Navigating Red Flags

[PandaBear97]

Okay yall, so we listening and not judging, right? A bit of background : I am 27F , my partner is 30M and we have been together for 8 years now, he has not proposed yet but he indicates he is on the verge very soon. Ok boom, so I did the exact opposite of common sense advice and I … didn’t “ignore” red flags in my relationship, but definitely did not take head to them either . I did not have proper boundaries and self care systems in place to properly protect myself from being negatively impacted by the effects of such red flags. So here I am 2 (+1 on the way) kids later dealing with a massive brain fuck. I convinced myself that as long as I am aware of the red flags in my relationship from the beginning we can address them and move on someday in the future. Little did I know the whole time I was taking slaps to the face and turning the other cheek I was also changing the way I value myself. My value started to depend on his approval and i didn’t even realize it for the longest but all the negative thoughts I had about myself and my shortcomings stemmed from his opinions that they made me less of a good wife and that I am not as committed to him as he is to me since I struggle to be intentional about him. (Giving myself grace though because admittedly he was not exuding the kind of energy that demanded the type of compassion he sought (his anger and trust issues were very difficult to overlook and still feel connected) .. okay, so this is all the red flags I have notice:

🚩easily angered
🚩insecure about cheating
🚩 not trusting my truth
🚩flirting with girls on social media— going as far as messaging old flings telling them he wish things were different and even suggesting to come by to cuddle/mess around with several females
🚩when confronted about disloyal messages he was stating it would stop, yet it never stopped
🚩 cheating “scandal” while pregnant with first child , allegedly another girl had his baby
🚩inability to comprehend/ support mental health needs, laughing when I talked about it
🚩getting an std and being confronted about me cheating knowing he was the one cheating (gas lighting in its prime)
🚩finding out he got ANOTHER girl pregnant and had been having an affair over course of past couple years with her although he said he cut her off after I found messages between them in past
🚩lying to my face when asking if he spoken to / seen any of the girls I caught him cheating with
🚩 believing that women should get an abortion when father is not ready to take responsibility for his mistakes
🚩 doesn’t take time to read bible / pray together
🚩gets defensive when I speak about my feelings
🚩does not have a unified approach to problem solving, meaning he thinks I should only be concerned about maintaining the house and kids and my own business and stay out of his business and financial plans , which leaves a lot of room for division in relationship
🚩telling me if I was better at taking care of home and being intimate with him then he wouldn’t have felt drawn away from us (prime blame shifting excuse)

My red flags are that I am a people pleaser, socially awkward (very timid in social settings that demand self confidence), lack discipline and I have mismanaged ADHD symptoms (which is vicariously infecting his mental capacity to manage everything going on).. might have more but that’s the main things I feel contribute to my lack of relationship success.

I know it is A LOT OF BULLSHIT !! But … I really still have faith that choosing to love through hell or high water can revive our relationship so we can start over new and can be happily married knowing we sorted through all of our issues together and can confidently say we trust the others ability to love and support unconditionally and be happy with the husband/wife we become.

I know most people would say just leave the man and find someone to treat me right the first time around… but The Advice I seek is more along the lines how do I go about setting boundaries for myself to address problems like those listed above, and how can I stand on those boundaries without being offensive? I understand that how he reacts to my new boundaries is going to determine the future of our relationship but the boundaries need to be set in place because our current operations are going to run us both crazy.

You don't understand what a red flag is. This relationship is so far beyond red flags it's laughable. You can't love him into not being abusive. Please, for the sake of your kids, give up the bad job.

you want to make things work with someone who basically despises you, has zero respect for you and pretty thinks you’re worthless

Well, let's face it, that's how he feels towards all women.

Knocks up his side piece, "get a fucking abortion, that's your duty".

What a gentleman.

Never heard of condoms apparently. Not responsible for his own ejaculated spunk.

Op, every now and then a man is described on here who makes us posters fantasise about doing violence to. Your piece of shit 'partner" has certainly made the podium.

Get counselling for you on your own.

You need to understand why you've stayed,why you are letting someone treat you like this.

You mention religion, aee you from a religious background where you stay with Aman no matter how badly be behaves? Where you always feel you have to forgive and have to work at it?

No.

You're not married, he's not your spouse . . But even if he was; he's broken every biblical rule for spouses.

You have children ??? And you’re ok with your kids growing up in an abusive household being taught that women are second class worthless scum who just roll over and let men shit all over them without a whimper?

You’ll be happy to see your daughter being treated like this by a man? And proud when your son led up to be an abuser like his father?

This isn’t just your life he’s destroying - put your kids first and get them away from this abuser

I don't believe anyone well-meaning can advise you on how to function in dysfunction.

Now you have this newfound self-awareness, you lose this man and work on yourself, then decide what you would like your new boundaries to be and how will you hold them in your new relationship?

I think you're labouring under sunk costs fallacy. This won't improve. See the positives of leaving. You're young, have kids already so don't have to worry about missing that boat, and time to work on your career. Great position. Don't drag this mire of shite out. 7 years is nothing given how young you met.

Why are you still there? Being a martyr won't help you and is really bad for your children. Find the strength of character to leave this inadequate dishonest apology for a man, and live your own strong life with your DC. Raise your bar woman. I despair any woman's bar could sink so low. Staying with him will model terrible relationship dynamics to your DC.

They don't change. He won't change. Teach your children that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable and should not be tolerated.

Leave, be single, work on your boundaries.

Well in spite of every horrific thing he's done, you've still had two kids with him and are about to have another, so I imagine telling him you expect him to change will fall on completely deaf ears. Why on earth would he bother to listen or take anything you say seriously? He has no fear of losing you. He does not think you have it in you to stand up to him and mean it.

He's certainly not going to marry you and he's not going to sit and pray to reflect on how he can do better, although he may keep dangling those carrots every time you make noises about leaving him, just to get you back under control with false promises.

I think you either accept that he's a useless, unfaithful, misogynist arsehole who won't change and you spend the rest of your life compromising your dignity just to keep him, or you wise up and kick him out. I don't believe there is a third option available to you here.

At the moment he stays with you because you tolerate nonsense that other women would not. He gets to live the life of a single man with the home comforts of a wife and family. The second you start to seriously enforce some boundaries he'll leave you. Mark my words.

What will it take for you to leave him? Catching a potentially life threatening or life limiting sexual disease? Because he has form for having unprotected sex with numerous women.

Waiting until he completely breaks you to the point of a full blown mental breakdown and you can’t look after the kids anymore?

Waiting until he raises his hands to you?

What are you teaching your children here? What are you modelling to them by staying in this utterly abusive relationship? Is this the kind of relationship you want your children to have when they grow up? Because they will either end up with someone like him or become someone like him. Neither of those outcomes are healthy ones.

Read the linked book, get into therapy and then get a job. Work from home if you have to but start getting yourself sorted so you can leave this vile excuse for a man. That’s if he doesn’t leave you for another woman first and leave you with nothing financially and sole responsibility for the raising the children.

Leave now. This won’t get better. You made a mistake choosing this man. Now make the right choices to get rid of him.

https://www.docdroid.net/2fZmz40/why-does-he-do-that-pdf

so we listening and not judging, right?

I wish you could bring that "assertive" attitude into your own relationship and life.

You have listed the many deal breakers (not red flags). You are well.aware of them. You know they are wrong.

Now look after yourself. Live the kind of life you want to live.

By the way, a doctor in our practice is a single Mum to three kids. A highly qualified, experienced medical professional .... She had to get rid of her kids' Dad.
It's no reflection on you

This is HIS failure NOT yours.

Give me one genuinely good reason why you are prepared to martyr yourself and tolerate years more of this abusive bullshit.

choosing to love through hell or high water

Love cannot change someone's values & personality.

He sounds like he has a personality disorder.

You cannot love him into being what he is not.

Your mammoth effort & self sacrifice cannot make up for his flaws/what is missing on him/how he is wired.

Love is two way

Marriage is two way.

Love yourself enough to look after yourself. Put your love there and towards your kids.

I'm surprised he hasn't caused you a mental breakdown yet. Your kids need you healthy and stable and the best version of yourself for them.

Noone on this planet could be the best version of themselves, dealing with this "man"'s behaviour.

By the way having sex with someone and being around them creates oxytocin. More on women than men. You will become free of that "drug" when you still being inti are with him and stop being around him.

You can bond with someone else sooner or later, someone worth bonding with.

The op has deeply dysfunctional and unhealthy beliefs about what love is.

Oh and he's probably going to impregnate a woman who he can't coerce into an abortion sooner or later.

Then you'll have baby mammas, step siblings and a proper cluster-fuck shit show for your kids.

Life doesn't have to be like this.

You could have a decent, peaceful life with a guy who doesn't fuck around on you all the time. (While being jealous & controlling .... I wonder why, projection of his own values activities, eh?).
I've met plenty of men who don't. They're not wired like him. He's a fuck up.

OP are you in the US? It’s just the wording of your post and the bible reference that makes me wonder.

If Jerry Springer was still with us, this bloke would be a whole series on his own. The dysfunction is off the scale with your relationship.

You say no judgement but it’s impossible not to judge this man as an absolute grade A cunt

One good reason, OP.

He's not going to marry you.

I disagree.

It's not easy to find women who'll have sex with you, love you, bear your kids, look after your home ...while you cheat on them, infect them with stds, impregnate their side piece, tell them they shouldn't know anything or have any control about the finances etc in their household etc.

All that and a woman who's still thinks she can love him into changing. Who takes all the responsibility on her shoulders, while you abuse her and abuse her some more.

For a "man" like him, that's quite a find.

I'd say he'll be very happy to marry her. That's the only kind of person he could settle with.

Op, he's the sort of person who destroys another person. You can let him or you can get out.

@StrawberryDream24 I completely disagree. He doesn't want to lose his assets in a divorce and he would have married her by now.

I think he thinks even if they marry, he's going to continue to keep the op in the dark/totally uninvolved in the finances ..... So he can do what he wants (married or not).

He thinks women are inferior.

He thinks he'll continue to rule the roost.

He knows she's got no real plans to leave ....otherwise she wouldn't be saying "I still believe if I just love through hell or high water ...." .

It doesn't sound like he has to convince her he's imminently proposing in order to get her to stay. She's stayed through all this and is still extremely invested.
She is financially dependant on him and knows nothing about his finances so he also probably thinks she won't leave because of that.

Abusive men do often marry for all sorts of reasons.
There might be tax breaks. He might be able to put liabilities/debts in his spouse's name etc. etc.

You get what you settle for. In your case, you've acquiesced to being treated like shit. So that's what you'll get.

No one is going to be able to tell you how to fix this relationship because it's unsalvageable.

Hello, just to say that you think you can set boundaries and stick to them. I thought so too.
In actual day to day living, it is exhausting to stick to boundaries every single day. It is exhausting to have to be watchful for them every single day, and slowly slowly they will be eroded, so slowly you won’t notice. You will notice yourself becoming more tired, more confused, you will try and understand, make up reasons, your mind will become full of him and his behavior and your behavior until you have no room for any other thoughts, and by then you will be wrung out, have very little self esteem or self care or energy to escape.
you will write posts like this over and over, you won’t believe the responses, you will think they are too extreme, they don’t understand..but the posters on here really do, they have been where you are now, and if they say run, please listen.

The thing that we need to understand is that red flags are not to be justified, diminished or ignored. A red flag means walk (or run) away. Having appropriate boundaries should mean that once a red flag is identified, the relationship is over.

You do not "navigate" red flags. You take them as a sign to run in the opposite direction.

OP as someone who is a Christian and who has also had to leave an abusive marriage I really agree with @StrawberryDream24 in absolutely everything she said (maybe with a bit less swearing and murderous intent 🤣 but basically she has hit the nail on the head with everything she has said here). Red flags in a relationship are usually a reason to cut and run because this person is a danger to your wellbeing, they can’t generally be “negotiated” as such, because they occur when someone has a deeply rooted harmful view of relationships, due to eg a personality disorder or whatever. And I would agree he has shown an absolute multitude of bright red flags already. Your own “red flags” are not actually red flags, they are perhaps imperfections, which everyone has, or things which might lead to some conflict in a relationship, but they do not make you less deserving of love and they do not scream “do not get into a relationship with this person as she will be a danger to your own wellbeing” in the same way.

I do understand how a Christian background and a protected more conservative upbringing can sadly sometimes lead to women in particular ending up in abusive situations. Most people in the U.K. are not Christian and will not fully understand your perspective here. I do understand it to a point, particularly when I think many churches have not done enough to spell out this obvious pitfall for many Christian women, and make sure that they understand that although forgiveness is commendable, it does not mean we have to put up with anything and everything or that that is ok. As @StrawberryDream24 says, judgement is sometimes necessary, helpful and positive, remember God is a judge!

Please remember also that even Jesus cited infidelity and abuse as grounds for divorce. You do not have to accept this and you are still very young with the rest of your life to live. I would really recommend speaking to a very good Christian counsellor for support figuring out your next steps from here - by yourself (in this case I do not believe marriage counselling with be helpful).

In my case it took me a while to figure out what was happening in my marriage and to wake up to the abuse, not helped by the fact that my ex was deceptive about wanting to heal our marriage after infidelity without admitting the full extent of it and while still engaging in domestic abuse. I initially did try hard to rebuild our marriage from what I at that time believed to be a point of honesty and remorse on his part, and wanting a truly positive loving and meaningful Christian marriage going forward with forgiveness. I found the books and forum on the MarriageBuilders website below invaluable information for people who are genuinely in this position, I think their advice would have really worked to heal the marriage if my ex had been truly honest, remorseful and willing to do the hard work to rebuild. It’s a Christian programme but I think can be applied to any marriage/long term relationship. I have to say none of what you say here about the relationship currently makes me think your partner is in a place where he truly wants to do the work for this, but actually it was ALSO very helpful in helping me decide exactly where was reasonable to draw boundaries and say enough is enough, which is kind of what you actually asked for here, so I still think you might find it a helpful resource. Ultimately it was a big part of what helped me realise that even with Christian principles in play, it was ok for me to leave the marriage without feeling that I was abandoning my faith.

https://www.marriagebuilders.com

My advice though is that from what you’ve told us it’s not worth investing more time and energy into this as is already sadly. In hindsight I regret not moving faster and getting out of my marriage earlier than I ultimately did. I feel I put everything in to saving the marriage for my own sake and for our child’s sake and I ultimately didn’t keep enough time and energy resources back for myself for healing from the divorce and aftermath, and dealing with whatever else life had to throw at me since. In some ways at least when I was done I was really done and not at risk of backtracking, but I wish I could have got to that place quicker.

How does an ant stop a human from stepping on them?

You're an ant to him. The only way to save yourself is to run.

You say you have faith. So you believe evil exists right? He is evil. Believe it. And run. God gave you one life, do not waste it on a monster.