Looking back, it’s often so clear just how unhealthy a relationship really was. But if we are in the middle of it, we often do not want to accept red flags. Why that can be.
Even though terms like toxic or red flags are used in an almost inflationary way when it comes to relationships today, there are a few points that most psychologists and therapists agree are problematic. This includes, for example, unhealthy dynamics within the partnership such as the need to control or strong jealousy, aggressive or avoidant conflict behavior or the feeling that we have to pretend.
And while our friends or family may point out such difficult relationship dynamics to us, we often cannot (or do not want to) see them ourselves. But why are red flags so naturally visible from the outside, while we ourselves, at least as long as we are still in the relationship, cannot recognize them as such?
Psychology: Why We Often Ignore Red Flags
1. Good faith
Optimism is an important and healthy quality. However, this also has its limits, because in relationships too much optimism can be fatal. If your partner is often uncontrollably aggressive in arguments, it doesn’t help much to convince yourself that “it’ll get better on its own at some point”. In most cases it won’t. You can try talking to your counterpart about it and they might be genuinely willing to work on the mistakes. Or at some point you have to realize that this relationship cannot be healthy in the long run.
2. The rose-colored glasses
How quickly we want to and are able to get involved with someone new varies greatly. Some people need months before they feel ready for a kiss, others would like to spend every free minute with their new love after just a few days. However, if we rush into a relationship too quickly, this usually leads to a problem: when we are newly in love, we cannot think clearly. Because of hormones, we wear the proverbial rose-colored glasses – and are therefore blind to the mistakes of our sweetheart. If we make big decisions in this irrational phase, such as a shared apartment, it will be difficult for us to recognize red flags as such later in the relationship.
3. Fear of being alone
When we uncover problematic behaviors and realize that the relationship is unhealthy, it often ends in a breakup. And for some people, that idea is worse than the fear of being mistreated. The motto is: better a dysfunctional relationship than none at all. This fear can lead us to ignore red flags because we see the risk of otherwise being alone and even lonely as greater than “a few conflicts.”
4. Lack of self-confidence
It takes a certain amount of trust in ourselves to recognize unhealthy behaviors in the relationship – and then act accordingly. Thought patterns like “Of course I’m just exaggerating, it can’t be that bad” or “I must have misunderstood that” often make it difficult for us to admit to ourselves when something is wrong. If we don’t trust our own perception and assessment sufficiently, we tend to look for the fault in ourselves rather than recognizing the red flags in our counterpart.
Sources used: psychcentral.com, psychologytoday.com