal sometimes with domestic violence

00:01:16.080 | cases, so let's say an abuser says, in court, says, "Oh, well, I was helping her because

00:01:23.240 | she was so upset I took her keys away and I held her down on the bed because I was afraid

00:01:28.800 | she would leave and get into a car crash."

00:01:31.880 | Well, there may be rare occasions where that's true, but that's a common story that we get

00:01:37.800 | from domestic abusers.

00:01:41.200 | Or in court, I've seen this, where there'll be a very reasonable person kind of explaining

00:01:47.920 | the situation and their partner, more often a woman, is just emotional, is a mess, maybe

00:01:55.380 | even in tears.

00:01:57.680 | And people don't realize about 80% of divorces in court today, people represent themselves.

00:02:04.220 | And so there's these conversations and the judge is like, "Well, this guy's being really

00:02:09.760 | reasonable and this woman's a mess, I mean, you know, I'm going to go with what he's saying."

00:02:16.480 | And so a lot of stuff slips under the radar that way.

00:02:20.600 | But gender-wise, it could be the reverse, and a lot of relationships people get into,

00:02:26.000 | people make themselves look really good and then the negative stuff comes out weeks, months,

00:02:32.800 | maybe a year later.

00:02:34.480 | So that's why we say wait a year until you decide to commit.

00:02:39.500 | Because nowadays, who knows, you may have someone that really is good at covering their

00:02:44.280 | bad behavior.

00:02:45.280 | Yeah, let's hover on that one particular point, because this is perhaps one of the most important

00:02:49.960 | takeaways from your work.

00:02:52.120 | Could you just spell out this first year principle?

00:02:56.840 | And perhaps it's useful for us to also acknowledge that, yes, there are a great many, truly great

00:03:04.460 | stories about people who met one weekend, two weeks later, got married, and then we're

00:03:10.280 | hearing the story 50 years later when they've got grandkids and great grandkids, they thrived.

00:03:15.440 | Or people met, got engaged three months later, or, you know, in some cases, got pregnant

00:03:21.440 | three months later, and they have this wonderful marriage and family story to tell.

00:03:25.740 | We hear these stories and they're really wonderful stories, right?

00:03:28.280 | I mean, they sort of affirm your belief in humanity when you hear those stories.

00:03:34.280 | And they are powerful.

00:03:36.840 | But in discussing a little bit of this with you offline, you probably have witnessed more

00:03:42.880 | cases where people rushed and that rushing to commit or to create led to more problems

00:03:51.280 | than it did good.

00:03:52.960 | Yes.

00:03:53.960 | And that's many, many of the high conflict divorces that I've worked on as a lawyer and

00:04:00.000 | before that as a therapist and sometimes as a mediator are, in my mind, kind of the bad

00:04:06.960 | luck stories.

00:04:08.640 | Got a decent person, usually my client, of course, but something happened, they got together

00:04:15.040 | too fast, and then all this stuff came out.

00:04:19.180 | And I really believe in today's world that it is a matter of luck.

00:04:24.600 | And that's why you should take a year to find out, am I, did I draw the short straw in this

00:04:30.360 | relationship because I got this perfect looking person, great record, all these good things.

00:04:38.080 | But close relationships is where personality disorders come out, interpersonal difficulty,

00:04:45.320 | and the high conflict behaviors, mostly close relationships.

00:04:49.680 | So they might, everyone might like them at work, but when you're home alone with them,

00:04:54.520 | they could be really terrible, yelling, hitting, doing all of this stuff.

00:05:00.060 | So that's why we say wait a year.

00:05:02.880 | I've had a lot of cases where people tell me we just fell in love, it was beautiful

00:05:08.760 | and everything was wonderful for about six months.

00:05:12.320 | And then when I committed to get married, all this stuff started showing up.

00:05:17.520 | But I got married anyway because I figured, well, time and love will heal everything.

00:05:22.480 | Only it didn't.

00:05:24.080 | So in today's world, there's a higher risk of getting a high conflict relationship I

00:05:30.760 | must say.

00:05:32.360 | And the description you gave is what people often tell me, they say my grandparents got

00:05:37.620 | married a week after they met and they just celebrated their 60th anniversary, they're

00:05:42.480 | still in love, everything's wonderful.

00:05:45.280 | Your grandparents tended to know who they were marrying.

00:05:49.540 | In today's world, not only don't you know, you don't have a history, but high conflict

00:05:54.480 | people have learned to cover up the full range of who they are.

00:05:59.040 | And they're not bad people, and that's something I want to emphasize.

00:06:02.620 | They just have a different personality.

00:06:04.920 | And they may have been born this way, but they don't come with markings, you know,

00:06:10.760 | they don't come with the music like of Jaws, doo-doo-doo-doo.

00:06:14.800 | They look good and anybody I think is at risk of falling into a relationship like this.

00:06:20.500 | I definitely want to come back to this point that you made, that you're not demonizing

00:06:25.020 | these people.

00:06:26.020 | Right.

00:06:27.020 | You're talking about how to behave with them or how to not behave with them in some cases

00:06:33.220 | in order to try and create the smoothest possible interactions, in some cases, no interaction.

00:06:40.140 | But if we could hover still a bit more on this first year idea, my understanding is

00:06:45.980 | that no getting engaged, or for that matter married, no conceiving children, and no moving

00:06:56.280 | in together in year one.

00:06:58.980 | Are those the critical...

00:07:00.720 | Except for the last one, is it's really, don't commit like getting married within the first

00:07:06.880 | year.

00:07:07.880 | Sometimes moving in together is a good way to find out what it's like up close with this

00:07:12.640 | person.

00:07:13.640 | Yeah, you learn a lot by living with somebody.

00:07:15.260 | That's right.

00:07:16.260 | That's right.

00:07:17.260 | And personality disorders, part of the definition is interpersonal dysfunction.

00:07:21.840 | And that's close, that's close relationships.

00:07:24.480 | So if you haven't had that close relationship, you don't see what happens when you leave

00:07:30.080 | your socks out or the caps off the toothpaste and some little thing is some huge storm.

00:07:36.360 | Or when somebody is sleep-deprived.

00:07:37.880 | I always say you learn a lot about somebody after a bad night's sleep, you end them, right?

00:07:43.360 | Right.

00:07:44.360 | But the key is patterns of behavior.

00:07:46.520 | So one thing I want to say is everybody gets angry sometimes, that's fine.

00:07:52.400 | Everybody yells sometimes.

00:07:54.520 | Everybody criticizes sometimes.

00:07:57.540 | But if they have a pattern, like their life pattern of relationship is to yell and scream

00:08:03.120 | and criticize and all that, whoa, this pattern is probably going to keep going.

00:08:09.720 | And as I mentioned earlier, I believe, with personality disorders, it's a narrower pattern

00:08:14.520 | of behavior.

00:08:16.160 | So it's more pattern-driven in several different settings.

00:08:21.320 | Family, maybe at work when it's close, maybe in the community when it's close.

00:08:27.080 | So these are recognizable patterns, as recognizable as alcoholism and addiction, once people learn.

00:08:36.040 | So that's the key.

00:08:37.040 | Give yourself some time, see if this stuff comes to the surface.

00:08:40.520 | I think you're raising a really interesting point, which is that although nowadays we

00:08:45.240 | have more information about people available to us by way of the internet and social media,

00:08:51.760 | you made the comparison with our grandparents' era.

00:08:54.960 | I'm 49 years old, so my grandparents...

00:08:58.120 | Actually my grandparents knew each other from the time they were like in the eighth grade.

00:09:02.560 | They eloped when they turned 18, boom, went and got married, I think to the dismay of

00:09:08.600 | one side or the other side of parents, but then were married more than 50 years.

00:09:13.200 | And grandkids, obviously, I'm one of them, et cetera.

00:09:15.840 | And so you have these stories and we love these kinds of stories, but as you point out,

00:09:21.720 | they knew each other very, very well and had for a long time.

00:09:26.400 | Nowadays, one can "do their research", go online and look for things, but would you

00:09:32.080 | argue that that's not complete information?

00:09:34.920 | Right.

00:09:35.920 | I think it can be helpful.

00:09:38.280 | I tell people, "Google your partner and find out if there's some history there that may

00:09:43.000 | impact you."

00:09:44.000 | Definitely.

00:09:45.000 | But don't believe that's sufficient.

00:09:47.160 | What I say, what you really want to talk to is relatives and friends of this person, and

00:09:52.280 | what you really want to do is see them in action with their relatives and friends.

00:09:57.800 | Relatives and friends.

00:09:58.800 | Yes, because that's close relationships.

00:10:00.760 | That's the key.

00:10:01.760 | This is all about close relationships.

00:10:04.440 | And that's what catches people by surprise.

00:10:06.520 | They say, "This person looks good at work."

00:10:09.080 | Some people have worked together for 10 years and maybe they were in other relationships

00:10:15.640 | and they both got divorced, commiserated with each other, and they get together.

00:10:20.480 | And it's like, "We've known each other for 10 years, you know, we're going to have a

00:10:23.640 | great relationship."

00:10:25.760 | And they find out this is like a stranger almost, because it's a close relationship

00:10:30.720 | now.

00:10:31.760 | And that's the difference.

00:10:32.960 | How people behave in a close relationship often triggers like personality disorder stuff.

00:10:40.080 | Fear of abandonment, fear of looking inferior, fear of being dominated, fear of not getting

00:10:47.520 | enough attention.

00:10:48.600 | The personality disorders seem to have excessive fears in these areas.

00:10:54.600 | Is it fair to say that if somebody has a lot of stable friendships over, you know, long

00:10:59.340 | periods of time, that that's a good indication that they can maintain close relationships?

00:11:06.240 | But it seems to me you'd also want to know, like, what is a close friend to that person?

00:11:09.520 | Do they actually spend time with them, you know, and likewise with coworkers?

00:11:15.080 | Because some work environments that I've been in are necessarily very non-personal.

00:11:21.120 | You don't share much, right?

00:11:22.680 | Whereas other environments, like I know the partners of everyone I work with now at the

00:11:28.880 | podcast, that wasn't true for my academic colleagues.

00:11:31.360 | I knew some of my academic colleagues' families, I would have dinner with them, et cetera,

00:11:35.720 | but some of them less so.

00:11:37.340 | So context matters a lot.

00:11:39.000 | Yes.

00:11:40.000 | Right.

00:11:41.000 | And I'd say, you mentioned the word stability, and that's really a key.

00:11:44.680 | So if they have close friends they've had for 10, 20, 30 years, that's a really good

00:11:50.240 | sign.

00:11:52.360 | Bad signs are, "I don't want you talking to my family, they're evil people, they'll say

00:11:57.840 | terrible things about me, you can't trust them, they'll end up, they'll turn on you,

00:12:03.200 | they'll hate you," all this stuff.

00:12:04.840 | "You can't even ever talk to my, I can't even let you know who my family is and what their

00:12:10.120 | emails and phone numbers are."

00:12:12.320 | Oh goodness.

00:12:13.320 | That's a warning sign.

00:12:14.320 | Yeah.

00:12:15.320 | Definite warning sign.

00:12:16.320 | Because everyone has conflict with family members at some level, but you would hope

00:12:19.960 | that one would feel comfortable allowing you to interact with their family.

00:12:25.520 | Yeah.

00:12:26.520 | And if your family's really difficult, introduce your partner to your family and let them see,

00:12:31.320 | "This is a difficult family and this is why I had to distance from them," because a lot

00:12:35.720 | of people, to be healthy, do have to get some more distance.

00:12:39.680 | But it's the secretiveness, it's the, just secrets in general are not a good thing for

00:12:46.160 | relationships.

00:12:49.080 | That's the biggest piece that's missing in a way, compared to 50 years ago when people

00:12:54.840 | knew.

00:12:55.840 | It was hard to have family secrets 50 years ago.

00:12:59.640 | Well, even though people may be all over the internet, you might really know their secrets.

00:13:05.840 | And that's what you need to find out.

00:13:07.480 | Yeah.

00:13:08.480 | Yeah.

00:13:09.480 | Yeah.

00:13:10.480 | Yeah.

00:13:11.480 | Yeah.

00:13:11.480 | (upbeat music)

00:13:14.060 | (upbeat music)

How to Identify Toxic People & Partners Early | Bill Eddy & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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