What If You Were the
Red Flag?
93. What If You Were the Red Flag?
Do you often think it’s your partner’s fault, that you “just” want to be with him because you love him?
Your partners rarely meet your needs in relationships and you wonder why?
You feel like a victim in your relationships and you suffer from it?
You meet men who tend to run away from you and you don’t know why?
This episode 93, with the perspective of the 600 people I’ve accompanied, is not going to please you.
What if you were the red flag?
Definition of a Red Flag
There are several definitions of a red flag.
For me a red flag is when the person is not capable of entering into a healthy relationship, it’s not just the criteria you don’t want in a partner but rather signs that the person has toxic behavior or is toxic and is not capable of relating without doing work on themselves.
For me there are 6 criteria that make a person a red flag:
- They blame their exes for their past relationships not working out.
- They impose their choices
- They put you down or criticize you, even in a teasing tone
- They try to change you
- Their actions are not aligned with their words (lies)
- You have to justify your behavior or else you are restricted in your freedom of action
Concrete Examples of Behaviors That Are Red Flags for Me
- You tell how you were a victim of disrespect from your partners without talking about your share of the wrong.
- You show up at his place without an appointment to “make” a surprise or because you “feel like seeing him”. Except the surprise is repeated a bit too often and encroaches on his private life.
- You’d like him to make efforts in the relationship and comment in a passive-aggressive way when he fails to make them, “no I’m not angry” or “it’s just the minimum to expect in a relationship, I thought you knew”.
- He clearly said he wants a casual fling and you keep trying to convince him otherwise.
- If he can’t see you one evening, you ask him to justify why he can’t.
Here you realize that it easily happens to everyone to be a red flag or to have toxic behaviors.
What makes you a real red flag is the accumulation, the repetition of these behaviors.
❤️ Watch my webinar on how to finally be happy in love!
Use Your Red Flag Behaviors to Grow in Relational Capacity
- If you feel like a victim in your past relationships, understand what you repeat and how you may have contributed to this result (your 50%): was it by saying nothing, by accepting the other’s behavior, by not acting if it continued?
- You can’t impose in relationships but you can have an indirect influence by acting in alignment with what you truly want, for example by having an in-depth discussion about the status of the relationship, how often you’d like to see the other, etc…. I talk about it in more detail in episode 5 Why you don’t get what you want in relationships.
- The other is not responsible for how you feel, if you feel frustration or anger because the other is not doing enough, reacting to your anger by communicating aggressively won’t help you. Welcome this anger, be curious about its message and respond to the need behind it. Sometimes it will simply require inner work to change your perspective on the situation and sometimes it will require you to communicate your needs more directly before you get into this state of anger or frustration. I talk about it in more detail in episode 12 Emotional responsibility.
- You don’t have the power to change the other. It’s your responsibility to ask yourself what you want in a relationship and as a partner and to choose a partner who naturally has what you are looking for.
By changing your ways of doing things you will change your results in love. This is what we do in Opening up to love.
We All Have Toxic Behaviors
As I was saying with Catherine la Psy in episode 13 it’s almost inevitable to have no toxic behaviors in a relationship. At some point you will inevitably position yourself as a persecutor, victim or rescuer or simply be more of a burden than a bonus for a relationship.
It’s normal because the couple is a space of healing.
The Idea Is to Become Aware When It Happens to You, to Choose Again and to Repair.
In this sense the other’s feedback can be a gem for becoming aware. And on top of that it lets you experience that you don’t need to be perfect to be loved, that you can grow and heal through the relationship.
Ask Yourself What You Bring to the Relationship
What type of partner are you? Does it match the standards you want in a relationship?
Here are 5 aspects to help you introspect:
- Do you take responsibility for your garden/cake?
- Have you taken responsibility for your happiness, needs or are you waiting for the other to fill these gaps for you? In other words you don’t wait for the other to meet all your needs. You take care of your needs yourself like a healthy cake.
- Are you emotionally responsible and do you manage not to take personally everything the other says or does /doesn’t say or doesn’t do personally?
- Do you communicate your needs or do you wait for the other to guess them?
- Do you embellish the other’s life with attentions, recognition of what he does for you, compliments? The purpose of the couple is to be a cherry on a cake, a bonus.
- How do you welcome the other?
- Do you create an environment of love and safety where the other can confide without fear of being judged? Are you able to welcome/understand the other’s perspective/emotions even if you don’t agree?
- Are you ready to fully listen to the other and to discover him with curiosity?
- Do you cultivate love or fear in your couple? (Episode 7 for more details)
- Are you ready to grow through the relationship?
- Are you ready to receive his feedback about you or your behavior?
- Do you see conflicts in the relationship as an opportunity to grow personally?
- Give him the benefit of the doubt about his intentions and clarify if needed? Do you have a team spirit with your partner or are you in competition?
Here I invite you to look at what you are doing currently and where you want to go to see where you can make your relational capacities grow.
For you
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Going further
If you’d like to dive deeper into the subject and identify your own love patterns, there’s my book S’ouvrir à l’amour available in all bookstores.
And if you want to do the work on your love patterns through the body and transform your love life, there’s the program Opening up to love. You can take the Day of the Past option, a day of Somatic Deprogramming: psycho-corporeal work to deprogram nervous system automatisms and reprogram new relational reflexes.
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Éditions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir à l’amour“, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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