By Sophie Hutchison

Not all nice guys stay nice. We’ve heard this story before. So, why do we ignore the red flags that appear early on in relationships? Do we honestly believe that no one else will love us, or do we believe that we deserve to be treated badly? I guess we must do. There were certainly plenty of red flags that I chose to ignore in my last relationship. 

The first was his exes. Everyone has their share of bad breakups and heartbreak, but a pattern emerged when he talked about his exes. According to him, all of them had cheated on him. You know the saying: two is a coincidence, three is a pattern. What’s four? Why was it that all his ex-girlfriends since he was sixteen had cheated on him and left him? Was it simply his taste in women, or was it his behaviour?

His attitude towards love unnerved me from the start. He was desperate for my love and attention, a complete contrast to any guy that I’d been with before. For context: I’d been single for six years before we got together. Having someone so attentive was strange to me. I told him as much, but he took that to mean that he had to make up for all those other guys’ lack of commitment by talking about marriage, moving in together and having kids. After a month together, that was a little too much for me, but my fears fell on deaf ears.  

I spent a lot of time with him as we came out of lockdown, going on drives and walks, meeting his mum, and eventually staying the night. I’d never done that before. It was a big deal for me, which I never thought he appreciated. I spent so much time with him that I barely saw my own family. It got to the point where my sister told me that she missed me; we kept failing to see each other because of our schedules. He didn’t appreciate that either. He didn’t get that I am close with my family because he wasn’t with his. Yet we always saw his side, not mine. 

Jealousy was a common emotion for him. Maybe his insecurities from being cheated on were to blame, but how was a delivery driver looking at me considered a risk? I hated it when he was like that. I didn’t want someone to yell ‘pervert’ at a stranger for looking at me. It was embarrassing as hell and not at all sexy. He wanted me to keep my attention on him, always, and we spent most of our time immersed in his life: his friends, his family, his job. Never mine. 

I should have left after our first proper fight, which happened a month into the relationship. All I did was talk to someone I used to be friends with who wanted to apologise for the past. Someone I’d seen naked, but I’m not attracted to women so I didn’t see a problem. He didn’t like that, though, and told me that I wasn’t allowed to talk to her. How he talked to me during that fight made me feel so low that I didn’t think I deserved love. Somehow, I ended up apologising – ignoring the golden rule that nobody should tell you who to speak to or not – and we kept dating. 

I ignored the voice in the back of my head that told me he didn’t understand me, that he just wanted to possess me because I seemed stable. It took one more fight about his demands for more of my time for me to realise that nothing I did would ever be enough. I saw him almost every day with only a part-time job to keep us apart, so how would he have been when I was working 9-5? How would he have been with my male friends? I didn’t want to find out. He already thought that I was choosing a job over him. He didn’t understand why maybe I didn’t want to see him after work – I got scolded as he dropped me off. I came into work sobbing, unsure why my boyfriend wanted me to feel so bad about myself. Enough was enough. 

When I saw posts on Instagram about abusive relationships, all I saw was a checklist of what I was dealing with. I had ignored a lot of his issues until then: the mummy issues, the resentment of me doing better than him. I was done. 

I didn’t realise just how toxic and abusive my ex was until I’d left, and he refused to let me go. If you see red flags early on in a relationship, don’t ignore them. Learn from my mistakes.