Are these red flags?

[AChristmasFlag]

I met a woman on an online dating website last month, we are both women.

She seems great fun, is a martial arts instructor, settled responsible career working with rehabilitating people, a nicely kept home, travels the world in a camper van with a cute dog, quite attractive, she seems like a very appealing package and just the kind of person I might have hoped to meet. (Not concerned about that being identifying, absolutely certain she nor her friends read Mumsnet)

I am of course more interested in her character than the above surface trappings.

As we have talked more regularly and at length, I’ve learned some things about her that I would like some objective feed back on…

She mentions somehow or some way almost everyday that she experienced love and was very loved by her exs, but that she never felt the same degree of love for them, and she wanted to experience a passionate powerful love.

When I asked her what love meant to her, she said to love each other to the same level, and to feel the same excitement about that person 20 years later as you did day one.

She is 51.

She said that first time she felt such a passionate love was this past summer, when she met a woman she said she couldn’t build a real connection with, that she was aloof and distant and it was clear they did not feel the same way about each other. She said this woman nearly broke her and has shattered her self confidence for the first time.

I asked her if she perhaps had come to associate pain and longing with passionate love, and that perhaps it was more of a “the one that got away” situation, and that allowed her to project things on this woman that may or may not be true. She agreed that was “undoubtedly” the case, and that she had learned so much about herself.

She said she believed that experience was karma and she learned a lot about herself. She said she felt what it must have been like for her exs who she was not as passionate about and who she left, while they still loved her… because she needed something “spicy” and dislikes the stale routine that sets in after a few years.

I said how did your exs respond the the imbalance of love… she said that she was attentive and kind, and that was enough for them… but that she knows she can give more and be more - she mentioned she could be more romantic, organise surprises, that sort of thing.

I have seen several flags in this and want to stop this in its tracks before it has begun, AIBU?

I know of course that I can end things at any time for any reason, and I don’t need permissions from anyone… my only doubt is I have been very hurt a few times now, and I’m wondering if I am judging hastily before I’ve even really got to know someone, and she may have qualities I don’t know about yet… also, what people say, and who they are is often very different. I haven’t had much opportunity to see her behaviour to judge her by that instead.

It may be that she has these ideas because she has been born and raised in France, and that culture is certainly very different.

Just needing some reassurance and feedback, thank you Vipers!

She sounds fun and pleasant enough. I wouldn't call it a red flag as such but it depends what you want and need from life / your relationship and whether you're compatible.

It sounds like her expectations for a relationship would be difficult to maintain long term so if that's your desired end goal, maybe it doesn't sound like the relationship would end up going anywhere.

Probably fancies her though.

I don’t want somebody to tell me who and what they are, I want to decide myself. People who make grand pronouncements about their character and what kind of person they are set the alarm bells off with me, because every time I’ve encountered it before they’ve turned out to be difficult and self absorbed or mirroring.

Also, you make it clear what you’re looking for at the start, or if things start looking like they might go somewhere, you don’t constantly batter the other person over the head with what you want and how you didn’t get it with x or y, but you did with z. That’s just weird and manipulative. Getting down to that level of detail about past relationships is something you might do when you’re established and secure together, not in the preliminary feeling each other out and presenting your best self stage. Whoever said it screams triangulation is spot on I think

lastly, and honestly, listening to someone constantly Wang on about themselves is really boring. Does she demonstrate the same level of curiosity about you and your needs/wants? This is the trying to impress you stage when her awareness of how she comes across and her curiosity about you should be at its most acute. If your alarm bells are ringing now, at the time that she’s most attentive, it won’t get better, and clearly your bells are ringing because you’re posting here. Just be careful, especially if you attach easily.

and no, a campervan and a dog are definitely not uncommon among lesbians of this age, the woman that I’m talking to also has a dog and a campervan. 😂 The other stuff could be quite identifying though.

I'd throw this one back OP, so many red flags.

Why this fixation on past relationships? This is meant to be your time to get to know each other and have fun, not spend your days dissecting her previous relationships. I'm not one for this constant focus on the past. Yes, these are important conversations to have in context but it all sounds ridiculously overwrought.

She clearly has manic pixie dream girl energy. That's tiresome enough in your twenties but in your fifties?!

She seems to be training you to always feel on edge and inferior. She's literally telling you she's unlikely to like/love you as much as you will like/love her. My first reaction would be "get over yourself sweetheart!" And maybe watch fewer romcoms?!

And finally I'm probably quite biased but I have very little time for these free-spirited, empathetic, traveller types-I'm yet to meet one who isn't a self-centred arse.

Know your worth and find someone who wants a partner and a friend, not a therapist/pet.

This is a great point, thank you.

I have questioned her about her ideas, and presented what it might represent, she seemed to understand me, but continued talking about wanting some “spice”… I read that as she doesn’t like smooth sailing and calm.

I suppose I haven’t said so directly that I found this off putting… I had imagined that an intelligent person would deduce this from the way I questioned her and offered interpretations that appeared to be maladjusted?

Having thought about it more on my feet just now, I suppose I had subconsciously decided there was no need to go anymore into it because it was a red flag that wouldn’t allow me to consider crossing into a serious relationship.

I wonder if this too negative or pessimistic of me? This was the main reason why I initially posted this thread.

I suppose it would not hurt to tell her I’m concerned and why… maybe I secretly fear she will change my mind and change for me briefly to draw me closer, but that her true nature would remain the same and I would her caught up in an emotional turmoil with her that would be difficult to disentangle from once you’re in it…

Sometimes, when you tell someone at an early stage what you like and what you dislike, you’ve just given them the keys to the safe without knowing who they are!

How do other people traverse these things a bit more safely? I’d like to hear more about other approaches, please.

@ChihuahuasREvil I agree with you. All these grand proclamations are just weird. I would have hated to spend the first few months of my relationship having to listen to my partner go on about her exes or dump all that emotional baggage on to me. It's way too much!

Read your posts back OP and look at the words and phrases you use: fear, red flag, trauma bonding etc. All this from a one-month acquaintance! You deserve better than this.

Basing this very unscientifically on a handful of French friends: that all does sound quite culturally French, yeah

Yes, I think you’ve identified a real danger here, that the more you divulge, the easier it is for a skilled manipulator to mirror back to you what you want to see. A skilled manipulator will do that anyway though, without you spelling it out in words of one syllable. I’m not sure that’s what’s going on here though. I refer you to my previous question, does she demonstrate the same level of interest in your feelings and what you want as she does in herself? The fact that you’ve hinted to her that you see red flags in her and she’s brushed it off suggests that she’s either not paying much attention, or she’s intentionally diverting the conversation away. Neither is a good sign and I advise extreme caution, if not immediate binning.

I suppose this is why affairs and the Cinq à sept culture are tolerated… this constant search for passion, grand transformative feelings, exciting (sexual) encounters…

A tendency to admire the neurotic, insomniacs, the eccentric, and mild psychological problems… these might all be seen as signs of a huge intellectual mind…

All VERY different over there, I would say… this cannot be underestimated.
What’s normal for them might be strange or unacceptable to us.

Curious to know what is a “manic dream girl pixie”? Is it an Anime reference?

She mentions somehow or some way almost everyday that she experienced love and was very loved by her exs, but that she never felt the same degree of love for them, and she wanted to experience a passionate powerful love.

This bit stood out to me as the main potential red flag. How does she shoehorn such a deeply personal topic into conversation with a potential new partner so often? And why? It's only been a month of chatting with you.

I've learned that anyone who talks so much about themselves with their exes is either very self absorbed or just not over them, and not good dating material either way.

It's like she's trying to warn you, in a roundabout, perhaps subconscious way, that she has attachment issues. The problem is that she doesn't seem to see it like that, more like she is expecting to one day find the perfect partner who makes all of her issues unimportant.

That person doesn't really exist of course, and often our issues lead us to be drawn to the very opposite of what we actually need. I suspect you may one day find yourself tied up in knots trying to be that impossibly ideal person for her, and then facing the fallout when you inevitably fail.

I might be wrong though, as these are just my thoughts based on my own experiences.

Whatever you do, remember to put your own happiness first when meeting someone new, and always trust your gut.

No, it really isn’t. I have a good few French colleagues who are now also my friends and none of them go dicking about like this.

I have known two men who said almost EXACTLY the same things as your date. Right down to the needing excitement, the claims to get bored easily, the talk of wanting to be deeply in love, and even the stuff about the One Great Love who they fell for but who unattainable/didn’t reciprocate. Neither of them were French (one Welsh and one northerner, both from backgrounds where this sort of intensity is absolutely not a cultural thing. It’s just textbook narcissistic melodrama straight from the control/manipulation playbook. Both these men were charismatic and angsty, treated women like shit, dismissed any desire for stability as ‘boring’, and generally messed around with partner’s heads and then used the excuse that “I always told you that this is what I would be like”. They both spun the story to girlfriends in a way that suggested that she could be the one to win him over, if only they were cool and exciting and wild enough. Then the moment a girlfriend objected to them, eg, openly pursuing another woman or ghosting her for a week, they’d say they were being boring and uptight and bourgeois.

You’d be fucking insane to date this woman. She’s a textbook manipulator with an ego the size of Jupiter.

Rather, I would say she is an rank amateur with low self esteem.

A top shelf narcissist, you might not initially see coming… she’s so transparent in her self proclaimed flaws that it’s almost baffling.

Any reasonably healthy person would run!

I think maybe she’s saying these things to sound cooler than she is, and is maybe afraid of coming across as a staid provincial middle aged lady, that’s my sense, and that could potentially be forgiven or moved on from…

That sounds like trauma bonding and a very unhealthy attachment . Yes it’s a red flag and she is only going to love you that way if you are always on your way away from her imho

Tread carefully. Don’t get too involved emotionally. I agree you should end it but you do seem to want to give her a chance.

How many long term relationships has she had? Obviously the ones who loved her more than she loved them.