Pay Attention to Red Flags with Terri Cole
Speak truthfully with kindness, with love, with ease.
As part of our series with Real Love Ready Summit keynote speaker, Terri Cole, we present: “Pay Attention to Red Flags”.
An RLR community member asked, “What do I need to do or be aware of within myself in order to avoid getting into the same type of relationship that has not been successful in the past, such as dating men with control issues, anger issues?”
Terri came back at us with some good psychology… click play and join in on the LOVE!
Here’s where you look at what you’re repeating. This is repeating relationship realities. We’re always looking for patterns in any part of our life. If you want to understand, if you get stuck in something and you want to understand why, identify the pattern, bring the pattern from the dark into the light. What is the pattern? Oh, when I get into relationship with someone I start walking on eggshells because they have anger issues. Instead of going, ahh red flag, red flag again, anger issues again – red flag I’m going to get the hell out of here! Why is that? It’s because when we grow up a particular way; how we grew up in a family. If you are attracting men with control and anger issues I have no doubt that there was control and anger issues in the home you grew up in, because you don’t just fall off the tree attracting this. It actually happens for a reason because it’s familiar to you. So what happens unconsciously is we recognize love and control and anger. Oh look, they go together. Even if you don’t want them to go together in your unconscious mind. So, in your unconscious mind you see someone who you’re attracted to and part of that attraction is because they remind you of someone who in your young mind was appropriate husband/partner material. Probably your Father, maybe another adult figure in your life.
The only way to change what you’re attracting is to understand why you are attracting what you are attracting and then be willing to see the new red flags. When I see a reg flag instead of making excuses and telling myself lies about it and being like no, no, no, it’s just the fourth quarter and he gets like this in the fourth quarter, but he’s not always like this. No. Now that you’ve identified - I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who is controlling and angry. Now you have to be willing to be like, what are the red flags? Let’s go back and do an inventory of the last 4 relationships with guys like this. I’m going to write it down. I know that there were signs and I know that I ignored them. What were the signs? Now this time around the moment that happens you’re going to say to yourself, no. Or, you give the person a chance. You go, hey you know what Bob, I did not like that tone of voice. It sounded really aggressive to me and I have to say I don’t like it. That’s not the way that I do things. I don’t like talking that way. Oh well, let’s say Bob is like, What are you talking about? I wasn’t doing that. Well, that’s what I heard. So I’m going to ask you to be aware of that, because I do not like that tone of voice. That’s not the way I interact on a regular basis. Unless you are telling me to watch out because someone is about to run me over with a car, there’s no reason for you to use that tone of voice with me and I am making a simple request that you don’t. So if Bob thinks you’re on drugs because you are now pointing out these things that’s ok. You are pointing them out not for Bob but for you because this is how we heal. We stand up for ourselves, we speak up truthfully.
“You can always draw a boundary and speak truthfully with kindness, with love, with ease. It is always possible. It’s in the not saying it or in the willfully ignoring the red flags that we set ourselves up to stay in unsatisfying relationships.”
Listen you do it all in your own way. I just got hot from that conversation, so maybe that was a little aggressive in the way I did it, but you don’t have to do it that way. You can always draw a boundary and speak truthfully with kindness, with love, with ease. It’s always possible. But it’s in the not saying it or in the willfully ignoring the red flags that we set ourselves up to stay in these unsatisfying relationships.