Have you ever wished there was a way to know if a relationship is going to work from the beginning? What if you could instantly tell if a new love interest is worth your time and effort?
It turns out it’s possible if you know which red flags to look out for.
Over 30 years ago, a therapist robin norwood wrote a bestseller Women who love too much: When I kept hoping that my boyfriend would change. In it, she included an entire chapter about how men and women struggling in disastrous and dysfunctional relationships find each other and become attracted to each other.
She describes the “subtle signals that flash” between couples who have just met, hinting that you can tell the end of a relationship from the beginning.
Sometimes the signals are not so subtle. Sometimes they light up like lightning at the very beginning of your relationship and tell you, “Put that beautiful dream aside. Maybe we should skip this.”
Often they will tell you what will happen in advance. Therefore, listen carefully and do not justify these warnings with dreams or excuses.
To illustrate what I mean, let’s take a look at my past three significant relationships. In each piece, the first word the man said told me how it would end.
In two of them, I didn’t want to hear it, so I apologized.
Here’s the easiest way to tell if your relationship will last (before you get too deep).
1. “I don’t love you and I think I’m just using you.”
That’s what my first serious boyfriend said to me on our third or fourth date. With everything I knew about him, I couldn’t believe that this man would actually take advantage of me. But should I have asked? yes.
When I met him, he was heartbroken over his divorce. He found his wife in bed with another man and tried in vain to win her back. Even though she told him she didn’t love another man.
I thought he was an honest man because he was a minister. We had a great time together. He was my first serious boyfriend and I was over the moon at how great he was. I thought that if I treated him better than his ex-wife, he would surely realize how great I was and change his mind. myself.
Two years later, when I was driving him a long way to and from work because his car broke down (I then gave him $5,000 to buy a new car), I heard him complaining about how he was turned down. Assistant manager position in a jewelry store.
The answers he gave in a personality test conducted to select candidates for employment were extremely honest.
He reported that the store generally did not hire profiles like his because it was associated with dishonesty. In his case, they made an exception and hired him.i think they got Be fooled by the minister’s backgroundtoo.
Shortly after being hired, he met someone new at the store and dumped me, and within a few months we were engaged. He then used his employee discount to purchase jewelry in order to offer a deal to a wedding photographer in lieu of payment, contrary to company policy. The store found out and fired him.
2. “I don’t think I’ll live very long.”
“I love you so much that I want to marry you.” He said this to me about 9 months after we started dating! We have been together for 11 years and married for 7 years and have had a very happy relationship.
In fact, it was the best relationship I’ve ever had. This man never gave me any reason to doubt that he cared about me. It was never, “Will he or won’t he? Will he or won’t he?” There is no nightmarish feeling that we are all familiar with, when a man starts acting “strange” and we worry that he is trying to cheat on us.
However, he was 21 years older than me and one thing he often said was that he wouldn’t live long. He often said that while the women in his own family lived long lives (his mother died in her 90s), the men never lived past 70.
Sadly, my husband didn’t live that long. He died at the age of 66 from a brain tumor. Again, what I was told initially turned out to be true.
3. “I have nothing to offer you. I have nothing to offer anyone in my current state.”
At the beginning of a very intimate and magical relationship with a man who broke up with me after 20 years of a very unhappy marriage, he said:
“I may not have the courage to do what I need to do. I will realize that I am not strong enough to survive on my own. If that turns out to be true, it will be my fault and no one else’s It’s not your fault. I have nothing to offer you. I have nothing to offer anyone in my current state.”
When you hear that word, believe it.
After he left home, he was ostracized by his wife and grown children, and the guilt drove him back into the marriage. He dumped me suddenly, unexpectedly, and in a very painful way. Two years later, he heard from that person again. He was still married, but still miserable.
Three serious relationships. Three times, the man told me the ending first. So how can you know from the beginning that your relationship will last? Just ask. Better yet, believe what your man says.
Robin Norwood may be onto something here.
PD reader Although she is a Level 1 student at the NCGR School of Astrology, her work focuses on spirituality, lifestyle, and relationship topics.she runs Unfaithful: A perspective on relationships with third parties Moderate.
This article was originally published at: another woman thinking. Reprinted with permission from the author.