Relationships Can Blind Us From Seeing The Red Flags

Learning to take notice of the red flags waving around us takes effort, intention, practice and humbleness.  It’s easy to think that only the younger generations fall prey to this illusion, but in reality it can follow us over the years if we don’t learn and grow wiser over time.  We think with age comes wisdom, but sometimes wisdom falls far behind.  This could be the person who keeps going from one bad relationship to the next, afraid to be alone. 

Finding Your Ally- Our biggest allies in navigating the red flags in our relationships is usually our family.  They are supposed to have our back and have only our best interest at heart.  When you have a healthy family, bringing your date to family gatherings is priority.  Seeing how your date gets along with your family and if they encourage you to spend time with your family, shows you a lot about that person.  This simple area can reveal many beginnings of huge red flags.  If your date starts saying you shouldn’t go to the party, or that they are doing you a favor by coming with you and supporting your family relationships.  If they make you feel guilty for wanting to spend time with your family, then these are big red flags that they are trying to separate and isolate you from your support group.  Now this is all assuming that you have a healthy family.  Meaning, your family gatherings and visits are as often as you’d like, but not to the codependent stage.  And that your family wants and challenges you to be and live the best version of yourself.  After a healthy family visit, we should feel good about ourselves and encouraged.  Now this doesn’t mean that we won’t disagree with our family in some areas, but overall they always tell us the truth and want to help us succeed in whatever goal we set for ourselves.  Now if your family is not an example of healthy, then the red flag starts to show in the opposite way.   If you are dating a good person and are in a healthy relationship, then an unhealthy family may be upset that they are no longer the center of your world, that your relationship with your date takes up more of your time and focus.  As with anything, the scale of codependency on one side and neglect on the other side is quite a range.  Finding the middle ground in many things will keep the scale balanced to a healthy level.  As much as a family should value and strive to spend time together often, having days in between to live the rest of your life and do other things that also bring you enjoyment is important too.  Finding your ally may not lead you to your family if they are on the toxic side of the scale.  Perhaps it is a friend or mentor instead.  Someone who over time has showed you they are going to tell you the truth even if you can’t see it yet.  Whoever is in your corner, if they check all the boxes of what it means to be a good ally then it is important to really hear them and their feedback on your date.

The Gut Tells All- Intuition is something we are born with and is supposed to get honed the older we get.  Unfortunately as we grow up we can get discouraged from listening to it.  The two things about a gut feeling is, it’s not always logical and many times we might get it wrong.  These two things can make others doubt our gut feeling and even worse make us doubt it.  If we stop listening to our intuition it can lead us down a hard path of trial and error and to things that could have been avoided.  We all hear the stories of the person who had a feeling that they shouldn’t get on the plane for their flight and so they postponed it one day.  Only to find out later that their original plane crashed.  It would be amazing if it was always crystal clear like this for us, but most of the time we never know if following our gut or not actually made a difference.  Perhaps crossing the street when we got a weird vibe and taking a different path kept us from getting mugged or from nothing at all.  We may never know, but what we do know is that whenever possible we believed and supported our intuition.  Listening to our allies and our gut can help us start to see the red flags a lot sooner.

Time Reveals All Things- In any relationship we always start out with our best foot forward.  Nobody wants their faults to be on display, especially when we are dating.  Most people go out of their way to be extra kind, funny, forgiving, understanding, supportive, patient, sexy, and romantic.  No one wants to showcase their weaknesses.  We don’t want to scare away our date so we try extra hard to hide our flaws.  This is only natural and we all know deep down where we are weak and need to change.  Maybe we are impatient, lazy, messy, always late, drink too much, poor with our finances, have wandering eyes, lose our temper, etc.  The longer you are dating someone, the more likely these bad habits and attributes will begin to show themselves and the red flags begin to creep out.  Instead of listening to our intuition and our allies, we might make excuses for that person.  They didn’t mean to do that and were just having an off day.  They are under a lot of stress.  They seem sorry and say they’re going to change.  Many of these red flags can be revealed throughout our dating relationship over time, place, and situation.  How do they behave around our family, friends, work, and at the restaurant?  How do they handle arguments, disagreements, alcohol, and stress?  How do they handle their finances?  Are they in debt, do they have a healthy savings, do they change jobs often?  What are their habits?  Do they make excuses and blame others or take ownership when something goes wrong?  It takes a couple years to really get to know someone in all of these areas.  Most of these situations can be created and are not by chance.  It requires you to spend a lot of time talking and less time being intimate. 

Don’t Do It Like The Movies- This relationship pattern is told over and over in many romantic comedies.  Boy meets girl, they hit it off, jump into sex, several weeks, months or years go by and then a “Big Topic” comes up that is a deal breaker.  Something so obvious that they should have talked about by the fifth date.  They realize they have different goals or beliefs in a major area like wanting to get married or have kids.  Now this might make for a funny twist in a movie, but in real life this just means we have spent many months or years deep into a relationship just to find we are not on the same page on the big stuff.  What are the “Big Topics”?  These include faith, finances, work/career, goals, kids, parenting styles & discipline, values, relationships with your families, sharing a past trauma, and revealing any secrets.  We aren’t getting any younger so why wait to start having these real conversations.  The whole point of dating is to find your forever mate.  If your dating just to pass time and have fun, then you are missing the whole point and the value of the dating process.  Part of finding the right person for you is becoming the best version of yourself.  Being single, growing and working on yourself first is what will lead you to a great spouse when the time is right.

What To Do When A Red Flag Shows Itself- As we go throughout our lives and the relationships that weave in and out of it.  We are faced with a decision.  When a red flag pokes its head out of the shadowy corners we can ignore it or address it.  Ignoring it may seem better in the moment but its like a splinter that will never heal over if left in.  No matter the red flag or the person it surrounds we have a few choices.  Leave the relationship (friend, job, church, or distance ourselves from them) or in a more personal relationship like dating we can to bring it to the forefront and give the person a chance to truly change if they want to keep us around.  If you are past the dating and well into marriage it gets trickier.  There really is only a few areas that could warrant a divorce.  Physical, mental and emotional abuse, addiction and adultery.  The first one should be non-negotiable, but the last two are dependent on what you are willing to deal with and where your breaking point is. 

Instead of looking for ways to avoid seeing the red flags in our relationships, we should be looking for ways to reveal them faster.  We all deserve to be in healthy, strong, and supportive relationships.  Ones that leaves us feeling loved, valued and respected.  By requiring this from others we also give them the chance to grow and become better too.

There Are Many Fish In The Sea-  As much as we may hate to hear this phrase, it really is a great visual.  The Sea is endless and all encompassing.  Because many of us live in our own little ecosystem and daily patterns, our sphere of people around us may feel small.  But this doesn’t mean that we have to settle for a bad relationship full of red flags.  It is better to be alone then to be in a bad relationship.  If we don’t let go of the bad we are clinging onto then we can’t reach out for the good floating by when it presents itself.  This might mean it is time to expand our sphere, try a new class or hobby.  When we work on ourselves, God has a way of bringing us exactly what is right for us.