11 Early Red Flags That The Relationship Is Toxic (And You Should Get Out Now)

“When you find yourself not telling friends or family about things your SO has done/the way you’re being treated because they wouldn’t understand and you don’t want to make your SO look bad.” — ThingerBees

“The first red flag isn’t an obvious one. But essentially, if somebody makes you afraid of bringing up a problem you may have with them or responds automatically mean as shit/defensive as fuck, GET AWAY. Within a relationship, you have the right to bring up a conversation on something that may bother you in a calm manner and that person should respond to you accordingly. Fights will happen, yes, but you should be able to talk to each other without it being a fight at the first few mentions of something that may potentially challenge them.” — [deleted]

“When they dislike your friends for no reason. When they try and isolate you. When they insist on knowing your Facebook password.” — DirtySingh

“Least interest theory is a concept that states that the party who cares less about the relationship dominates the relationship. This is obviously true in business practice, but also true in romantic relationships. Abusive and manipulative people use this to their advantage by never leaving their comfort zone. They will encourage and often expect vulnerability, disclosure, and investment into the relationship on your part, but they will not personally reciprocate those values.” — cornnndog

“The first red flag is the person having an opinion about every single thing you do and every single person you talk to, like they need to be hands on in all your dealings and activities like they are your parent or some shit. Normal people don’t want to coach your life, only fucked up people do.” — shewshoe

“They will down play the things they do that are hurtful, while also inflating the things you do that hurt them. When they cheat, or are caught talking to someone else, ‘it was just a stupid thing,’ but you do something in no way comparable, but they will find a way to make it comparable.” — cornnndog

“The need for my undivided attention every day in my every waking hour. Seriously people, clingers are bad news.” — [deleted]

“Everything is your fault if you’re in an abusive relationship, according to your abuser.” — widemec

“There were all of these unspoken ‘rules’ I didn’t know about until I would incur his wrath for breaking them.” — badly_behaved

“Any form of gaslighting no matter how small. Also pre-blaming you for things they know will happen because of them. He’d tell me on vacation ‘that drink is too strong you’re just going to pass out later and we won’t be able to go out and do anything,’ but in reality it was him passing out from drinking at 9pm forcing us to stay in. Or saying, ‘Yeah I want to see the sunrise but you’re never going to get out of bed that early,’ yet I went and saw it and he slept until 2 hours later when I finally got him up. When I realized it, I saw he was basically trying to make me give up on doing things so he could blame me for us not doing it, even though if I held up my end he wouldn’t hold up his. Between that and making me think my emotions were invalid when he’d upset me just made for a super manipulative relationship.” — madguins

“The casual passive-aggressive comments he would drop in normal conversation. Then the comments would become more direct, then mean, and finally just cruel. And once he saw that I would accept those, well, the floodgates of abuse just burst open.” — scaredofmyownshadow