Such Pretty Red Flags

Don’t let mixed signals fool you. Indecision is a decision.

Nitya Prakash

I didn’t see it coming, not the breakup, certainly not the cheating or the end of what I believed was going to be a lifelong friendship. I didn’t see it coming, but I probably should have.

When he shows up he’s perfect. I had convinced myself that that was all that counted. Our time together was always wonderful. All those times I almost dumped him, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to end the relationship as I wanted to make official my belief that there was no relationship anymore. 

Then he’d show up again and everything would be fine, better than fine. He’d level up just enough to keep me invested. It didn’t take much. I gave him my love like it was a participation trophy. He showed up. That’s it. I had somehow twisted breadcrumbing into a good sign. It was proof he didn’t want to lose me. He always had a good excuse for his absence. This was fine. We were good.

I should have called him Casper. He’s very friendly, but when you really need a friend, he’s nothing but a ghost. That Man is his absence. He is the silence of phone calls that aren’t returned. He is so many projects, personal and professional, that are well begun and then abandoned. He is the shape of all the space I held for him until my back ached at the strain. He is all the things I told myself didn’t count, so much more than he is the things I counted.

It made a certain sense to only measure our relationship as those moments when we both participated. That wasn’t most of the time though.  If “left on read” could be a person, he was it. One of the few things that I liked about being kept on the DL was that there were only a few people who knew to start pestering me when they got impatient waiting to hear back from him. And because everyone else was getting even more of a disappearing act, I told myself this was fine. We were good.

We got along so easily. Partly because I think we are pleasant people who are easy to get along with. And partly because I didn’t want to waste what little time we had together fighting over small things. I could rationalize that a blue whale is just a small thing though; I mean, if you compare it to Jupiter, it is. Isn’t it? 

I was disappointed that he didn’t properly introduce me to his housemates, but he was so dismissive of the idea, and somehow I thought that was because they weren’t important to him, instead of seeing that it was because I wasn’t. It was okay that I hadn’t met his family yet, too. They all lived out of state. When I asked him if his family knew about me, he said yes. It never occurred to me to push for exactly what they knew about me. 

Even before we were a couple he talked about them like I was going to meet them someday. I cared about them as if I already had. Since I was always busy with my own family, with school, with work, it didn’t strike me odd that I was never invited to any of his family functions. All the big stuff was out of state and the small stuff wasn’t worth the hassle of getting me to San Diego and back. 

Besides, he had met my family, who are much more California based. I really did think we were only on the down low where his professional life was concerned. I believed him when he said he was a private person. So what if he didn’t share my desire to sing our love from the mountaintops. That’s how I love. I thought he loved me how he loved. This was fine. We were good.

I don’t come from a very demonstrative family. Saying “I love you” is likely to be greeted with some kind of joke response, “That sounds like a you problem.”  The men in the family are particularly internal. Still, for all of the sarcasm and teasing, I know that my family loves unconditionally. They show up when and how it matters most. Not everybody needs to wear their heart on their sleeve to prove that it is beating. 

I guess while I was thinking he was terrible at relationships, That Man was thinking I was terrible at casual sex. And we were just being so patient about it, we didn’t find out how different our expectations were until it was much too late. What I thought was rock steady was just indifference. I fell in love with how great our relationship could be without making him prove to me how great it would be. 

He did me wrong, but I did me wrong, too. I braided his red flags into my hair like ribbons, wore them with the same pride I had worn his jacket, because they were his, and I believed he was mine. When he shows up, he’s perfect, so I subtracted all the times he didn’t. His absence didn’t count. I held space for him so steadfastly that it felt like that space was holding me. 

So what if we went nearly five years without him putting a label on it? Words aren’t what matter in a relationship, right? Right?! I didn’t think things were perfect. It would have been a different kind of red flag if they were. Our flaws seemed complementary, though, like our sum was greater than our parts. I believed that we were in a long-term, committed monogamous relationship, with the usual amount of nuance plus the extra complications of long-distance. 

I always hated his “better to ask forgiveness than permission” motto. It created unnecessary problems at work. I definitely didn’t want it applied to our relationship. We were supposed to be on the same team. Why would anyone want to be with someone who intentionally does things they know they’ll want to be forgiven for later? Don’t do things if you know they’ll cause you to owe your loved ones an apology. Also, a partnership shouldn’t involve permission; it should involve collaboration. Plan to ask for input, for support, not for forgiveness or permission. We’re both grown-ups, don’t come to me like you need a note from the teacher. 

We fought well when we fought. Attacking the problem, we never went after each other. Though in hindsight, I can’t remember any significant personal conflict, most of our problem-solving was for work. The lack of conflict in our relationship seemed like such beautiful compatibility at the time. We got along so well, laughed so easily.

In hindsight, the absence of uncomfortable conversations wasn’t so much about being so perfectly in sync as it was about a lack of emotional intimacy on his side. I had mistaken his yeah-yeah, sure-sure attitude for genuine agreement. I kept thinking we were on the same page when he hadn’t even opened the book.

Whether it was emotional manipulation or just a bad memory, the number of conversations we had that hinged on another conversation he said didn’t happen was absolutely maddening. Even when I was still looking at him through rose-colored glasses, I felt unintentionally gaslit so much of the time, and keeping things so hush-hush has left me with very few witnesses to help reconcile the Grand Canyon-sized gaps between how we each remember things. 

Our relationship was shaped as much by my failure to push for the hard conversations as by his failure to show up and follow through. In agreeing to always give him the benefit of the doubt, I’d given myself permission to always hear what I wanted. I rationalized everything else.

There were always red flags, but I guess love is colorblind. Before anything else had happened, he was my friend, and I loved him as a friend, and he was there when I needed him through my dad’s decline in health and death. It only seemed right to stand by my man, ride or die, once we became a couple. Which only I seem to remember us being.

I remember our relationship one way, he remembers it another. At the end of the day, I think we’re both wrong, but I don’t know what to do about that. I only remember the parts that I remember, framed the way that I chose to frame them at the time. I don’t trust his memory or integrity enough to have him help me with the missing pieces. Not that either one of us wants to speak to the other again anyway. What a sad ending to what had seemed like a beautiful love story.

I’m not the same
When love gets strong
People get weak
Sometimes they lose control
And wind up in too deep

Cyndi Lauper
Who Let in the Rain