Disclaimer: Partners in Men’s Health and Tar Tales — Change for Children.
No one goes into a relationship wanting a partner who is mean, manipulative, and controlling. In most cases, the partner seems fine in the begging. They may be rough around the edges, but the good sometimes outweighs the bad.
Then, their true selves begin to show. They become plain insufferable! You’re soon in a relationship with someone for a long time, and ending things is just hard.
While you can’t always see the real face of your partner until a long time has passed, there could be subtle red flags early in the relationship that may indicate that they are not relationship material. You should reconsider whether or not you want to devote your life to them. Here are some red flags to look out for. Seeking professional help from an online therapist (PMH)can be effective in talking you through red flags in a relationship.
You Must Justify Their Bad Behavior
Your relationship shouldn’t consist of writing apologies for your partner. Sometimes, there is a reason for the undesired behavior, but often you are trying to take something inexcusable and use mental gymnastics to excuse it. If you find yourself doing this, it is a red flag.
Your Family And Friends Don’t Like Them!
The cliché of the overly critical parent has made some people brush off any criticisms family members may have of their partner. Still, sometimes, they might be onto something. If you generally respect the opinions of your family or friends, it’s worth examining how likely it is that they’re completely wrong about disliking your significant other.
This isn’t to say that you should break up with your partner just because your parent or friend doesn’t like your partner. However, you should listen to their words and try to look at them objectively, as your family and friends could be hinting at smaller yellow flags that could become one major red flag down the line if you ignore them.
They Don’t Want To Take Responsibility
No one has their life fully together, especially if the two of you are young. If your partner is in a bad situation, such as not having a job, it doesn’t mean they are not worthy of having a romantic relationship with you. However, if they are always making every excuse under the sun as to why they haven’t had a job yet or won’t change another problem they have, they may not be worth dating and could be a deal breaker. You’re in a relationship, not babysitting. A lack of accountability is always a relationship red flag!
They Just Can’t Apologize
One of the cornerstones of a good relationship is apologizing and compromising. Couples will get into fights or be wrong about things, and apologizing is a great way to hold accountability and help repair the problems you will inevitably face.
However, if your partner won’t ever admit they were wrong or apologize for something they blatantly did, then this may be a sign of a bad relationship. Some people have a hard time admitting fault, which can make your relationship’s future more complicated.
How can the two of you grow if one refuses to admit their flaws?
What To Do When You Experience These Red Flags?
We are all flawed people, and your partner will likely have some flaws or traits you don’t like. If you experience a few red flags, it may not necessarily be a reason for you to cut ties just yet. They may not be aware of their behavior, and what you perceive as a red flag could be an honest mistake and not deliberate. If they’re willing to make a change, they will spend time listening and trying to improve their behavior. If they get aggressive and attend therapy just to break up then maybe it’s time to end the relationship and try to find someone who does want to grow with you.
1. Know Your Boundaries
Trust your gut if you think you’re in an emotionally (verbal or psychological) abusive relationship. Know when it’s time for your partnership to end. Certain circumstances are intolerable, and a deal breaker and these relationship red flags are one of them.
2. Watch Out For Manipulation
Some people want to manipulate you. Overtly verbal or emotional abuse is wrong. You could be spending energy trying to fix something that will stay broken. Some people don’t give others respect, and that’s an issue and one of the most common red flags in a relationship.
Sometimes manipulation might not appear negative on the surface, however. Love bombing is a common strategy used in unhealthy relationships by manipulative and abusive partners, too.
You need to focus on your mental health, and a person who negatively wields power over you is not healthy. Unfortunately, some people are out to hurt others. You can find someone who treats you well and doesn’t have anger management issues or manipulate your feelings for their gain. If you’ve told someone multiple times to stop doing the behavior and they don’t listen to your boundary, that’s a problem. It can even involve silent treatment! A manipulative person lacks integrity, and they might not even realize what they’re doing to you, but their excuses do not justify behavior that makes you feel bad about yourself.
Speak Up!
It can be difficult to speak up when you feel unheard. Some people are focused on their voices and forget to listen to others. If you’re in a relationship where your partner isn’t listening and lacks self-awareness, it’s okay to point out that you have things to say. If you advocate for yourself, you will probably feel more empowered. It can contribute to your personal growth. If you find that your partner brushes you off every time you stand up for yourself, that’s a red flag that something isn’t right. It’s crucial to speak up for yourself.
Everybody has a story to share. That is why we created the TAR Tales website, where you can share your experiences with the rest of our community and help us raise awareness of the victims of domestic abuse. We invite you to speak up and share your survival and recovery stories. Why? Because it is beneficial for your healing and will become the foundation of international public health, educational, and awareness campaign.
Sharing stories is the only way we can connect as humans.
Learning more about someone and their story enables us to understand them on a different level and form a deeper connection. For those of you who are struggling to open up, remember:
Safety is not the absence of the threat, but the presence of connection.
Guilt Isn’t a Reason to Stay.
Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.
Mila’s articles cover clinical and experience-based standpoints on topics: Parental Alienation, Narcissism, Malicious Parent Syndrome, Stepparenting and Shared Parenting in TAR situations where children are involved. She provides practical, vulnerable, and real-life examples to help men recover and overcome their fears. She will help you heal: one article at a a time. She is also a Co-Founder of nonprofit organization TAR NETWORK that focuses on victims of PA: children, adults, and families. Please check the organizations which are still underdevelopment here:
https://partnersinmenshealth.com/
https://tartales.org
If you wish to write and share your stories and get in touch with Mila please contact her.
Get in touch, subscribe or follow and let’s talk here https://medium.com/@milena-koljensic
Hello Milena:
I was married to a man for 36 years who did all you list in your article and worse. He crushed my skull, attempted to strangle me, administered countless facial bone breaks and black eyes, serial cheated, slandered me to give himself public justification for cheating, made my self worth zero so that holding down a worthwhile position for my career advancement became impossible, did not protect me from others’ disrespect, humiliated me in public, flirted with other women when in my presence while neglecting to introduce me, manipulated me into believing that all his problems were my fault, never took responsibility for any action no matter how morally repugnant, cruel, or against our marriage vows or untrue his lies about me and his so called jokes at my expense were designed to show me in a bad light. He was a pathological liar and he gave me oral cancer from a sexually transmitted disease that he never admitted to contracting while in our 25th year of marriage. He used my power of health and convinced my surgeon that he should lie about the pathology and tell me it was benign or I might get violent. He was apparently sleeping with the nurse in charge of my case and told her I was an addict so during recovery in spring 2022 the pain medication given was not sufficient in strength or quantity. I had to beg another practitioner to provide enough for the rest of my recovery. The 35th year, after telling him that if he did not want to be with me as my partner and husband in the manner he had promised originally, then i certainly did not want to be with him in this one way stream of unconditional love and forgiveness any longer. I actually asked for a divorce in October 2017 and by July 2022 after dozens of chances given for him to treat me with the minimum, respect, he attempted to kill me for a full hour with a gun and I called 911. While giving our address to the dispatcher, he shot himself and an hour later died despite extraordinary effort by EMTs. I am nearly certain he slashed one of my tires on my vehicle prior to a long hundreds mile journey to another state in late May 0f 2022. The onslaught of terror this year prior to his suicide was brought on by my reactive abuse, a common occurrence of C-PTSD survivors that renders the fight or flight state in us nearly always active and I began yelling at him and treating my now monstrous spouse like he had treated me for three and a half decades minus the violence. He made recordings and took photos to post on social media of me at my worst and obviously edited out all of his purposeful baiting and attacking of me to make people believe that I was a demon and he the innocent victim. I saved his career, kept him from spending time in prison, and protected him always from anyone who was foolish enough to say a negative word to me regarding his behavior. I told no one except a sister-in-law and a therapist about the abuse. We saw many marriage counselors and every time he would lie and deny any fault or behavior of his and make complete and total false statements regarding me including and always that I was mentally ill and yes, I was depressed and confused and for many years believed the marriage failure and turmoil were all my fault. I did everything except his job as a fire fighter/engineer, the same as the day he started and 30 years later they paid him to leave before his full retirement by giving him the time. I wore second hand clothes, had nothing of value except 12 place settings of silver given as a wedding gift to me in my first marriage to the father of my children. One afternoon in our 7th year together. he took a rifle butt to the whole set that I was showing to my youngest son and destroyed it by beating on it so that mangled is an understatement of the condition when he finished. When in 2019 my oldest son committed suicide, he used that fact against me every time we argued and when I told him to never do it again he continued until I began telling him that my son’s death was his fault due to the horrible example of manhood he demonstrated during Matthew’s youth. He finally stopped telling me it was my fault. Looking back four months after his death, I cannot fathom why he married me. He was my knight in shining armor in the beginning. He presented to the rest of the world as a charming, good looking 71 year old hero and retired public servant who was a multi-talented renaissance man of this century. Inside our house and vehicles, he was almost always cruel, scoffing, mocking, gaslighting, denigrating and dishonest. He would sense my distance when I wanted to leave the marriage and was making a plan and turn on that lovable, gentleman who was thoughtful, generous and sexually magnetic just in time to make me believe that I had made a big deal out of nothing and consequently justify his abuse as something he could not help, etc. That is how I spent the final 8 years. I made excuses about why he used sex as a weapon, withholding my basic needs as well as love, attention, affection, appreciation, and allowance from me. By total chance, I found some Facebook pages about abusers and began seeing the farcical life living with a very disturbed man had actually been and there seems to be a type of script these men act out in marriages. Once aware, I couldn’t unsee the real child who pretended to be a man. The entitlement, the inability to feel for anyone else, the acting only in others’ interests if there was a benefit for him, the manipulation, the image polishing to make sure he was seen as someone much more altruistic, friendly, charming, and accomplished than the reality. My hyper-vigilance became a gift as I began to discern his true intentions and lies about nearly everything. I knew what he would do or say next as the patterns of behavior he used without consequence to get his insatiable appetites and deviant sexual needs met by all his partners outside the marriage without me knowing. I began to flashback and recall incidences when I had kept quiet in the name of peace and harmony. My anger as those realizations crystallized became a giant tidal wave of rage and when triggered holding back about his past lies and deceptions became a monster in me that could not be controlled. My acute vocabulary pinned him to the wall each time he lied, attempted to humiliate, acted like a philandering ass in public, or any infraction at all while he had mistreated me for an extended recent period. I was ruthless as I shared my knowledge of current observations and past discoveries and intuitions with the most brutal assessment possible. This me was a woman unrecognizable to myself. When I see an organization devoted exclusively to protecting men’s rights, my inner guide becomes agitated. All my 65 years, men were brutally abusive to me from age 5 until now. People who have never met me previously and knew my spouse judged me and made rude, unwarranted comments upon introduction. Some men who knew him even abusively addressed me in public and despite years long acquaintanceship have not done so to any other member or volunteer of the club. Men have always had the advantage and the power in any male/female association. If the courts and the law caught up and punished these con-men and grifters and violent men, perhaps women would not be labeled poor relationship material by a society that fails to acknowledge the pernicious and wide ranging damage done to the mothers raising our children and the examples shown by deviant criminal fathers to make their offspring such unsuitable mate and partner material.
a CHILD OF GOD IS WORTHY OF lOVE , PLEASE BELIEVE WHEN SOMEONE SAYS NO ONE LIKES OR LOVES YOU, GOD LOVES YOU… AND SAYING THAT TO SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT MEAN YOUR WORKING WITH THE WRONG SIDE , I BET THATS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO GOD AND GOOD PEOPLE . ive noticed when groups of people who have done bad things , diffrent things , but who are they to judge witch are worse and what to give there focus on, seeing nothing they do as of being as deserving of what they themselves are doing to an individual…. thats the sign of what all stories in the bible are based on as jesus had groups of bad people who throw rocks and made no sesnse in there meaningless bullies , as of course no one but him will look more at that behavior im certian but him so trust me dont be one of them… you know thats the thing you can always see .. max heuy and louie, they can do no wrong but really do they do anything right if they dont let others do what they are ment to do with out the interference of there worthless judgements… be ware someone can be alone after an abuser destroys there life… its the one person who doesnt use the “volnerablitly : to there advantage that will be remembered… choose right and let god make the choice not some bad person who cant see how they direct or produced no more than proglonging abuse and for there own benifit it aparantly is ignored as no one gets more abuse as a victom does from the ones who claim they are helping god…. are they just helping themselves of course god knows…. the whole story so trust your not alone and dont let bad people keep you from trying to change when they want you to stay the same, usually with the benifit for themselves.. god bless the only person th at matters is the person trying to change and do something after all the abusers keep you alone …..dont worry god knows who and whats blocking your true path.. you willl find the light even with darkness …… working in the shadows they rob they rape and they keep you down and with out that , you know you would be going on and up … and god knows there working for themselves not being able to see there own huge damage they caused… big problem that isnt for you to judge or solve …. try to believe , not be a follower you know it was wrong but they cant be the judge when no one can judge themselves … they usually everyone as a group……they look for someone seperated and alone… a predator does that and thats pathatic and nothing special so dont worry what a pradator girl/group/man or club think … god doesnt inform them on his plan for you so who the hell are they to even tell you what is possible trust me they dont even know and if they think god tells them thants even more ridiculous hes not there god alone… as they usually say…. hes yours to …. and thats alone just like when your born and die… such is the truth… its not ment to be a social or even part of someoneses …directive to know what is for others ….trust me these are not things you have to share with others if to know your day to be good is everyday… if its the first or the last its non of there buisness…amen