Spotting a bundle of red flags

Caroline Egan
10 min readJun 12, 2023

What I Wished I’d Known

Photo by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash

I’m defensive but with good reason. People are jerks.

I wish I’d know sooner that I was a naive dope though. You know when you have a feeling in the pit of your stomach and you can’t tell if you’re crazy or whether you should go with it or not?

Imagine wasting years with people that were actually just psychologically messing with you?

I suppose you should look internally here as well.

Like are you blinded to these red flags or are you trying to rehash old wounds from your childhood?

Because it’s madness to think that you can keep doing the same things over and over and for different results to emerge without any change on your part.

I’m not saying these are the only reasons people end up in abusive relationships or the it’s anyone’s fault for that, but I’ve done a bit of therapy and self exploration to make sure I won’t stand for it again, and to recognise the early signs of toxicity.

Here was me thinking I was relatively strong-willed and capable on my own and then WHOOSH I was a BASKETCASE!

Two of these people that I was in relationships with objectively had more red flags than China, but I pushed those gut feelings down like a good girl. I stayed and wasted…

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Caroline Egan

Nerdy, freelance writer, feminist, horror/sci-fi enthusiast, mother, big child. Support me and become a member here: https://eganc3.medium.com/membership