5 Big Relationship Red Flags You Shouldn't Ignore

My actual therapist, on the other hand, was more realistic. She recognised a string of potentially problematic behaviours in this person that were visible in previous partners – emotionally unavailable, bad at communicating, avoidantly attached. But she never used the term “red flags”. It was more about why me and this particular person wouldn’t chime – my inability to select someone compatible was something that I, equally, needed to work on. 

We’re only slowly starting to critically reexamine the buzzwords that have dominated relationship discourse over the past few years. Let’s put it this way: It’s not gaslighting if your date changes their mind about where they want to go for dinner, and it’s not a red flag just because he doesn’t like cheese (whether that’s the ick, though, is another conversation entirely). 

There are, however, a few genuine signs that someone could be unhealthy – even downright dangerous – for you. I spoke to some experts about the actual red flags you should look out for when dating someone new. 

Red flags are, like the name suggests, markers or warnings about a person, usually in a relationship context. Apparently, the term is thought to have derived from armies using red flags to signal they were ready for battle – an adequate metaphor for preparing to sift through a sea of Tinder profiles, if you ask me.

Here, we’re mainly discussing red flags in the context of searching for new partners, but they can also show up midway through relationships and in platonic friendships, too. It’s worth remembering that a red flag isn’t always a tangible thing either – sometimes it can be intuition (or good pattern recognition) warning you about a situation in advance, or signalling that something isn’t quite right. 

Almost every single psychologist and dating expert I interviewed listed love bombing as their number one red flag when dating a new partner. “Love bombing is where things are extremely intense extremely quickly, but then there will be a shift,” social worker, author and dating educator LalalaLetMeExplain says. “This will be things like them telling you 'you're mine' very early on; suddenly spending every night together or potentially moving in together [and] literally declaring that you're in a relationship within a week or two.” 

As an overly romantic, sometimes naive person who falls in love with anyone who pays me enough attention, I’m keen to know when intense, romantic behaviour is nefarious, rather than just plain sad. 

“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” says Dr Elena Touroni, consultant psychologist and co-founder of the Chelsea Psychology Clinic. “All things that go up must come down, and love bombing is defined by extremes of behaviour.” These extremes could involve someone showering you with praise, gifts, and attention, before rapidly withdrawing these things to devalue you. 

Hot and cold behaviour like that can be intensely alluring. It can also trap you in a shit relationship where you spend years in misery, yearning for those blissful first few weeks again. “It's establishing complete control,” Lala explains. She adds that it essentially communicates the message: “Now I'm going to make you work for the love that I gave you before, but I'm never going to give that to you again, and you're going to be constantly working for it.”

Love bombing is particularly insidious as it’s not just a red flag for incompatible partners, but also features regularly in abusive relationships. “We're not just trying to warn you off a bad boy,” Lala reiterates, “we're trying to save your life.”

All relationships are characterised by some level of disagreement: perhaps you can’t stand their mates, or they leave the toilet seat up all the time, or they think Prince Harry oversharing is a good thing, actually. Maybe they eat an obscene amount of meat, while you’re trying to go vegan. But it’s how these disagreements are navigated, and how a person handles their emotions during conflict, that can tell you if they’re somebody worth pursuing. 

“If someone doesn't know how to process their emotions in a healthy way, they are likely not a safe person to be in a relationship with,” says sexologist and attachment therapist Madalaine Munro. “This includes being aggressive, getting violent or completely withdrawing.” 

Violence and aggression aren’t always physical, either, and can also involve someone resorting to personal, verbal attacks during conflict – if they’re throwing out slurs left right and centre, this can easily devolve into throwing objects or physical attacks, too.

Another sign of poor emotional processing is silent treatment, also known as stonewalling. This might involve someone ignoring you for days or weeks after an argument, even if you’re living in the same house. “Abusers will use the silent treatment to make you feel like you've behaved badly, which is something that you should never feel in a relationship. You're not a child,” Lala explains. “In a healthy, adult relationship, you’d never do that to a friend. You would say ‘Listen, I'm pissed off, and I'm not going to talk to you. Let me cool off for a week or two and then we'll convene’.”

Although conflict might be scarce when you first start dating, there are still subtle signs to look for that can indicate that this person’s behaviour might become a problem down the line. “When you have differences, or are processing hurt with each other, are they open to feedback?” Munro asks. “Can they receive what you are saying? Are they able to apologise? Or do they get defensive and angry?” 

Putting someone down, also called negging, is a major red flag that can play into wider patterns of manipulative and controlling behaviour. Negging is often used to slowly erode and chip away at a person’s self-esteem through negative or harmful comments passed off as “banter”. (Seriously, if they’re still basing their personality off toxic workplace dynamics circa 2015 lad culture, they’re a hard pass anyway). 

“If you're eating and your partner says ‘oh, are you sure you need all that?’, that’s negging,” Lala explains. “They go, 'I'm joking, why can't you take it?' You feel like a dickhead for being upset, and then they make fun of you for being upset. It puts you in a position where you think, ‘If I'm this huge, unattractive beast, I'm not gonna leave this man, because who's gonna want me?’”

Lala also warns us to be particularly vigilant about online negging, because some social media dating coaches – especially those targeting men – often recommend it as a dating tactic, rather than a facet of emotional abuse. “I saw some guy the other day teaching men to tell a woman that she's boring, and he was putting it across like it was really good dating advice,” she says. “A lot of pickup artists and YouTube dating coach stuff is about negging. They feed them all this bullshit about having to be the breadwinner and the protector – it’s very misogynistic.”

Not talking about your former partner with a new date is as much of a dating staple as stalking them on social media before meeting, or taking your nudes ahead of time (don’t @ me, I’m organised!). But if they do talk negatively about former partners, “it’s a warning sign of how they process things when they don’t go well,” Munro explains. “If someone is blaming their past relationship problems on all their ex partners, it shows that they can’t take responsibility for their own actions.”

As somebody whose own taste in people is so dire that I’ve been jokingly instructed not to bring them to events, I am a little guilty of this. I try not to badmouth my exes at every inconvenience (and until now, have refrained from writing about any of them post-breakup), but most of them are embarrassing at best – others, downright abusive and sexist. Is it spiteful to warn future lovers of my past transgressions? How do I toe the line between disclosing my history and scaring someone away?

Lala says it’s not the act of bringing up an ex that constitutes a red flag, but rather how the person speaks about them. “There are people out there who have crazy exes,” she admits. “But I think the way in which they talk about the ex is a big identifier. You might have somebody who has a crazy ex, but who is able to say it was really sad because she had childhood trauma, rather than ‘she's a lunatic, she took out an injunction against me.'” 

Munro agrees, and feels that as well as coming across as disrespectful, hostility towards an ex could also be a sign that someone isn’t ready to move past the situation. “If they haven’t healed, it is likely they will speak about that experience in an emotionally charged or triggered way,” she says. 

Lying is probably one of the biggest red flags of all, because it affects all aspects of a burgeoning relationship. Not only are lies used to control and manipulate, but being around a compulsive liar can stop you from feeling safe and comfortable in a relationship. “There won’t be trust in the relationship, and there won’t be intimacy in the relationship because the person isn’t being intimate and honest with themselves, so they wont be with you,” Munro says. 

While the odd white lie is probably innocuous (and perhaps even joyous!) excessive lying is, obviously, a shit thing to do in any situation, and can sometimes progress into the internet’s favourite buzzword: gaslighting. Lala admits that while this term is admittedly overused online, it remains an important and useful way of describing more serious situations of psychological manipulation. “They might fuck with the Alexa or the heating or the smart lights, and make their partner feel like they're going mad, or make them feel unsafe in the house,” she explains. “Gaslighting in abusive relationships is an incredibly complex thing, which serves to make the person feel like they're going completely and utterly mad.”

Is a relationship marked by red flags ever salvageable? It depends. There’s a big difference between red flags that highlight someone’s emotional unavailability, and point towards abuse, and our experts say these situations should be handled differently. 

“If someone is exhibiting signs of abusive behaviour, whether that’s physical or emotional, get out of the relationship as soon as possible,” Elena says. “If the red flag is something smaller, then it may be worth having a conversation to see whether this is something you can work through together. We can’t expect someone to know how to meet all of our needs straight off the bat.” 

This concept of working with – rather than against – your partner is a nuance mainly forgotten in modern dating culture, where we’re often encouraged to abandon partners at the first sign of discomfort or fall into the trap of hyperfocusing on petty traits based on our own preconceived biases. 

Munro suggests flipping the situation onto yourself to determine whether something is a genuine red flag. “Take time to understand your own trauma and patterns,” she says. “Someone may want to attract an open and communicative person, however they themselves may not be able to do so. Flipping the ‘red flag’ onto yourself may determine whether this is a personal insecurity or whether it’s a real red flag.”

Experts also suggest a traffic light system that can be personal to you, made up of green, orange and red flags, or red flags versus lesser pink flags. “A pink flag might be that they don't have any social media at all, for example,” Lala suggests. “It's not a red flag because you can't just run away from everyone who doesn't have social media, but it's a pink flag because it's a bit unusual in this day and age.”

With bad dating advice proliferating on social media, it’s more important than ever to stay literate and consider the context behind what you’re watching. Always ask: Who made this video? What are their credentials? Are they pretending to be someone they’re not? This also applies to questioning broader narratives served up by algorithms, which can also include content that advocates lines of thinking like “all men are trash” or leans into “dump him” feminism. 

“If you have been hurt by men, you may seek advice and help on healing from men. The algorithm may then prioritise accounts that share things on why “men always hurt you”. This may perpetuate a view of why men are wrong or bad, and you will take this into your dating life,” Munro explains. “The balance comes from understanding that the nuance of abuse, context, gender may not be captured in a 30 second video or a picture.”

Dating advice is complex and multifaceted, and the reality can be hard to unpick, no matter how many Taylor Swift albums you’ve overanalysed. But, when used wisely, red flag advice can still serve as an important piece of a wider puzzle when deciding if someone is worth your time – as well as if you, yourself, are ready for dating. I should probably call my therapist back, TBH.