Not All Flags Are Bright Red

It’s not always so easy to see the problems coming in a relationship. We’re beginning to talk now about not just red flags, but green flags (the things that show that a relationship is particularly healthy), and today we have another concept to discuss - the yellow or “orange” flag. The notion of a flag that isn’t a red flag on someone else but something that is from within yourself that should mark for you to pause and re-evaluate whether the relationship is serving you is a valuable idea that’s gaining some traction.

The picture here is a graphic by @holisticallygrace listing some big yellow or orange flags that should give you some pause. The ones that in my life have taken the most work to unravel and overcome are tip-toeing around my own needs and ignoring my own boundaries and values relative to those of others. It’s taken me years of work in therapy to get to the point where I recognize these flags as they’re occurring in my relationships, instead of seeing them in the post-mortem of the relationships.

Different people have different strengths and weaknesses, different points they excel in and struggle with to recognize, to acknowledge, and to gradually improve such that they don’t repeat the pattern in their relationships. Some people don’t have patterns - just one relationship or another that doesn’t fit them for one of these reasons or another reason altogether, but where one of these is the first sign to you that the relationship isn’t quite a healthy fit for you. It’s your emotions showing you it isn’t working, one orange flag at a time.

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