Common reasons why we ignore red flags

Red flags are often ignored in the beginning of a relationship for multiple reasons. The way we are brought up and the kind of trauma we have dealt with in childhood play a huge role in our perspective towards red flags. Often the flags that we ignore in the start of the relationship, end up making the relationship toxic to the point that we cease to be together with that other person. However, why do we ignore red flags? Addressing this, Therapist Israa Nasir wrote, “What this means is that we need to really pay attention to our own patterns. These patterns lead us to the similar situations across the different domains of our life: romantic, family, platonic, work. One reason a lot of people are in relationships that they are not happy in is because they overlooked the red-flags.”

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Israa further added that the first step of healing from this is to understand the patterns we have and what led us to ignore the red flags in the first place. Here are a few common reasons, noted down by the therapist:

Change: We often ignore the red flags because we believe that we can change the other person. This makes us not see the reality of things and accept them for who they are.

Company: Seeking company to beat loneliness is a huge reason why we ignore red flags even though they are just right there. This makes us get in trouble later in life.

Potential: We start to think that there is huge potential in the person and the relationship in the future. Hence, we stop seeing them even when they show us the truth about themselves.

Judgement: People who are generally indecisive in nature, struggle to trust their judgement, and end up being in a relationship with a person full of red flags.

Starting all over again: When we have invested time, energy and emotions on a person, we start to ignore their red flags because we do not want to start all over again with another person.

Benefit of doubt: We sometimes do not see their real intentions because we keep giving them the benefit of doubt.

Emotional needs: When people minimise their own emotional needs to make everyone else their priority, they struggle to please everyone and end up ignore all kinds of red flags.