Bait & Switch
Saving Your Relationship After Incredible Romance Turns Into Exhausting Chaos
Some romantic relationships simply go sour. This book is not for them. Instead, it is for people stuck in high-conflict relationships. This is the relationship with a tantalizing beginning complete with charm, fun, ease, sensuality, and sexiness, that abruptly turns into one of confusion, dread, despair, and even violence. There is no good exit strategy or staying strategy.
In sales terminology, this type of relationship would be considered bait and switch.
People with high-conflict personalities (HCPs) have a different operating system in romantic relationships. They unwittingly crave and work hard to be in one, but sabotage it. Some may have a form of Borderline Personality Disorder. The other partner enters into the relationship because it is the best, but eventually lands in lengthy and expensive battles over anything and everything.
In this first-of-its-kind book, Megan Hunter addresses the patterns and thoughts from both sides without placing blame or casting judgment. Based on hundreds of interviews with people in high-conflict relationships, seeing the destruction of families in her policy work in family law, and feedback from lawyers, psychologists, and mediators who work with these couples, it is an inside look at "his" thoughts and "her" thoughts, their unconscious interactions, and step-by-step staying or exiting strategies.
Megan Hunter is a leading expert and speaker on high-conflict personalities who trains legal and mental health professionals. After helping shape policies to improve family law through the Arizona Supreme Court, she co-founded the High Conflict Institute with author Bill Eddy, who developed the high-conflict personality theory.
Megan Hunter is a leading expert and international speaker on the topic of high-conflict relationships -- the most difficult of "difficult" relationships. After many years training family court judges, lawyers, mediators and mental health professionals, she's added the focus of helping people in high-conflict relationships learn to manage them or strategies to exit with less collateral damage. She has trained professionals across the U.S., Canada and extensively throughout Australia.
Megan is CEO and founder of Life Unhooked, a training and consulting company; Unhooked Books, an online bookstore specializing in conflict resolution; and publisher at High Conflict Institute Press. She was co-founder of the High Conflict Institute along with author and speaker, Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. who developed the high-conflict personality theory. Megan developed the concept of the Institute after 13 years in family law as the Family Law Specialist with the Arizona Supreme Court, and Child Support Manager of the Dawes County Attorney’s Office in Nebraska.
Megan has trained legal, mental health, business, leadership groups, universities and other professionals across the United States, Canada and Australia in the area of high-conflict legal disputes.
Her background includes policy formation, research and program development regarding court processes child support protocols and parent education programs, as well as developing expertise regarding international child custody disputes. As staff to the Arizona Legislature’s Domestic Relations and Child Support Committees she gained a broad understanding of the issues facing both families and professionals in family law.
She holds an M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix and a Bachelor’s of Business and Economics from Chadron State College, Chadron, Nebraska. She served as President of the Arizona Chapter of the Association of Family & Conciliation Courts, the Arizona Family Support Council and Nebraska Child Support Enforcement Association. More recently, she served 5 years on the Arizona Board of Psychologist Examiners and as Vice President of the non-profit organization, Personality Disorder Awareness Network.
She was given the Outstanding Contribution Award from the Arizona Association of Family & Conciliation Courts in 2010 and the Friend of Psychology Award from the Arizona Psychological Association in 2006.
She lives in Arizona and is married with three children and five stepchildren.
