Earliest green flags that jumped out for you

[thestables123]

When you met your special person?

I am in the very early stages of dating and through counselling and lots of work on myself, I've come to realise that my ex partner revealed himself to me very early on but I didn't seem to either process the reality of him or went into denial eg psycho ex, fired from work, bad relationship with kids in his past etc.

So that was a long time ago and I'm back on the dating game again and have decided that I will adopt the mantra of ' I'll believe it when I see it ..'

I've already have had plenty of men , married and lying , cheating and saying anything to secure a date. I've copped them straight away and blocked.

Tonight, I have a date with a man I'm chatting to, for the last week.
Of those I've spoken to since I began on line dating again a few weeks ago, he sounds like a normal regular man.
Spoke glowingly about the mother of his child.
Adores his family. Lots of friends / acquaintances.
Fully independent.
Very mannerly and respectful in conversation.
Seems like a gentle man.
Comes from a family well known for being popular and well liked due to their manners and decency.

I've had a look on social media and media in general. What he had told me is so far true.
He is spoken highly of in his circle , on line.

But , I accept that I haven't met him yet so this could all be a waste of time.

However... could you tell me your experience of green flags after many red ones and essentially a bad break up ?

Thanks for reading.

Respecting your boundaries.
Not having to explain why you can't do something, or what you are doing with your time.
Not being expected to reply to messages straight away - even if you've read them!!

Thanks.
I always find it interesting when it comes to peoples texting habits and responses.
I always respond straight away or else I'll forget to but I've noticed since the end of my love bombing ex , who used to text me continuously , that I expected immediate responses as I was used to them.
I now knew this is unreasonable and again this man I'm chatting g to , texts as and when as I do , but within parameters that I find respectful . So I don't want to be left on read for 8 hours despite knowing he had his phone with him at all times and is not working, parenting or at the gym.
They're my boundaries. Respectful

I was going to say treating my parents and his own parents decently but I see you already have that covered

I got pregnant within a matter of months of meeting and he was supportive, despite being 23 and a student. This was the first huge green flag, among many smaller ones. He then continued in the same vein by proving practical, hard working and by sending most of the money from his PT job to me to support our child.

It's honestly not about counting flags. There is one green flag of a healthy relationship: you feel good. There is one red flag; there are aspects that make you feel bad, even if you also feel good.

That's it. Mr 90% Green Flag is Mr Incompatible.

Mr Compatible will be all green, no red. It's not perfection, it's that his imperfections don't make you feel bad.

This is it 100%.

Comes from a family well known for being popular and well liked due to their manners and decency. I've had a look on social media and media in general. What he had told me is so far true.He is spoken highly of in his circle , on line

It's surely a red flag when someone you've never once met has told you how his family is well known and popular for their manners and decency? Such an odd thing to say 🤔

Similarly with being highly spoken of online. Unless he's a celebrity most of us aren't 'spoken of' online, and the ones that are always seem to be a bit worrying in person - the most awful people I know belong to self-employed networks where they're forever bigging each other up for money, and the saddest marriages are the ones with annual posts about their husbands being amazing.

He was as polite and pleasant to waiters, shop assistants etc as to anyone else. Rudeness to anyone in a service role is a huge red flag to me.

He liked my cats! He had never had a pet and wasn’t used to them, but he never got irritated with them and soon came to love them as much as I did.

He isn’t argumentative. Nor am I, in fact we both have ‘people-pleaser’ tendencies, which works well for us!

He's kind to people serving him in shops and restaurants, gentle with animals and children , he helps his friends without thinking and he doesn't look for praise for doing anything adult , emptying bins for example .

None of the good stuff matters if he is subtly negging you, making you feel lesser, disrespecting you.

It's a good sign that he is well liked and respected. That he seems honest. But it's how he treats you, speaks to you, respects you that matters, especially when you disagree.

See how he reacts when you voice an opinion he does not like.

All of the green flags that people are listing are things that can be used by thoroughly unpleasant people. Hitler was apparently lovely to go for coffee and cake with, kind to animals, polite to waiting staff, good listener, etc. Nice bloke...?

I'm not sure I agree. Someone can make you feel amazing through love-bombing etc.

To avoid against heartbreak or disappointment, you need to "think" about the relationship and what's going on, not just base it on how you "feel". You need to engage the head as well as the heart!

He also made millions of people "feel" great with his promises and charisma. Based on your mantra of it all being about whether they make you feel great, Hitler was a great guy!

Consistency. That was key for me - does he do what he says he will, when he will? Do you feel secure, heard, understood?

Kindness. Respectful, not just to me but to everyone. Generous, not with money necessarily (but I wouldn’t want a tight partner) but with time and effort. Does he make an effort for you?

When they stop making you feel amazing via lovebombing @Tuilpmouse , you stop the relationship.

What you're suggesting leads to the logical conclusion that there are situations where your partner might be making you feel awful, but you should stay because it makes more sense. Or that you might feel great in your relationship, on all counts, but you should leave because of a brain based reason.

Unless you want a relationship because it's logically viable, you have to be lead by how you feel. Doing what you think you 'should' leads to people staying in harmful relationships. A relationship that feels good is good. That doesn't mean it will keep feeling good, so we have to stay observant. But we don't have to over-ride our feelings with thoughts. We don't have to silence our feelings because of thoughts. If someone treats us well, but we know they have a history of being an arsehole, that will be represented to us as an unsure feeling. We want to feel good. So we need to follow how we feel.

Comes from a family well known for being popular and well liked due to their manners and decency.

Did he tell you this?

It's not "head" or "heart", it's both. You need to feel great in the relationship AND be mindful enough when things don't add up... Then you wouldn't get very far into a love-bombing relationship in the first place... you stop despite the feelings because you know what's behind them, rather than continue until it feels crap, at which point you've wasted more of your life and become more emotionally invested with the additional heartache that brings.

Also, if there's a feeling that isn't great, you don't immediately say "that's it!"... it's far better and more realistic to think about it and see if it can be resolved. If not, obviously best to end it, but If it can through some communication or a slight change in attitude, then your feelings will return and deepen and you've not cast them off simply because the feelings weren't 100% positive at that moment!

And then people started to feel less great about him as time went on, until most people started to not like him so much.

We can all be duped. That's a fact. Being willing to flex our thoughts as our feelings change (i.e. 'Adolf used to do stuff that felt really good, like making me laugh over coffee, and being Mr Charisma, and I thought he was great, but now he's doing stuff that feels all wrong, so now I don't think he's so great') is key to keeping our lives healthy. That's my point. Green flags are meaningless in the long term. You can't judge someone other than by what they do and how it feels. You can't decide that someone is 'good' because they do good things.

I have no mantra.

I worked with him. So I really saw what he was like for 8 hours a day in a small office.

You need to feel great in the relationship AND be mindful enough when things don't add up

Usually when things don't add up, it's not a calculation, it's a feeling. Something doesn't feel right. Something sits wrong. Something is uncomfortable.

He lies to you, for example... he's allowed to do that. There are no laws. But it doesn't feel good to you. We're all in different places with this; some people don't mind white lies, some can't stand them. It's how we feel about it that makes the decision about whether it's good for us, not whether it's objectively right or wrong. There are no rules.

@Cantstaystuckforever @AlisonHalligan ... No, he didn't tell me this!!!

I've heard this from people who move in his circle both at work and in their personal lives.
They would be known as good and kind people.
Great responses and advice so far everyone 😊

Our relationship isn't perfect, but when my now OH turned up on our second date with screen de-icer and all sorts of stuff to put on the seals of my old banger because I had spoken how I was getting frozen out of my car every day in the cold snap and was late for work every day, I remember thinking he might be a keeper.

Also never feeling that feeling of "will he reply or won't he" as I just always knew he would in the early days of texting. Even if I had to wait a few hours when he was at work he would always reply. Always followed through with plans, never flaky.

For me, the one thing that made me realise that the new relationship was different was just simply the fact that it was easy....

I have a very stressful job and being a single mother with a very toxic ex, I was used to pulling my hair out about 90% of the time! I know it may sound simple but that was really it, making my life easy, the relationship was just.... easy!

All that needs to be said here!