The Red Flag Relationship Game

I brought up a past relationship that didn't work out a post or so ago, though ending the relationship enabled my meeting Chris (aka Mr. Perfect Fitness) whom I've been with for 5 years. He and I met on Halloween 2003.

I got this red flag relationship game idea from my therapist years ago. The idea is based on a target like a bulls-eye. You put 5 outer rings around the bulls-eye target and in the center of the target is the person's name (the person you're in the relationship with). Go to the craft store and purchase (or make your own) red flags on pins or toothpicks. Each time while dating, talking, observing behavior in the relationship, listen and watch for the red flags. I asked my therapist sort of a silly question which was, "What if you don't feel you can tell a red flag?" To which he replied, "oh, YOU'LL know!"

With each red flag "occasion" you move your red flags pins to an outer part of the circle, moving one ring of the bulls-eye at a time. You can still be intimate (woo hoo!) inside the relationship until you reach ring four of the bulls-eye circle at which time you must stop intimate contact, however, still be observant toward incoming red flags because the ultimate goal of the red-flag game is to move the last red flag to the final outer bulls-eye ring and at this point, you must end your relationship which is the whole point of the game, to help a person understand just how awful and pointless their relationship is.

Even though I held fast during my three months with this man, I observed numerous red flags.

Some of which were:

• He told me that he once saw a fairy (with wings) sitting on a park bench in L.A. (the story is too long to be repeated here or anywhere)
  
• He believed that when he met people, he could "just tell."
  
• He often said he'd do things he had no intention of doing such as dieting, buying gifts, exercising, taking me places, being nice.
  
• He talked non-stop about how miserable his job was and he thought I had no clue how awful jobs can be.
  
• I'd find myself on Saturday morning, after eating breakfast with him, wondering WTF I was supposed to do all day? I felt trapped.
  
• He had heinous trust issues.
  
• He was homophobic. (I have twins and one is heterosexual.)
  
• He was extremely jealous and sometimes (even at my age) I mistook this display of jealousy for love.
  
• He was self-absorbed and in a strange way, narcissistic.
  
• He spent way too much time chatting online.
  
• He was accusatory.
  
• He once said he knew way more about Alan Watts that I could ever hope to know yet he and I had NEVER had one discussion about Alan Watts. (This subject just bounced out of thin air one day as if we had been arguing about it for months.)
  
• He spent inordinate amounts of time watching TV.
  
• He loved Sci-Fi and hated that we didn't have that in common.
  
• He thought I was strange because I didn't stay up watching TV until 3am.
  
• He was really uncomfortable around other people, my friends.
  
• He brought up the 'race' thing weekly.
  
• When we were intimate, he'd talk about his body parts and always use the color "black" in conjunction with that body part. I guess he did this just in case I didn't recognize the part, knowing the color would help me locate it.
  
• He was very unhappy or 99% of these things would have never been mentioned.

I spent some time compiling this list of red flags throughout my relationship with this man more for fun once I realized I was torturing myself by staying in the relationship. This was definitely not a love connection. 

I used the bulls-eye target metaphorically in my situation because to use a real bulls-eye target would have draped the entire side of an enormous office building. Instead of marking each red flag inside of the 5 circles, as I journeyed outward and away from the relationship, I became a human red-flag pin, moving one red-flagged circle at a time until I was exhausted and worn out very much like the cartoon character crawling through desert sand in search of an oasis. Throughout a few short months I stumbled upon piles of red flags, pretending all the time that 'all systems were go' in some desperate attempt to make myself feel loved by a man who had no clue how to love or maybe it was me who didn't know. I'm not sure. But I don't look back and see this relationship as a horrid waste of my time because I realize that I had to walk consciously and deliberately out of that situation to finally realize just how lovable I am.