Ignoring massive red flags?

[GoldenCookie]

does anyone else feel surprised about what people put up with early in relationships? i know it's not easy to end things but i'm talking within 3 months which should be the honey moon stage yet still allow someone to treat them so disgusting? i read a post on another group and was literally shocked at what happened to a woman in a 3 month relationship and lots of the comments saying " it could happen to anyone" "victim blaming" if anyone said how could she stay with someone that done that stuff, i'm talking really vile stuff. am i wrong in thinking it's not actually victim blaming to question why someone would allow these selves to be treated with such little respect and don't think it should be normalised that we would all put up with it? i'm not talking subtle little things btw i'm specifically referring to very new relationships btw not when there are kids etc involved and much harder to escape.

There’s women on here who share major red flags within the very, very early days but continue anyway. There’s some who have posted concerns before or after the first date, women who are doing Claire’s Law checks and then continuing to date these men when it’s been a matter of weeks or months.
There are usually kids involved which makes it worse and harder to understand.

They have no respect for themselves and very low self worth. No amount of telling some women to walk away will work and it’s horrifying to think the cycle could continue their kids. I don’t agree with it being classed as victim blaming because often they continue with their eyes wide open.

i just don't get the whole "it could happen to any of us" i mean really after 3 months, honestly the things she wrote was extremely disturbing it makes me wonder what low self esteem someone has that they would let someone treat them like that

Unless you’ve been through it, you probably won’t be able to understand it. They love bomb and then they add in a red flag. Sometimes subtle. Usually women who end up in the situation you’re talking about have low self esteem, often have been raised in abusive households, they have poor concept of healthy relationships, how to set and maintain healthy boundaries and they repeat the cycles that are familiar to them. It really can happen to anyone. It could even be that someone has been single a long time and is lonely and they feel amazing when they’ve been love bombed after such a long time and they stay because they want that side of their abuser back. That’s what makes them feel safe. And the more that happens, the more trauma bonded they become. It might be that it’s their first serious relationship and they don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like. They might feel like they must’ve done something to cause the abuse, (which they didn’t of course) and doubt themselves and think they can fix it or change his behaviour and get the love bomb back that’s they’ve fallen head over heels for. They might have ended up pregnant after a fling and tried to make the relationship work for the benefit of their unborn child. There’s many reasons why women stay in these relationships when they should walk away and the best thing we can do is support those women to leave and do so safely. In the end, that’s all that matters not how they ended up there. That’s for afterwards when they learn what happened and how to prevent ending up in another abusive relationship.

sorry no but i don't ever understand how any woman would let what i read happen to them after 3 short months! and don't agree it could happen to anyone i'm not talking subtle red flags at all.

again i'm talking early relationship 3 months no kids i mentioned that already i can understand how some women feel trapped but not after 3 months.

What happened to them?

I’m not familiar with the post you’re talking about or what happened, so I can’t comment on that particular case but as I said, it will be a myriad of predetermining factors. Low self esteem and self worth, raised in abusive homes, poor parental modelling, inability to set and maintain healthy boundaries, previous abusive relationships that caused mental conditioning, etc. And when we say it could happen to anyone, that means of any age, social class, race, sexuality, etc. We’re not saying it could happen to anyone because clearly when a person has a healthy sense of self esteem and no past experience of abuse, it’s much harder for an abuser to target them. It could also be that someone has neurodiversity and isn’t sure about behaviours in romantic relationships.

Yes I understand that but it’s possible to become pregnant within 3 months into a new relationship and that’s what I was talking about.

I think it's often to do with what you grew up with and stuff like that. Whether you ever got the chance to build a good 'shark cage'.

Also the techniques of the abuser are very intoxicating, it feels amazing.

I was love bombed by a bloke who I realise had narcissistic traits.

I cane out of a 27 year marriage and he was my rebound. I’d never had a shit relationship before, I had a great upbringing, I had lots of friends and I’m self confident. I don’t have a low bar, poor self esteem or any sort of desperation but at that point in my life, I was probably more vulnerable than I realised.

I had no idea that love bombing, narcissists, gas lighting etc existed because it was a millions miles outside any experience I’d ever had

Now I wouldn’t look twice at the mug and I’d tell him to fuck off within days. But sometimes we are all at point where we’re more vulnerable than we know and it’s easier to get reeled in than you realise.

If you’d said to me a few years before that I’d end up with someone like him, I would have laughed in your face!

Honestly none of us can truly say we would never be taken in if the circumstances were right - or wrong!

they are not even red flags more complete abuse, being called a cow and a slag daily, told "make my breakfast you slag" urinated on them all apparently in a 3 month relationship 🤷🏻‍♀️ that's not just little red flags like something being off but ignoring it that's just full on abuse but if anyone says anything and try to understand why someone would put up with that it's "victim blaming" i think saying that can happen to anyone makes women sound helpless.

I can’t figure out why some women would think that was ok and it’s sounds like mental illness. Like they were so ground down from the parents or whoever that they just don’t think they’re worth anything. That’s really sad.

exactly. its not victim blaming to want to understand this.

I agree. I am gobsmacked at the utter shit people (women) put up with / to the point I have wondered if certain posters are trolling.

But then I remember the story of the woman who grew up in an abusive home. She was older when she posted and had a DD. She described how utterly simple things were mind blowing to her. I understand she has some involvement from social services when she had her daughter and she talked about all the things she didn’t know. She said bedsheets were one. She was an intelligent women and knew what bedsheets were. That you could buy them.

But she didn’t know they would be the absolute bare minimum needed to have for a child’s bed to be a normal mother.

No one has ever told her and her life had been so dysfunctional that it was probably the least of anyone’s worries.

I can see it happening to women who have had that sort of upbringing. My lovely friend is one sadly. She used to tell me the latest fuckery her boyfriend had done and I was always disgusted and amazed she was willing to put up with it. But she had a traumatic upbringing and had never seen a healthy relationship.

It’s definitely mental illness but how do you fix that. They’re putting themselves in a really bad place. Years of therapy maybe but who knows.

When it's intertwined with love bombing which makes you feel on a high then it's easy to ignore the flags

@GoldenCookie we seek out what we know and feel comfortable with. Anyone who stays with an abusive partner has been abused. It is the environment they know and the behaviour that they understand. Most people with good boundaries, good self-esteem, who are confident and happy to be assertive without being aggressive will not overlook red flags. Of course it happens every now and then, but generally people in abusive relationships have grown up in abusive households.

I grew up in a middle class abusive household, so I wouldn't have accepted someone calling me a cow or urinating on me, because that was not the kind of abuse I was comfortable with. I sought out relationships with people who were mean, inconsiderate, undermining, soul-sucking, incapable of coping themselves, emotionally unstable and a bit violent etc etc etc.

It is very, very sad and a difficult cycle to break. Personally, I think schools would be better way more time on teaching kids how to buy and cook nutritious food, how to manage their household budget, how to develop good self-esteem, how to be assertive, some basic DIY and then do all the stuff about quadratic equations, prepositions and the Incas of Peru.

Low self esteem and often having a rescuer complex (getting self worth from trying to fix broken people). My mum is married to a man who literally brought his court records from when he was convicted of sexually abusing his daughter to their first date so he could show her. She fell for it because she felt he was being so honest and open and it really meant he would never do it again. She’s a rescuer and loves someone broken to fix. He has done it again since they’ve been together from what I hear (though not caught this time). We are NC obviously. But it’s mind boggling to me that some otherwise really intelligent women accept this behaviour as normal.