Why did I Ignore ALL the Red Flags?

“You know that you cause 95% of all of our problems, right?” he would often say… 

It started out differently, of course. But like always, I’d seen red flags in the beginning and chose to ignore them. I now know it was because I didn't believe that I was worthy of anything different but also, I’d never seen what a healthy relationship looked like before. You hear all the time that “couples fight”, controlling & jealous behaviours meant that he “must really love me” and well, this is the exact narrative I had embedded into my internal belief system. These stories felt normal and comfortable to me - “safe” even. 

I remember the first red flag. Early on in the relationship I witnessed a conversation that he was having with his mother. It quickly became heated to the point of him shouting at her, speaking to her like she was trash. I’ll never forget it becasue I specifically remember hearing a voice screaming in my mind saying “THIS IS EXACTLY HOW HE WILL SPEAK TO YOU TOO!”

You’ve probably guessed that it's exactly what happened. It was not the last time I chose to ignore my own strong (and incredibly accurate) intuition.

A short while into the relationship I felt the urge to go through his phone. I wasn't proud of it however, my spidey senses were tingling through my body. I opened his phone to see messages to other women that were wildly inappropriate for someone who claimed to be in a relationship with me. Although I confronted him, the young girl within me who was so desperate to be loved by a man chose to stay and “work it out”. This marked the true beginning of my complete insecure and unhealthy attachment to him.

I didn't journal for all the years we were together. Nothing; not one word written down. Journaling had always been my safe space. It's where I can be my truest self and where I can dump all of the things that are in my head, and the feelings that weigh heavy on my chest are all written on blank pages. I like to read them again from time to time; to see how far I've come, how much I've grown, what lessons I'm STILL learning. I look for any patterns and behaviours that I can work on improving or simply let go of. I cant explain it but it just never felt safe to have my thoughts and feelings recorded where he might (more like would have) go looking for them. 

All of this behaviour seemed so normal to me; betrayal, manipulation & other emotional abuse tactics were what I had both experienced & witnessed in relationships all around me. It wasn't until this relationship ended that I realised how problematic the behaviour was. I was no longer clouded by any feel good hormones or the desire to be perceived as being in a happy & healthy relationship (cracks were showing anyways) so, the excuses i was making for him became tired.

It wasn’t easy to unlearn these beliefs around relationships, but ultimately that inner work and healing process is what led me to change the narrative I’d been following my entire life. 

No more excuses for poor behaviour, no more believing that I’m undeserving of great love, no more living in denial and NO MORE IGNORING RED FLAGS!!