7 signs it’s time to walk away.

Image via WikipediaAlright, this is one of those “in hindsight…” posts. As you should know by now, I broke off a horrible relationship not too long ago (okay, it was three months ago) but sometimes I find myself feeling like it was ages ago. Our first major MAJOR fight (as we had many fights our entire relationship) was way back at the end of March, on our 5-month anniversary, and I think that I truly was “done” but hung on for some stupid reason for a few more months.

Anyway, as we all know, hindsight truly is 20/20 (or better) and we often wind up kicking ourselves over and over in despise when we realize how stupid we were. So here is my current list of “dealbreakers”, based not only on that horrible relationship, but also on a couple dates I had since then with other guys. (Read more after the jump…)

• He hates your friends. Bigger red flag if he’s never met them or spent any normal amount of time with them. If he’s bashing them, judging them, or otherwise questioning why they’re in your life entirely, unless he’s got a good point, this is a big no-no. He’s trying to get you to focus your friendship quota on him and only him. It’s called being a CONTROL FREAK and is headed nowhere but to disasterous results.
• He calls you 14,375,829 times a day, even when you’re working. Being that I work from home, it’s always hard to convey to people that when I’m working, I’m working and can’t be disrupted too often. Sure, a morning call to say, “Have a great day,” or a lunchtime call to let me know you’re thinking of me is wonderful. Keeping me on the phone because you’re bored just flat out sucks the life out of me, mmkay?Again, I see this as a control issue – he wants your undivided attention and could care less about anything that might be important to you, like I don’t know… your paycheck.
• He calls you names, and they’re not cutesy. As I’ve mentioned before, my ex used to call me “fat bitch” at least 40-50 times a day (on our dozens of phone calls, and in person). When I finally started to exert my distaste for it, he defended himself with, “You know I’m only messing around.” Um, it’s like Pavlov’s dogs – repeat an action enough times, and the reaction will become second nature. I was conditioned to not only expect to hear it, but to believe it. And who wants to believe something like that?
• He refuses to accompany you to parties, gatherings, weddings, etc. every time. An important part of being a couple is to actually do things together, as a couple. It got to the point with me that my friends would joke that my boyfriend was imaginary. They knew me better than that, but without getting to know him or spend time with him, they only had phone conversations we had about him to make their decisions to accept or reject him. Of course, when they’d hear nothing but the bad stuff, they hated him regardless… and in my case it might’ve been more detrimental for him to have been able to fake them out with a shining personality. What really bothered me most is that there were important events that I wanted to share with him, and he’d not only refuse to go, but try to convince me not to go and to stay home with him instead. I gave up a lot of events in the beginning because I wanted to be with him, and I regret that so much.
• He jumps to exclusivity too soon. I mean, REALLY too soon. Typically, it’s us women who fear that we’ve done this and scared off the guy. But men are totally guilty of it too. They question why your profile’s still up on the dating site after your first date. They accuse you of talking to other guys when you really still have every right to. They start wanting to not only talk to you all day long, but even every day after date one, and they want to see you any free moment you have. These too, all signs of control issues (and some ways jealousy which can be dangerous) and should really scare the crap out of any woman.
• He keeps telling you that his family doesn’t like you, despite signs otherwise. He wants to be the one to say whether or not you’re going to be in his life. He doesn’t want you to bond too closely with his parents or siblings because he’s afraid that if he’s the one who screws up the relationship that he’ll never hear the end of it from his family. He wants you to be on edge, fearing that at any moment his mother could be the reason he’s no longer interested. This means, duh, that he’s not enough into you to know that he wants you as a long-term fixture in his life. If this is going on months into the relationship, then you need to bail out gracefully. No one should be made to feel they have to “perform” or meet someone else’s standards in order to keep a man. Period.
• He never spends any money on you, worse if it’s without a “deal”. Meaning that whole, “I’ll buy lunch (the cheaper meal), you buy dinner (the more expensive meal),” thing. Or, “I’ll buy the groceries, you cook (like a good little housewife should),” or “I can’t afford anything for Christmas, but I’ll get you back with interest on Valentine’s Day.” (And V-Day comes and you get nothing at all.) Sure, circumstances might make these things happen, but if it happens all the time, he’s flat out using you for your greenbacks. I once tallied up the total of what I spent versus what he spent over the course of the relationship. Yep, I’m the one who totally spent more – like, WAY more.

These are really just a few reasons. There are more obvious ones like physical abuse, stalking, threats, harassment… but these are some major dealbreakers for me at the moment. On top of mullets, non-white teeth, missing teeth, and lack of a job and car.

What are some of your major red flags?