A Clinical Psychologist Explains How To Tell If You're The 'Difficult One' In Your Relationship

It's easy to point fingers in a relationship, especially when things feel tense or unresolved. But figuring out whether you're the "difficult one" in your relationship starts with looking at your own patterns, not just your partner's behavior.

This is not a pejorative, insulting term, but it’s a shorthand way to express a very real difference. 

The "difficult" partner is the one who is more opinionated, more sensitive, more dramatic, more argumentative, more passionate, and so forth. 

They are more openly dissatisfied with their relationship and, therefore, are the partner who initiates the search for a couples counselor. 

Gabriel Ponton / Unsplash+

Problems emerge in the following situations:

1. When the difficult partner refuses to admit they are difficult or to recognize a pattern in their behavior (e.g., a history of volatile relationships) and/or their actual position on the normal distribution of sensitivity/difficulty
2. When the non-difficult partner acts like a saint and as though they have zero issues at all, just because they aren’t classically “difficult.”
3. When the non-difficult partner refuses to believe that he picked his difficult partner for many conscious and subconscious reasons, including aspects of their “difficult” behavior

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Non-“difficult” people do not usually do these things that their difficult partners do:

1. Hang up the phone
2. Yell
3. Cry
4. Express dramatic anger or sadness
5. Take risks
6. Call out of work sick unless they are almost dead
7. Have up and down moods

They often, though, have these failings:

1. They are not as creative as their partners
2. They are scared to rock the boat
3. Their risk aversion may be paralyzing
4. They don’t express as many positive emotions
5. They are less passionate and intense romantically
6. They may be emotionally avoidant
7. They are workhorses who think nobody will love them if they don’t excel at tasks and take things off their partners’ plates

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In a post about pairing stable men with sensitive women, I describe a best-case scenario in which each partner recognizes their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as their partner's. But, this healthy objectivity is predicated on the sensitive/difficult partner being open about how they can be difficult, for better (“intense”) or worse (“insane”). 

My classic post, "Mr. Perfect and his Crazy Wife," elucidates what happens when this dynamic becomes toxic and both partners deny their contributions to marital discord. 

If you are the more difficult partner, own it. 

Be appreciative of ways that your partner helps and protects you from irritation, sadness, physical stress, and things not going your way. These ways often include: doing more chores especially when you’re tired/out of sorts, letting you sleep in, having the higher paid more boring job so you can self-actualize in your career, figuring out the finances because that stresses you out, letting you pick the TV show/restaurant/parenting philosophy/holiday ritual because you care a million times more than they do, and so forth.

If you are the non-difficult partner, you must get down off the cross immediately and not wallow in the martyrdom of how tough it is to have a partner who can be difficult to deal with. 

They have their strengths and are (or at least initially were) fascinating to you on some level, because they think and feel so deeply and engage with the world so differently than you do. They are often incisive, quick-thinking, passionate, creative, and deeply loving.

Use this post to spark a discussion with your significant other, whichever partner you are! 

If you’re the more difficult one, own that you can be hard to deal with. If you are the other partner, use this to reflect on how you can also be frustrating to deal with, even though you do not engage in histrionics. (You may engage in stonewalling, avoidance, condescension, and other annoying stuff.) 

The corollary of Socrates’ assertion that “The unexamined life is not worth living” is, in my experience, “The unexamined relationship leads to having to tell your boss that you need to block every Wednesday at 10 am for your Zoom couples counseling session.”

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Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice, Best Life Behavioral Health.