High-Conflict Couples | Couples Therapy | Regina Abayev, JD, LMFT
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High-Conflict Couples

When the conflict
has become
the relationship

High-conflict is more than frequent fighting. It is a state in which reactivity, escalation, and contempt have become the dominant pattern between two people, and neither person knows how to get out of it.

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High-conflict couples therapy Hermosa Beach
What High-Conflict Actually Is

More than
frequent fighting

Most couples argue. High-conflict couples are caught in something different: a self-reinforcing cycle of escalation, reactivity, and contempt that feels impossible to interrupt. Every conversation becomes a battleground. Every attempt at resolution makes things worse. The relationship has organized itself around the conflict, and both people are exhausted by it.

Better listening skills are part of this work but they are not where it starts. High-conflict patterns run deeper: they involve how each person manages their own emotional world, how they take responsibility for their own behavior, and whether they are willing to do something genuinely different.

"Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the ability to navigate conflict without destroying the respect you have for each other."

— Regina Abayev, JD, LMFT

What Brings Couples Here

"Every conversation ends in a fight. We cannot get through a single discussion without it escalating."

"There is so much contempt between us. I do not know when we stopped treating each other with basic respect."

"We have tried everything and nothing seems to work. We keep ending up in the same place."

"We are separating but we still have to co-parent. We cannot keep doing this to each other or to our kids."

Whether you are trying to save the relationship or trying to get through a separation without more damage, the work is the same: breaking the cycle, taking responsibility for your own part in it, and building something more functional in its place.

The Patterns

What keeps the
cycle running

High-conflict couples are typically running one or more of these patterns. They feel like responses to provocation. They are also the fuel that keeps the conflict alive.

Pattern One
Escalation
A disagreement that cannot stay at its actual level. One comment leads to a louder one, which leads to a historical grievance, which leads to a full rupture. Neither person knows how to stop the climb once it has started. The original topic is long forgotten by the time the conversation ends.
Pattern Two
Contempt
Eye-rolling, dismissiveness, mockery, or a tone that communicates fundamental disrespect for the other person. Contempt is the single strongest predictor of relationship breakdown. It signals that one or both people have stopped seeing their partner as worthy of basic regard. It is one of the hardest patterns to shift and one of the most important.
Pattern Three
Stonewalling
Complete emotional shutdown during conflict. One partner leaves the conversation entirely, physically or emotionally, while the other pursues, escalates, or collapses. The person who shuts down experiences it as self-protection. Their partner experiences it as abandonment. The cycle repeats because nothing ever gets resolved.
Pattern Four
Criticism and Blame
Framing every conflict as evidence of the other person's character rather than a specific behavior. "You always" and "you never" replace specific complaints. The other person becomes the problem, not the dynamic. As long as both people are focused on what the other is doing wrong, nothing changes.
Pattern Five
Emotional Flooding
When the nervous system becomes so activated that rational thought and regulated behavior become temporarily impossible. Flooding is physiological. It explains why people say and do things in conflict that they cannot explain afterward. Learning to recognize and interrupt flooding is one of the first things this work addresses.
Pattern Six
Historical Grievance
Every current conflict becoming a referendum on everything that has ever gone wrong. Years of unaddressed resentment get pulled into every argument, making resolution impossible because the conversation is never actually about what it appears to be about. The backlog needs to be addressed directly before current conflicts can be resolved.

"Conflict is the beginning of consciousness. It is the moment where we stop projecting who we want our partner to be and start seeing who they actually are."

— Harville Hendrix

What This Work Actually Requires

More than learning
to communicate

Communication skills are part of this work, and they are built on a foundation that most couples have never addressed. High-conflict couples have usually tried communication-focused approaches and found that the skills disappear the moment the emotional temperature rises.

What actually changes high-conflict patterns is each person taking genuine responsibility for their own emotional world and behavior inside the relationship. Not waiting for the other person to change first. Not explaining why their behavior was provoked. Actually looking at what they are bringing to the dynamic and being willing to do something different.

That is hard work. It requires being challenged directly, which is what this practice does from the first session.

Emotional regulation before communication
A person who is flooded cannot listen, negotiate, or repair. We start with the physiology — learning to recognize activation, interrupt the escalation, and return to a regulated state before attempting any productive conversation.
Accountability without self-defense
Most people can acknowledge their behavior in the abstract. Acknowledging it in the moment, without immediately explaining or justifying it, is a different skill entirely. This is where the work lives, and it is where most couples have never been taken.
Owning your own emotional world
High-conflict couples often hold each other responsible for how they feel. The shift from "you made me feel this way" to "this is what I am feeling and this is what I need" is fundamental. Most people have never been helped to actually make that shift under pressure, and it requires direct clinical work to develop.
Addressing the backlog
Years of unaddressed resentment do not disappear. They contaminate every current conversation. Part of this work is structured processing of what has accumulated so that present-day conflicts can actually stay about the present.
Building toward something
De-escalation is a necessary first step toward the actual goal: a relationship in which both people feel respected, heard, and safe enough to be honest. That requires active work toward connection, which is where this work ends up.
What I Bring to This Work

Prior experience that
matters in the room

I spent years in high-stakes environments before becoming a therapist — as a structured finance lawyer and trained mediator, in rooms where the emotions were raw and the ability to maintain structure was the difference between a productive conversation and a complete breakdown. I bring that experience directly into the room with high-conflict couples.

It allows me to stay grounded when the session gets intense, to maintain structure when both people are activated, and to step into the conflict directly. When things escalate in the room, I do not back away from it. I use it. That is often where the most important work happens.

Combined with deep clinical training in the Gottman Method, Relational Life Therapy, and advanced mediation, that background gives me the range to help couples do something genuinely different, in the session and outside of it.

"We came in rough shape and were on the verge of separating. There was so much anger and resentment between us that the relationship had become toxic. Regina was incredible. She really held each of us accountable for our own behavior in the relationship and helped us work through the resentments each of us were carrying."

Couples Client

When You Are Separating

High-conflict does not end
when the relationship does

Deciding to separate does not resolve high-conflict patterns. For couples with children, shared financial assets, a business, or ongoing legal matters, the ability to function in the same space without the conflict destroying everything around it becomes the most important work there is.

Children
Children need both parents to function. When high-conflict patterns continue through a separation, children absorb the damage. This work helps parents separate their co-parenting relationship from their personal conflict so that children are protected from what is happening between the adults.
Shared Assets and Business
Untangling a shared financial life, a business, or significant assets requires both people to make clear-headed decisions at the moment when that is hardest. Having spent years in finance and law, and trained as a mediator, I understand what that complexity actually involves and can help couples navigate it without the conflict making every decision impossible.
Ending Without More Damage
Some relationships end. How they end matters. The damage caused during a high-conflict separation can follow both people, and their children, for years. This work helps couples find a way through that is as clean as possible given everything that has happened.

Two people who can disagree without destroying each other. That is what this work is building toward.

Begin the Work

The pattern can
be interrupted

This practice serves couples in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, the South Bay, and across California via telehealth. Intensives are available for couples in acute crisis.

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Other areas of couples work

Communication and Conflict Lack of Intimacy Betrayal and Infidelity Discernment Counseling Pre-Marital Counseling Co-Parenting and Divorce Substance Use Separation