couples

17 relationship red flags these couples ignored until it was too late.

Have you noticed any of these in your relationship?

Sometimes when a relationship ends badly you wish you could go back and smack yourself. That you could shake your past self and say wake up, this needs to end!

Like those times when your partner commented on your weight or when he told you he hated your friends. Those little red flags that triggered something in your brain at the time, but you wrote it off as no big deal.

Looking back now though, it’s obvious those little niggles were an indicator of a bigger, irreparable problem.

Last week, Reddit users shared the one (or a few) red flags in their relationship that they didn't notice until it was too late.

See if any of them resonate with you...

1. "Let's downgrade from a relationship. But still higher than a friendship."

2. "Complete unwillingness to communicate about serious issues. If something was bothering her, she'd brush it off, bottle it up and save up an arsenal. Then one day she'd explode and lay into me about things that happened months prior that she'd been carrying around ever since."

3. "He refused to acknowledge me as his girlfriend in public."

4. "No Bible study group meeting goes on till 11:30 in the night... I should have known better."

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5. "There were SO many red flags that I wilfully ignored because I was a dumb ass in love but the biggest of all: We worked together and she had been working there a couple more years then I had. Most (if not all) of my female coworkers told me she was unstable, uncaring and had slept around on her previous boyfriends. I wrote it off as jealously. My manager even took me aside one day and said even though it wasn't his business, I should be really careful. They weren't wrong. Not by a long shot."

6. "None of my friends liked her or invited her anywhere. I always had to ask if I could bring her around. There is a reason you keep friends in your life, a big one being they know what is good/bad for you."

7. "She was always on her phone and had it locked. When she was texting she would turn her phone away from me."

8. "I was the red flag, I used manipulation and gaslighting to force a relationship I was super into. It went on for two-and-a-half years from when I was 16-19. I'm glad she finally let go of me because even in the past year and a half since we've been apart I've grown so much and we were able to be good friends in the end and she has a great new guy around. I only post this to tell people that sometimes people do it because they have the greatest of intentions but don't realise it is hurting you and the person you love. Anyone reading this and denying that they are the problem. Step back and really think. You can change. Relationships are free flowing. Do not try to control a situation. Whats meant to be, will happen."

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9. "She cheated on her boyfriend with me. Of course that wouldn't happen again, right? Wrong."

10. "We never went over to her apartment to hang out -- we always went to mine. Turns out, she was still married..."

11. "The clinginess. Pretty much all he wanted to do, all the time, was cuddle (in bed, watching a TV show, etc) - if I said I wanted a break just to chill out to surf the Internet an hour he got upset because he didn't know how I could "just ignore" someone who loved me and wanted to be with me like that. Which I found weird since per my definition chilling out and doing different things in the same room together implies in my mind you're together. Yeah, that one lasted a full six months until I called it quits because he wasn't growing out of it. Dude proceeded to send me crazy emails for longer than the actual dating lasted."

12. "When she told me she looked forward to being paid each month because it reset her bank balance back to roughly $0. Every month she would spend up until (and often over) her overdraft limit and made no attempt to actually dig herself out of perpetual debt."

13. "First, she seemed to think all my friends and both my parents hated her. Turns out my friends actually did hate her (trust your friends). She said that she was "good at manipulating people" about two years in. In addition to manipulation she told me that she planned things to get my attention before we started dating... Cheated on me at least one time. The last of the big red flags I saw was that she was constantly trying to pick fights or find insecurities of female friends/acquaintances."

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14. "She was a divorced mother of 2 kids. Choosing to spend her evenings either with me or in pubs with friends/colleagues over going home to her 2 boys (3 and 6-years-old). The boys were asleep before she reached home and got her only on the weekends."

15. "No sex. I made myself believe it was a phase, it wasn't, it was the end."

16. "My then-girlfriend-now-soon-to-be-ex-wife is exceptionally tight with her family, to a point where she considers their constant insulting and abusive behaviour to be the way a normal family operates. I married her thinking that her experience with a tight family unit — something I'd never had — would be a benefit to us. As it turned out, she remained exceptionally tight with her family, allowing them to rip the ever loving shit out of our family and our relationship. She (wife) still thinks this is normal."

17. "Little comments about my looks or how I acted. I caught on to a lot of things, but I had no idea how far it went until I realised just how manipulative he was."

Was there a red flag in your relationship before it ended?