We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community to share some of the red flags they missed early on in romantic relationships, and some of these are truly wild.
Here are 18 of them:
1. "Walked far, FAR ahead of me when we’d go out, and NEVER looked back for me."
"There was a lot more, but this was the camel that broke my straw back."
2. "My (now ex) boyfriend was always at my studio apartment (about six nights a week) when we first started dating, even though I wanted more free time to myself (which he thought meant I wanted to bring other guys over — separate red flag). I enjoy cooking and cooked dinner for us one night, and asked if he could take care of the dishes because I was spent from cooking. He argued that he was 'a guest' in my apartment and 'guests shouldn't be asked to do chores.' I swear I saw the red flag waving at that response. I stayed with him an embarrassingly long time, and when we eventually lived together, he (of course) fought doing any chores and would whine and start fights with me when he did have to do them."
"I am now with an amazing new guy who values my effort and time equally to his, and we split chores evenly like adults."
—Anonymous
3. "Made a spare key to my condo, a week or two into our relationship, without asking me first. (She would visit me first thing in the morning before work...ahem.)"
—Anonymous
4. "Put-downs. Like, every so often, he would put me down, but then be super apologetic afterwards and act like nothing ever happened. And I would get weepy and be like, 'Please don't do that.' I chalked it up to cultural differences. Until I moved to his home country with him, the put-downs became relentless, and I realized everyone else from his home country was not unnecessarily cruel and mean."
"Said bye bye and have obviously no regrets."
5. "The flirtatiousness. We have two kids now, but I really wish I had held him more accountable years ago. I love our children, but it’s hard when you have to ask the question, 'Would you be happy if your daughter was dating someone like you?'"
—Anonymous
6. "He told me he didn't know how to react to tragedy. I brushed it off, but I later realized he was telling me he was not connected to his emotions. When I needed him for emotional support, he either invalidated me or turned it around to make it about him. If a person tells you who they are, believe them."
7. "How quick he was to anger over the tiniest things. At first I overlooked it, but then, he would become insulting and cruel and just plain annoying. Just the other day, he threw a full-blown tantrum (like kids do) because he wasn’t able to get the shoes he wanted. Don’t know why I’m still with him."
—Anonymous
8. "He would call me Mandy, which is a nickname I absolutely hate and will not respond to. No one calls me that, and he knew it, but insisted the only reason he was doing it was because he wanted a special name that only he called me. That was the first of many, many, many glaring red flags that my naive 18-year-old self completely ignored."
9. "Love bombing, made me question my intuition, and isolating me from her life. She would text/tell me excessively throughout the day, showering me in 'you’re absolutely incredible's' and 'I love you's.' It lost its meaning after a while. Her actions said otherwise. I was never brought around friends. She hung out with the ex 1-on-1. Anytime I brought up something of concern, it felt suffocating because she had a major victim complex, and she never reassured me when I felt like something was off. The wildest thing, I think, was that it never felt like I could leave. There was always something she put in the air that made me feel trapped by her."
—Anonymous
10. "He was too grandiose. He was constantly telling stories about his past that made him seem interesting or badass, and he made sure to align himself and make connections with people he thought made him look good. It impressed everyone around him, including me. It turned out that a lot of his stories were heavily embellished, and he was cripplingly insecure. Any time I began to succeed in a way that would threaten him, he would dissuade me from it or put me down to 'humble' me. He would isolate me from our shared friends and put down my 'taste in people' any time I made friends of my own. I left three years ago, and I'm thriving in ways he never allowed me to know that I could."
11. "He was hateful and mean to everyone but me."
—Anonymous
12. "It started with them telling me to cancel my gym membership because I was 'only going to lose weight, or get jacked and start hitting them.' Then, they started controlling what I ate, how much and when. I was not allowed to eat unless they were in the room with me and could physically see me eat. If they even suspected I hadn't eaten, all hell would break loose. I was never asked for my thoughts, feelings, or opinions on anything, and if my ex didn't get their own way, it was catastrophic."
"I endured the emotional abuse for four years before I finally got away."
13. "She lied about multiple things in her online profile. She said she lived in a city she didn’t (later saying she 'just moved' to be near her mom), that she was a non-smoker (she was), and that she was a pre-kindergarten teacher (she later admitted she was unemployed after she 'moved')."
14. "He uses self-deprecating humor, and then, he started to do it to me in public. So he 'sucks at golf, ha-ha, so bad at it, but the [then] girlfriend? She's worse!' or 'I know I can't sing, and the girlfriend isn't much better, yuk yuk...' I let it go mainly because I could see he was trying to build himself up, but he didn't have to tear me down in the process. After we got married, a lot of his family started to call him out on it, but he kept doing it until I snapped at him at a party and totally turned the tables on him."
"Two wrongs don't make a right, I know, but he finally understood how fucking mortifying it was to do that to someone."
15. "On our first date, my ex was a little rude to the staff at the casino we were at. A few weeks later, he cut in front of someone in a line at an amusement park. He was very much the opposite with me so I just dismissed those behaviors. Eventually, though, the rose-colored glasses came off, and I saw what a narcissist (and a racist) he was."
—Anonymous
16. "He misunderstood my reference to stopping for a soft drink on the way home and told me I shouldn’t be going to bars without him. That was the first of many red flags."
—Anonymous
17. "He was OK with not being there for his kids and family. At the time, I loved that he always wanted to be with me and spend time with me. Looking back on it, he was not prioritizing the needs of his family and instead using me as a distraction from his responsibilities. In the end, he couldn’t be responsible in a relationship, either. I’ve learnt to always take notice of how someone treats the other people that 'mean everything' to them, because that is how they’ll treat me."
—Anonymous
18. And finally, "He would question my loyalty to him, ESPECIALLY when he got drunk…and boy can he get drunk. It started small with tiny comments, then he started going through my phone. It elevated to verbally abusive rants via text messages and then to face-to-face verbal abuse. He has called me some of the worst things imaginable and used my own personal stories against me. He’s 14 years older than me (in his early 50s), never been married, currently unemployed, has no social life to speak of, and is a raging alcoholic. I can’t believe I let it go on as long as I did."
"I still love the person he is when he’s sober, but I realized that that’s only HALF of him (or maybe less, given the frequency of his drinking). It’s sad watching someone battle an addiction and knowing they refuse to do anything to get better."