Recognising Red Flags: 7 Signs of an Unhealthy Relationship

Have you ever looked back at a past relationship and realized the warning signs were there all along?

Most times red flags don’t look red, they look like a passionate beautiful pink until they hurt us.

Today let’s learn how to recognize signs of an unhealthy relationship, those toxic behaviors that can turn love into a battlefield.  

Is your partner constantly leaving you bruised, but claims they're apologetic?  Do you find yourself questioning your own worth just to keep them happy?  

It's time to ditch the rose-colored glasses and learn how to identify the wrong person before they break your heart. 

But first, let’s look at why we fail to pay attention to those toxic relationship signs in the first place. 

Why We Fail to Recognise a WRONG Person & Why Red Flags May Look White

When it comes to finding love:

Learning to recognize the wrong person is more important than learning to recognize the right person.

That’s because, in life, you will meet many wrong persons before you meet the right one.

If you are bad at recognizing wrong people, you will meet the right person when the wrong ones have long messed you up!

 
- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

This is why many people find good people when they are too heartbroken and distrustful to ever love again.

 There are 3 main things you need to know to recognize if you are dating the right person or not.

a) Loving Someone Doesn’t Mean You Can Live With that Person

In my best-selling book ­How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye I wrote that,

Don’t Just Look for Someone that You Love, Look for Someone That You can both love and live with.

 
- MOFFAT MACHINGURA | How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye

GET THIS...

 The fact that you love someone doesn’t mean you can live together. 

Some people are difficult to live with.

Some people are like a thorny cactus tree, if you hug them you are the one who will always cry.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

They hurt everybody close to them. Even if they say sorry, they will still do something that hurts you again and again.

Some are so tired of saying "sorry" that they won’t even say it anymore.

You can also find yourself dating people who don’t even care that they are hating you.

Others could even be sadistic, they actually enjoy hurting you.

Then some hurt you and blame you for making them treat you so badly.

Those are signs of toxic behaviors in a relationship.

It doesn’t matter how much "in love" you feel, loving those kinds of people will never make you happy.

Even if they are genuinely apologizing and seem to be improving, the fact that you are always bruised is a clear sign that they are NOT good people to share life with. 

b) Beware of “But if I Leave, Who Will Love That Person?” Mentality

A big barrier to finding true love is the beliefs we have about love.

Get this, my friend...

We have been taught that love is sacrifice. We think love is taking pain 😭, or climbing on the cross and getting yourself nailed on it. 

But that needs to be taken in proper context.

If you take it out of context it could mess up your life, and increase your chances of finding and keeping Wrong People.

• I can take a bullet for you, as long as you are NOT 🙅‍♂️ the one pulling the trigger at me.
• I can hang on the cross for you as long as you are NOT the one driving the nails through my hands. 🙅‍♂️
• It’s okay to keep up with a painful life just to be with someone you love. That’s love. But if the painful thing in your life is actually the very same person that you love, keeping up with that is NOT love – it’s self-destruction.

The signs of an unhealthy relationship can be clear, but if you believe that enduring them is a sign of love – then you will see toxic behaviors as tests of love when they are actually red flags.

Trash all the wrong definitions you have about love. It’s our wrong definitions of love that lead us to the wrong people.

 
- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

c) Develop the Right Picture of Love

 Love is NOT pain, love is happiness.

•  Love is being cuddled in the arms of a friend; it’s NOT love when being with your lover feels the same as being with your enemy.
•  Love is caring for someone who cares for you, and love is a waste of time if its only one way.
•  True love must give you peace.
•  Thinking about your partner must make you smile, it must brighten your eyes and let the dimples on your cheeks show.

I’m NOT talking about blushing, am talking about joy and happiness. Blushing is short-lived, but happiness is forever.

Till you find that person in whose presence you can be happy, keep searching.

Don’t settle for less because in love, less happiness is more pain. And forever is too long to be unhappy. 🙌

 
- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

Let’s Get into the 7 signs of an unhealthy relationship.

7 Signs of an Unhealthy Relationship

Red Flag 1: Cheating

Funny enough: In dating relationships, cheating is only the number 5 cause of breakups, but in marriage relationships, cheating is the number 1 cause of divorce.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

That means, though cheating is bad, we often go as far as getting married to really see how bad it is.

You can go as far as marrying someone who cheats, knowing clearly that they do.

You believe they will stop because they are married, and if they don’t, you hate them and try to shame them for refusing to grow up.

Yet still, that hate and shame don’t change them.

It’s all because, during your dating years, you would have paid attention to the unimportant and spent all your time forgiving the unforgivable.

During dating, we often major on minor things and minor on major things.

We break up for actions we should forgive, and forgive actions we should break up for.

Consequently,

We divorce in marriage for what we forgave in dating.

 
- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

Cheating is one of those things.

We should never overlook it while dating. Cheating is a big red flag, way brighter than we usually realize.

My friend, divorce doesn’t just happen. It happens after a lot of physical and/or mental pain and suffering.

If cheating is the number one cause of divorce, far ahead of physical and mental abuse, that should show you that cheating causes more pain and suffering than physical and mental abuse.

Cheating is a big deal, and its pain is real. Sadly, we often don’t see that clearly enough until we are married.

We just think our partners will change as soon as we slide a marriage ring down their finger.

We think they will stop flirting with other people, they will drive away their secret exes who have been popping up throughout our time together.

We think marriage will make our cheating partners responsible and faithful.

Sometimes you can even tell yourself that you can handle their cheating.

If you are a lady, you could be believing that all men cheat, so you think you could die single waiting for one who doesn’t.

But some people are divorcing around you as a lesson that being single is better than being in a bad relationship. The pain of being repeatedly cheated on is NOT worth whatever that relationship offers.

Know that faithfulness is part of your rights in a relationship.

Faithfulness flourishes your soul, but cheating tortures it.

Anyone who is cheating on you, or whose character and behavior don’t promise faithfulness to you is bad for you.

Don’t ignore that red flag, it’s one of the most serious signs of an unhealthy relationship.

Red Flag 2: Incompatibility

Yes, incompatibility is a sign of an unhealthy relationship.

You can be two good people who are NOT good for each other.

-MOFFAT MACHINGURA

That’s incompatibility.

For your relationship to be successful your values, beliefs, and the way you see the world need to be similar.

Missing that is a big red flag for your relationship because you start trying to change each other and start arguments that never help.

The two of you need to see the world the same way to walk together on the same path.

You have to be able to laugh together to live together.
And you can only laugh together if you can laugh at the same things.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

You can’t force that compatibility.

It’s better to find someone who already lives in your world and share it together than try to find someone out of your world and suffocate them by trying to fit them into yours.

A fish and a bird can fall in love, but they can never live together.

A fish suffocates in a bird’s world and a bird suffocates in a fish’s world.

Both Mr. Fish and Miss Bird could be good people, but they are good people who are NOT good for each other.

If your beliefs, religions, idea of fun, and ambitions of life are too different – then chances are that you have met a good person who is NOT good for you.

Keep searching.

Red Flag 3: Drinking and Drugs

Oh yes, in Rihanna’s songs drinking and drugs look cool.

However, studies show that drinking and drugs cause more suffering and divorce in marriage than physical and mental abuse.

So forget the movies and the music,

In real life, drinking is far from the cool look you see in sports commercials and alcohol posters.

In fact

Alcohol’s most loyal customers are a mess. And doing life with them messes up yours.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

A drug addict hurts you even worse. If you don’t believe me ask their parents.

When you have a child who has been hooked on drugs for years you secretly wish he/she wasn’t your child, and you hate yourself for wishing so.

When looking for someone to settle with, go for sober. The drugging and drunkard are already taken – they are taken by the substances they abuse.

They may promise to quit, but their relationship with those substances is so strong that they rather lose everybody for those substances than lose those substances for anybody.

It’s hard doing life with someone who is trying to escape it.

-MOFFAT MACHINGURA

So when looking for love, look for sober. Be sober.

Alcohol and drug abuse are a big red flag.

Red Flag 4: A Casual/Cynical View of Love

If your partner keeps threatening to leave you, one day they will.  

Deep inside, they’ve already imagined life without you and they love it. That’s why they can’t stop talking about it.

That’s why they talk as if they are doing you a favor by being in your life.

Take that as a sign that they are casual about a relationship that you take so seriously. Casual is bad for you.

It’s one of the most ignored signs of an unhealthy relationship.

And if your partner keeps saying he/she doesn't believe in marriage - believe them.

I heard a lady who dated a guy for twelve years only to walk out without a marriage.

The guy had always said he wouldn’t marry her, he didn’t believe in marriage – but she thought if she stayed long enough and loved him strongly enough he would change his mind.

What she thought was a marriage was just a mirage.

Dating a person who doesn’t believe in marriage is a waste of time and perfume.

– MOFFAT MACHINGURA

Being told “let’s just date for fun we are too young to think about the future” is a sign that you have dropped your heart into the arms of a person who takes something as serious as love casually.

Such uncommitted people are wrong for you even if they are sweet to you.

When the wrong one loves you right, you forget their love will end.

But it always ends because…

If you are NOT dating for a marriage, you are dating for a heartbreak.

– MOFFAT MACHINGURA

Dating a serious person casually is an unsung type of toxic behavior, and a lack of seriousness from just one partner is a sign of an unhealthy relationship.

Red Flag 5: Personality Problems

Dear Ladies: Among your qualities of a good guy, always remember being mentally stable is more important than being financially stable.

Dear Gentleman: When looking for a woman to settle down with, remember that beauty and bathing well are NOT a sign of mental wellness. Some women look good yet they are crazy!

It’s NOT just living in the streets, skipping bathing, picking food from dust bins, and wearing dirty tattered clothes that certify people as mentally unwell.

Some people are:

• Bathing but crazy!
• Driving but crazy!
• Managing companies, leading churches, singing in the choir yet completely character crazy!

In my free book HowI Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye I wrote that,

The character of a person is also the character of that person’s love.

A cruel person gives cruel love.

A kind person gives kind love.

An unforgiving person gives an unforgiving love.

If you can’t live with their character, you can’t live with their love.

– MOFFAT MACHINGURA | How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye

Stop ignoring those toxic behaviors in a relationship,

You can NOT build a good relationship with a bad person – NO matter how good you are.

If that person is rude, easily aroused to anger, mean, and/or vengeful towards either you or other people – then that person is bad for you.

If your partner is sweet to just you and mean to everyone else, don’t be fooled, that person is just as bad for you as he/she is bad for everyone else.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

As for anger, please don’t take it lightly.

If he/she is a person everybody fears when angry – run. You are in danger.

When you see anger see danger.

Stop trying to change people. It’s only in fairy tales where love turns beasts into princes and princesses. In real life, beasts gobble up people.

All that anger needs is just a “d” to become “danger.” The word anger is the biggest part of the word danger.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

So when you meet a person with anger issues. You are in danger.

It’s one of the signs of an unhealthy relationship. Keep searching.

Red Flag 6: Bad Communication

You should be able to talk soul to soul, to see eye to eye. And you need to see eye to eye to walk side by side.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

A relationship that can’t communicate, can’t last.

Failure to communicate usually happens in 2 ways:

a) You don’t even talk that much

• You go for days without calling or seeing each other.
• You get bored of talking together or seeing each other everyday.

Yes you may be thinking it’s because you are busy or saving your stories and conversations for the best time.

But the truth is: your relationship is NOT working.

Be with someone in whose world you lose yourself.

Someone whom with whom you lose track of time when you start to talk or chatting, (rather than lose track of time when you merely kiss or touch – anybody can do that).

Lack of communication is one of the signs of an unhealthy relationship.

b) You talk, but it always ends up in arguments

Too many arguments and disagreements are a sign that your souls are incompatible with each other.

You are too different to do life together.

It’s like trying to install a Windows software on an Apple computer. The installation process will keep on displaying an incompatibility statement no-matter how many hundreds of times you try.

Couples who see the world similarly won’t need to argue over most things.

Just a simple conversation clears up their disagreements.

If you find yourself continuously arguing, it’s a sign that you could be forcing love on souls that can’t even be friends.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

Arguments grow toxic as they grow frequent.

Red Flag 7: Physical and Mental Abuse

This one is simple.

If your partner can hit you while you are still dating, they can kill you when you are married.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA

Also beware of silent treatment – being bitterly ignored for days after a disagreement. That’s emotional abuse.

And if your partner tells you that you are:

·        “Useless”

·        “Dumb”

·        “You are mothering without me”

·        “Nobody can love you like I do”

·        “Nobody loves you out there – it’s only me.”

·        “You are ugly but I love you anyway.”

Whether said harshly or softly, those words are actually mental abuse.

When you hear those, know that you are in trouble. That red flag is one of the biggest signs of an unhealthy relationship. Yet many ignore them because they think they deserve how they are being treated.

Bottom Line

These are the 7 signs of an unhealthy relationship. Subscribe and share for more lessons.

Remember...

Red flags never turn white.

So when you see these 7 red flags we just discussed, run!

Don’t settle for less because, in love, less happiness is more pain. And forever is too long to be unhappy. 

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA