Bait & Switch: Saving Your Relationship After Incredible Romance Turns Into Exhausting Chaos

by Megan Hunter

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.

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 11, 2014

About the author

Megan Hunter , MBA, is an author, speaker, and expert on high-conflict disputes and complicated relationships. She is CEO of Unhooked Media, a U.S.-based media company focused on relationship and conflict revolution through print, digital and the spoken word. She is publisher at High Conflict Institute Press and its imprint Unhooked Books and co-founder of the High Conflict Institute. She is a frequent guest on Sirius XM Satellite's The Doctor Show (psychiatry) with Dr. Michael Aronoff.

Megan trains legal, mental health, business, leadership groups, universities and other professionals across the U.S., Canada, South Africa and Australia. She has strong policy and judicial training experience during her tenure at the Arizona Supreme Court and as a member of the Arizona Board of Psychologist Examiners. She currently serves as project manager of the "We Got This" brand of the Black Sheep Project on the Advisory Board of the Personality Disorder Awareness Network.