Relationship Red Flags & Green Flags

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Narcissistic people are often fantastic salespeople because they have a tremendous ability to study another person, get the intel, and use it for for their own narcissistic needs.

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You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily, and I'm here to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sex. We've all heard of red flags in relationships, but let's be honest, sometimes they can be terribly hard to spot, especially when you really want a relationship to work or if the other person is super hot. Am I right? That's why I'm bringing you a special episode today focused on all things red flags and green flags with two of my top voices on the matter, psychologist and author Dr. Ramani and YouTube's favorite dating coach, Matthew Hussey. Dr. Ramani and I take a deep dive on narcissism and talk through things like love bombing, devaluation, and the different types of narcissists out there, as well as the personality types who tend to fall for them. And if you're thinking, "I wouldn't possibly fall for that nonsense," think again. These folks are master manipulators and at their core, deeply insecure. Next, Matthew Hossie walks us through our own less-than-ideal tendencies, such as why we keep going for aloof and unavailable people, how we repeat painful patterns from our childhood, and how we ignore someone's inconvenient truth. But Matthew also tells us what to look for when we're dating someone new, such as curiosity, they're equally invested in the relationship, and consistency with words and actions. So if you're dating right now, listen to this episode twice. All right, Intentions with Emily. For each episode, join me in setting an intention for the show. I do it and I encourage you to do the same. My intention is to help you recognize your dating patterns once and for all so you can start to make healthier choices and improve the relationships you're already in or leave them if they're not working. Please rate and review Sex with Emily wherever you listen to the show and check out our articles on our site. We have so many topics that are going to interest you. Check out my YouTube channel for more sex tips and advice. If you want to ask me a question, just call my hotline, 559-TALK-SEX, or 559-825-5739. Leave me your questions or message me at sexwithemily.com/askemily. Before we get things started, here are some of my top red flag warning signs, as you'll hear on today's show. So are they curious about you? Do they ask questions or are they constantly talking about themselves and trying to impress you? I don't know, maybe you like name droppers, but I don't care who you know. I don't care about those things. That does not impress me. Or maybe they're too curious about you and they're too involved and they're texting you like 10 times a day. And part of it feels really good to have someone that into you. But I'm telling you, 10 times a day and calling you every day when you just met can be a little bit too much. Or maybe on the flip side of this, you're doing all the work, you're reaching out, you're getting in touch with them, you're trying to schedule, make the plans for the date, because that's a red flag too. If you're doing all the heavy lifting. Now, for me personally, a red flag would be someone who doesn't have a growth mindset around sex. They're not interested in my pleasure as I am in their pleasure. They don't want to use lube. They don't want to use toys. They don't even want to talk about sex. That would be my red flag. Another one is how they talk about their exes. Listen, if you're constantly saying that your ex crazy and my ex did this and my ex did that, if they still have anger about past relationships, red flag, because they still need to go work on it. So pay attention to their language. Pay attention to what they're saying, 'cause people are gonna show you who they are. You just have to believe them. But I also have green flags. Like, are they considerate about your life? Do they remember what you say, where you live? Like, will they meet you halfway for a date, not make you drive across town? And do they really show an interest in you? Like, I want someone to want to know me. They wanna know what I'm all about. They wanna get to know me better. They ask questions. Maybe they remember what I, something I had told them, like on our last date or our last conversation. Somebody who's just kind. I really just want somebody who's kind. And you know, you can tell if someone's kind. Do they treat other people well? How do they treat their friends, their family, the waitstaff? I mean, these are all clues to what kind of decent person they are. Are they decent? I mean, if they're harassing the waiter and they're cheap, no. But if they're kind and they smile, they make eye contact, all those things, Those are some green flags. And also if someone tells you that they've been in therapy, that's a huge green flag for me. Have they done the work? Have they done a deep dive into some of their fears and things that hold them back? Cuz we all have them. And as my mom always said to me, the issues you have on the third date, you have forever. So not that's a bad thing. You just need to know, are these issues I can live with forever? Cuz everyone's gonna have issues or it's something you just don't want to handle in a relationship. All the information's there, just pay attention. Let's kick things off with red flags and Dr. Ramani, who tells us how to spot a narcissist.

Narcissism, it's like you and I have spoken about it, it's a very misunderstood term. It's characterized by a lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, a constant need for validation and admiration. They're often very controlling in relationships. They're very sensitive to criticism. They take advantage of other people. They can be quite manipulative. They're very prone to rage, and they don't do well with frustration, stress, or disappointment. At those times, they do tend to really blow up. Those are kind of the top notes. They're very prone to envy. They covet what other people have. Actually, in some cases, they often feel quite victimized that life didn't give them everything that they think that they deserve. Okay.

So that's a great overall picture of it. And then in listening to this, I think, well, I get stressed. I get upset sometimes. I mean, how do you know when it's a problem? When someone's actually— because sometimes we could use the term too much. So how do you—

I think that one of the things that confuses a lot of people is like, does this person have a diagnosis? Or you shouldn't call someone narcissistic, that's a diagnosis. It's actually not. There is something called narcissistic personality disorder, which is actually not that common. We see it in maybe 3 to 5% of the population. But this pattern of narcissism is a little— quite a bit more common. I mean, we don't have any good— we don't have great statistics on it. If you actually just ask me to spitball a number, I'd say probably closer to 15 to 20% of people, and that might even be an underestimate. But you ask, when is it too much? You know, it's one of those things when other people are really being affected negatively by it. I agree with you. There are times, I was on hold today for 30 minutes with someone and I was incensed. The woman who answered the phone was clearly not, you know, felt bad that she put me on hold. And then she put me on hold for another 15 minutes to clean up the mess. And I'm seething at this point, but I thought, I was able to say, this woman is not responsible for this. This poor woman is far down the chain. She's just doing her job. It's late in the time zone she's in. You know, instead of, I'm not going to get angry at her. I'm going to, you know, say, okay, this is, maybe I should consider whether I'm going to keep doing business with this company, but I'm not going to take it out on her. A person with a narcissistic personality style would never make that discernment. They would have gone to town on that woman. How dare you? How dare you waste my important time? A person who's really narcissistic just can't turn it off. They lash out, they rage. These are the people who will just make messes and later on apologize. And since everybody is used to giving them second chances, they just keep getting away with it over and over. And that's the pattern. I'm going to make a mess, I'm going to yell at people, I'm going to hurt people's feelings, and then I'm going to say sorry and it's okay. And then I'm going to do it again.

Because there's really no consciousness around it then. It's a pattern and people have been enabling them, perhaps for their entire lives. Is that what you're saying?

Absolutely.

It's, you know, you raise it in that sort of fancy clinical terms. We say that they have low self-reflective capacity, which is a really fancy way of saying they are absolutely unaware of who they are, what they say, how other people around them feel. And the deeper, darker part of it is they really don't care. You know, they can care when they need to care. And this is what really bothers people. People will say, golly, I was in a relationship with a narcissist and for the first month, He or she was the most attentive human being I've ever dated in my life. Like they remembered every detail about me. My birthday was pitch perfect. Like everything was like, it was perfect. So obviously they have the capacity for this. If they had no capacity for empathy, they'd never get it right. They're often narcissistic people are often fantastic salespeople because they have a tremendous ability to study another person get the intel and use it for their own narcissistic needs. Does that make sense? So if I'm having empathy for you, Dr. Emily, it's because you're a lovely person. I've heard great things about you. You're another human being. I care about you. Right. You know, whether or not we were doing this show. Right. You know, it's not like, well, I'm going to be nice to Emily because she's going to put me on her show and then I'm going to cut Emily loose. You know, it's not that. My point is, is that people often say, how can you say narcissist doesn't have empathy? They had a lot of empathy in the beginning and then it went away. What they have is this really incredible ability to turn that empathy on and off to suit their own personal needs.

So I know you've seen so many people over the years in your office and you've written about it and you've researched extensively, but what, if you have to say, is there a common story that you hear to explain if someone's going, well, well, I don't know if I'm in a, if it's narcissistic, you know, I can't tell. Is there, is there something you could kind of paint a picture you could paint for us? The client comes in and sits down and Here's the story, Dating a Narcissist.

You really look and you start counting up how many justifications they make for this person's behavior. The justification is the signature of the narcissistic relationship. Listen, none of us are perfect. Any of us who are in relationships know that we sometimes do say, "Eh, you know what? My partner's not the best in the evening 'cause he or she wakes up really early in the morning," whatever. But this is regular justification is number 1. It's making excuses for big-ticket stuff because you want it to work out because you're used to making those kinds of excuses from early in life. A lot of people who might have had a narcissistic parent, for example, they're much more likely to choose a narcissistic partner. It's almost like it's familiar. But I think that another thing that people will often point out in terms of some of those early red flags, they would notice a real sensitivity to criticism. They'd say, gosh, this person could really dish it out, but if anyone even made a tiny little joke at them, they would blow up and it would feel so disproportionate. And in those early days, especially of dating, might say something like, "Oh, I just assumed it's 'cause he was drunk," or, "I just assumed that this is something that maybe she was bullied about in the past." Didn't stop to think like, "Wow, that is a disproportionate, really poorly regulated reaction." And that hypersensitivity to criticism combined with that need that you feel like you're always making justifications for their behavior. "Oh, they're late, they have a busy job." "Oh, they got angry, they've been drinking too much." "Oh, you know, they didn't ask me how I was feeling even though I lost my job last week, but you know, they're distracted and maybe they feel guilty." be like always, always making these kinds of excuses. And I also have to say a lot of people in relationships with narcissists who don't see those early red flags are doing a lot of what I call storytelling. They want this to work out. The reason a lot of people marry a narcissist is bad luck and timing. They meet them at an age when they're like, "Oh, I want to get married and I don't want to spend another 6, 12 months finding someone else. There's enough good things about this person. Okay, let's make it work." And it'll be the single worst decision of their life because if you think dating a narcissist You think divorce is bad, try divorcing one. It is literally one of the most nightmarish things a person would go through, especially if there's children involved. And so this idea of a biological clock at 35 has resulted in many a narcissistic marriage.

Wow. We always talk about, when we're talking about sex and relationships, that people covet the honeymoon phase, that early part of a relationship when everything was amazing and they were having sex all the time. And I always say like, that was a very small portion of the relationship, that we're talking the first 3 months, but a lot of people live there. Live in that place. And sometimes, you know, I hear from a lot of it like they were so nice, or a lot of times it's about the sex. But what you're hearing is there, there's this bright light they turn on you. It's this intense focus to bring you under their layer in a way. It's a manipulation is what we're saying early on.

It is, it's a manipulation. It's also a dream, right? You know, if you really want to go primal with this, yes, what does every child crave? To be seen. To be loved unconditionally, to be really just sort of, you know, the center of a parent's universe. A lot of kids don't get that. And so the idea of sometimes in adult relationships, as a person falls in love, especially if they didn't get that, there's a craving for that. It's almost like, this is where I'm going to work through the father for whom I was never enough, or the mother for whom I was never enough. Now I'm going to be enough. And in the midst of this whole love bombing, idealization, seduction kind of a phase, that's we start entering something, and I'm going to use a technical term and explain it, called cognitive dissonance. Now cognitive dissonance is this idea that we have a really hard time holding two things that don't agree in our mind at the same time. So the old story on that is sour grapes, right? The fox saw the grapes, the grapes are really juicy and yummy, the fox couldn't reach them. So to help the fox deal with the bad feeling of like, there's yummy grapes and I can't jump that high, the fox says, oh, those grapes were probably sour anyhow. Well, a different kind of thing happens in the cognitive dissonance around a narcissistic relationship. In this idealized, seductive, you know, love-bombing time, people want to keep this and want this to last. Love bombing lasts anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks on average. So, you know, in the short, it'd be about a month, on the long, it'd be about 3 months, much longer than that. Sometimes some people have told me 6 months, but that's a bit of an outlier. And what they want is they want that to last. But the next step in a narcissistic relationship after idealization and seduction is devaluation. The narcissist does this interesting game. For them, they're really, really interested in the chase and the hunt. And so, and a lot of people almost resist it. And when the person finally thinks like, "Nah, this really, I finally did get my fairytale. I deserved this." They really do then, they kind of push all their chips to the middle of the table and they get all in. And then, When the narcissist knows they have you, that's when the devaluation phase starts. It's almost instantaneous. Like people will say, gosh, just when I moved in, this thing started going south. Right after I left my job and moved to the other coast, this thing stopped working out. And I'm like, mm-hmm, yep, because the love bombing was done.

They've got you.

Once they got you, they have contempt for you.

Oh, it's like you could set your watch by it. Now let's explain love bombing. If you will. Let's break that down, what that exactly is.

So love bombing doesn't always look the same. So in the classical kind of grandiose model, love bombing is really sort of the cinematic kind of seductive experience. The person's really handsome, charming, charismatic. You do really cool stuff, but everything's too fast. It's very, very intense. And people will describe this as like, this person understands me like I've never been understood before. I think I found my soulmate. This is a once in a lifetime love story. And again, intense and fast. People will start traveling together very quickly. "Hey, I'm going to the Bahamas next weekend." Meanwhile, it's like your third date. Probably not a good idea to fly to the Bahamas on your third date unless you already live in the Bahamas. Okay? So it all happens fast. You're meeting friends, you're meeting family. There might be expensive gifts. There might be a quick move like, "Hey, my lease is up. We've been spending 24/7 together." You move in really quickly after like 6 weeks and it seems like it's all just about a convenience, but we're together all the time. You do. You neglect other stuff in your life. You might find yourself taking time off from work, or it happens at a time when you do have more time, and you're with this person all the time. There's a lot of intensiveness in terms of, "Good morning, babe. Good morning, princess. Thinking about you, babe. What you doing, babe? Good night." And it's interesting because there's something very stalking about that. People are like, "Oh, I love the good morning text." Yeah, it feels good. Yeah, he just needs to know where you are all the time. And show me where you are is they want to make sure they know your whereabouts and all of this. I mean, sorry for being the anti-Cupid, but a lot of the stuff that's gotten romanticized is actually kind of stalky. And it is, it's the beginning of a controlling dynamic. And so not all love bombing is grandiose and presents and 100 roses showing up at your office kind of thing. Some love bombing is really what I call like sort of a, it's a rescuing love bombing. And what happens then, and this happens with a different kind of narcissism, with a person, it's what we call covert narcissism. Covert narcissists aren't so big and charismatic and charming. They tend to be a bit more victimized, resentful, sullen, and they feel angry at the world and they never got their shot. And why didn't they, you know, why didn't the world see how great they are? And when people meet them, people who are naturally rescuers will often feel like, well, gosh, this poor person seems so talented and they never got their chance. And in the early phases of the relationship, the COVID narcissist, like I said, may not be the hundred dozen roses or the sunset cruise, but maybe more of the— they tell you everything about themselves. They tell you about how terrible their childhood was. They tell you these really kind of sad victimized stories. And they say, "I just wish somebody would have believed in me. You seem like an amazing person. You seem like you get me." And you're like, you want to be that amazing person who gets them. And so before you know it, you're loaning them money, you're giving them your car, you're making calls to get them connections. And that love bombing feels different, but it's still very love bombing because you're getting sucked into this idea that you're going to be the one that kisses the frog and turns him into a prince.

So now we know what to look for, but who falls for a narcissist? As it turns out, a lot of us. Is there a certain personality type or people that you find drawn to narcissistic partners?

It's a pretty wide range. I think there are certain personality styles or people with certain histories that are a little bit more vulnerable. I think people like, you call them rescuers or fixers, Highly empathic people are often, you know, get corralled into relationships with narcissists when people meet someone at a transitional time of their life. So you, you meet— it's often easy to get stuck into a narcissistic relationship when you're new in a city, um, at a new college, um, in a new job, when you're traveling. So these sort of transitional times when you're kind of destabilized, it could even be if you've just experienced a big loss someone in your family has died, or you've gone through a divorce. So you're not quite fully on your feet. That's another time that people are very vulnerable to narcissists. People who have histories of trauma, their decision-making in relationships is often impacted in the long term, and they will often find themselves in relationships characterized by almost further ongoing invalidation. And believe it or not, like people obviously who had narcissistic parents, not surprisingly, are more likely to choose narcissistic partners. But there's one group that might be, you might be surprised at, People who grew up in really, really, really happy families are actually tremendous narcissist bait, and I'll tell you why. They're so used to love solving everything and people are good and, you know, their families will even say, "Oh, come on, give him a shot 'cause we're a family that draws together and he's just part of our family, so we're gonna love him back." And you'll see these people who really believe that love and family is all so good, And they sometimes take it real hard because they refuse to believe these ideas, like people really don't change, so they can get stuck for a long time. So you can see it's a pretty wide range of people who are quite vulnerable to this.

We are. What I love that you're saying is that so often we do think with hard enough work and consciousness and maybe a little therapy, people can change if they want to change. What about the narcissist?

The narcissistic personality style is really, really, really resistant to change. These kinds of high-conflict, antagonistic, difficult personalities are super rigid. You think of something rigid, it's like something heavy, you can't move it, you can't bend it, and this is no different. And so because of that, they're just not amenable to change. And remember, most narcissists think there's nothing to change. They are more likely to blame other people. This is other people's fault. This is the world's fault. You know, this isn't about me. I didn't do anything wrong. And because they're so quick to deflect blame on other people and they're not able to internalize their accountability, their responsibility, they just don't take it. And so there's no motivation for them to change. And if there's no motivation to change, a person's never going to change. So the likelihood of successful therapy with a narcissist is tough because the majority of them don't think that what they're doing is a problem. Now, if you put someone in front of me who's like, listen, I see all these patterns in myself. I'm not empathic enough. I don't think the rules apply to me. You know, I'm kind of a jerk. And I see now that I've hurt a lot of people. I'd like to commit to changing. Now you've given me something I could work with. You know, now it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to work because what it does mean is that for the rest of that narcissistic person's life, they have to be mindful in all of their interactions. They don't get to go have their usual rageful temper tantrums. They actually have to take the time to pay attention to other people's feelings. And quite frankly, that's exhausting for a narcissist.

Especially if it's your conditioning your entire life. If you're 40 years old and you're like, okay, now I'm gonna start paying attention and being empathic. A whole new skillset. So let's back up for a second. I'm curious, how does someone become a narcissist? Like, isn't it true that we're all born as, you know, babies, we all have the same opportunities to grow into a kind human being, or is it nature-nurture? What do you think about it?

It's more nurture than nature, but it's definitely, there is a little bit of nature in there. We are born, we're not actually all born made to be kind.

I know, it's like.

Yeah, I mean, it's a nice thought, but it's not true. And some people are born with more difficult temperaments. Some kids are born highly, highly, highly sensitive. They're very difficult to soothe. It's harder for them to form attachments. So some people actually believe that narcissism is a post-traumatic state. That's one explanation. And it actually holds some water that a person who's narcissistic actually didn't have safe and consistent early attachments. They have very anxious attachments. They have very avoidant and dismissive attachments. Their emotional worlds weren't often sufficiently fed sometimes their material worlds were, they'd get a bike every Christmas, they'd have the latest video games, they'd get to go to lots of theme parks, they may have grown up in a beautiful home, but none of their emotional needs were ever met. Add that in with their highly difficult or highly sensitive temperaments, that it can really make a sort of a volatile combination. And then these are kids who sometimes in some cases are really kind of, they start to realize that they're only validated when they perform. So if they look pretty or they're the perfect ballerina or the perfect soccer player, or they get the basketball trophy they win the spelling bee, then they're loved. But if none of those things aren't going on, the parents aren't that interested. So it's almost like the kid feels like a performing pony rather than as a human being. And then as they go into adult life, they retain that performing pony feel to them rather than a fully empathic feeling person. Oh God.

I mean, it makes so much sense. I mean, because that is our society, right? It's all about achievement or looking good or feeling good. So it makes sense why a lot of us get caught up in this performance perfectionist loop where we're all about achieving. Once I get the next thing, then the next thing, the next thing, I'll be happy. So what we're talking about then is early caregivers who aren't allowing us to experience the range of our emotions and feelings, like a parent maybe who was a little bit neglectful, or if your parent wasn't there for you, let's say, but the only time you're getting attention is when you do something, right? So isn't a lot of it we're talking about is like emotional regulation stuff?

Yeah. A core element of narcissism is emotional dysregulation. They don't know how to express feelings. There's some people that argue that people with narcissism just don't have a vocabulary to talk about feelings, but more than anything else, narcissism, the core, core, core of narcissism is insecurity. These are deeply insecure people. They constantly perceive the world as a place of threat. They always think that someone's trying to get something over on them. Now, if you always felt like the world was a place of threat, you'd have your fists up all the time too. And so because of that chronic sense of insecurity, they tend to be Insecure people are actually really, really problematic people because they are, again, they're always defending themselves against this perceived threat that often isn't there. And that's why people who are narcissistic can almost seem somewhat paranoid. But it is a, that insecurity comes from a childhood where they were never, they never felt safe emotionally.

When we come back, Matthew Hussey on how to spot the red flags in ourselves.

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Why are we attracted to people who are bad for us? Matthew Hussey explains. And also tells us how to fix it.

If they're not into me, it must mean they're more valuable than me, right?

They're more valuable.

I'm gonna go after them. Or it must mean they're scarce. We want what's scarce. We value highly what is scarce.

No one's scarce.

Well, and, and there's so many people on the planet.

Like, that's true.

You put people on pedestals. Yeah.

And someone can just be, by the way, in a phase of not investing in their life, and then you come to take that as a measure of their worth. Meanwhile, here's the great irony of it. You could have someone who was the bad boy 5 years ago, right, but now has, has gotten to a stage of their life where they're like, you know what, that wasn't fulfilling me. I actually want to give to someone.

Yeah.

And then that man shows up and really meets this, this person head on, and she's like, why are you not making me?

Because she wants him to be the bad boy, or she heard, right?

Like, you're missing that thing, right? And like, the irony is that he, he maybe he was that thing at some point in his life, or he was that thing to somebody else yesterday, but now he turned around to, to meet you. And, you know, we have a lot of, we have a lot of issues that blind us to the fact that there's someone in front of us who's actually trying. You know, you said, what about when someone is, they were trying and now they're not?

Yeah.

And that confuses us. We have to get to a point where we say, consistency, consistency of behavior is going to be attractive to me, right? Okay, I'm not going to do the calculation of, but last month, right, he said he liked me, or doesn't matter, what's he doing now? And what's he doing each week? Or she, you know, what was it like? What is this person doing on a consistent basis? Because this thing of constantly second-guessing if someone likes you, and someone who constantly makes makes you feel like you're second-guessing yourself about whether they like you. What is that you're attracted to?

Right?

What is that you're—

you're—

some of us are, you know, our childhood traumas, our issues, we play in the relationship because we think that, yeah, we are not— well, I guess all of our greatest fears is that we're not lovable. But we think, oh, I'm not lovable, or I have to— the chase, if it's hard, it means that it's worthwhile. If I had to chase it, or if someone makes me feel bad, that's familiar to how my dad made me feel. And so it's not conscious for many.

No, it is. That's what it is. I need to close that loop. I need to get some closure on the fact that my dad didn't give me that attention, and now I'm going to find someone else who's like him, but this time I'm going to get it. And the problem is, and the thing that even though those things, you're right, are unconscious, once we start to realize them, we can say, well, what's happening here? I'm making my dad God, right? I'm making my dad God in this situation. I'm looking at this person going, well, if only I could get their love. Well, who are they? They were a human, a flawed, screwed up human, right? Not someone to run your life around trying to, trying to please or trying to fix that hole that someone left behind. It's real, you know. Part of growing up for all of us is recognizing just how human our parents were, right?

They did the best they could.

Yeah, they did the best they could, and they may have been in so many ways just absolute train wrecks. And now you're running your life around trying to please a train wreck that imitates someone who was a train wreck growing up.

I always say you have to do the work. You have to do the work on yourself. Otherwise you keep repeating patterns. You keep dating. Like, why do you— I date the same guys over and over again. I was like, oh my God, they're the same. Until I realized that I used to think they weren't available, but it turned out I wasn't emotionally available. That's often what it is, you guys, if you haven't heard that. Like, if you keep dating people who aren't there, they don't show up. Breakup, it's you're the common denominator, right? So I had to look at that. But how do you get people to do the work? I always say when you break up with someone, don't jump right back into a relationship, but maybe look at yourself, look at the patterns. Like, how do you help people kind of look at those mistakes they're making in dating to make better choices in their next relationships or their next partners?

Well, I think some things are learned by dating a different kind of person than the person we normally date. I do think that you learn a lot from that experience because you, you see a different way of, of loving. You know, if you suddenly start dating a person who in an argument handles an argument compassionately and doesn't try to cut you emotionally in an argument, and you're arguing and they say, listen, I really don't want you to feel that way, and I didn't mean that. And they suddenly, like, you hear a new language around an argument, and it's uncomfortable in the beginning because, like, no, this is where you say a really mean, nasty thing. And this is where I give you the silent treatment for the next 3 days. And what's going on? And you start to at least hear and be present in a different language. Whether you can rise to the occasion is a different thing, but you learn a new reference point for how an argument can go. Now, you may not want to have to date to learn that lesson, but you can even learn that lesson by just surrounding yourself with new people in life. I believe so much in mentorship. Whether it's formal or informal, people kind of take mentorship too literally, right? They think a mentor is me finding someone in life and saying, will you be my mentor? This person starts— it's a mentor is just anybody that you have some proximity to that is from a world or a life or a level of knowledge that you don't currently have and by osmosis can teach you something. And I've had the beauty of traveling in my life and meeting all sorts of different people and getting such different perspectives. And short of therapy, I applaud anyone who is brave enough to go through therapy. I think it's a tremendously difficult—

You had therapy?

Yeah, I still do therapy. I see someone regularly because I don't— it doesn't matter what you know. We're so close to ourselves. We're so close to ourselves. Ourselves. I think I'm an incredibly self-aware person. I can still have someone who knows me well enough, who's read my patterns, tell me something that I'm doing or have done that surprises me. I go, man, I've always given myself such credit for being so evolved and so self-aware. And that just taught me something about myself that has been like a smack in the face. And I say that to people. I do retreats every year, I say the same thing to people. This isn't about I know more than you. This is about get outside yourself. Get someone who you trust, whose mind you value and respect, who can have a perspective on you that you cannot have on yourself. I can't see— I could see my hands. You see me. I can't see me. I see my hands and my legs. I seem to be in some sort of container walking around, but I don't see what you see.

We have to be open to that feedback.

You have to. So even if you don't do therapy, put yourself around new people that challenge all of your ways of thinking and doing things. That's one of the ways to be more aware of your patterns. Even belief in ourselves, which is important. Belief comes from being able to do something. Usually it comes from having had reference points for the fact that I can do this. And some of us, there's areas where we haven't got reference points.

Right.

Like, we might have every relationship we've been them, we got cheated on. And so when someone says you have to believe that you can find a relationship with someone that won't cheat on you, it's like, well, tell me how to do that, because every single relationship that person has cheated on me.

I get that all the time. People like, everyone cheats on me, or everyone this and that. It's like, well, clearly there's something that you're bringing to the table you're not seeing.

But well, there's something, something you're ignoring. Um, but yes, yeah, I, I think in some ways belief is overrated. Overrated. The idea that we have to believe we can do something is overrated.

Okay, so don't say just believe that you cannot be cheated on, to go back to your point.

I think that you have to change the idea that you can do something to the idea that it's necessary, that you have to. When something is essential to your being, when something is essential to the way you want to live life, you no longer really have to worry about whether you can. You just You just do it. I mean, I was 21 when I lost out on a really big job interview, and I, at the time, I was weighing up this job versus starting my own business. And I screwed up this interview royally. I mean, I went in and self-sabotaged the crap out of this interview, and they didn't give me the job. And all of a sudden, this option that I thought I had— should I start my own business? Should I go and work for this big company? Oh, the choices. Suddenly someone took away half the choice. And so, well, you ain't getting that anyway. So now I went, I have to make this business work. It's essential. I have to. And that's a different— that's a different feeling from, could I make this business work? And in our relationships, do you need to believe that you're not going to be cheated on? Not really. You just need to believe that a life where you don't take risks in love isn't a life worth living.

Yeah. To to take risks and be okay with someone leaving you, being hurt, is part of it, right?

Yeah, but it's so hard.

It's so hard.

It's so painful to be betrayed or to have your heart broken, to have someone, you know, to feel truly crushed. Yeah, by a situation is so, is so painful. And it doesn't mean when that happens you have to rush back out and do it all over again next month. But there gets to a point where it's almost not about whether you can trust people people. It's about personal pride.

Okay.

It's about something bigger. It's that, yeah, someone can do that to me again. Of course they can. I can't stop that. But I have survived this before.

There's something to that.

I'm still here. I can keep going. And I have most likely new tools now.

Yeah, we learn the lessons from the past. We have to learn them.

Yeah, I've learned lessons, or I've gathered new intelligence, or and therefore I can do this again. It's not— this doesn't have to be a thing that breaks me. And even if it happens again, I can have true pride in the fact that I showed up. And I do think— I, I think there's something that's underrated about a situation where, you know, many people have been in a situation where they gave their all to a relationship and were crushed in the process. Just someone steamrolled them, right? And they never saw coming. What's underrated, I think, is that those relationships where we truly give our all really can show the best of us. It— we get a chance to see who we can be.

Yeah.

When we're at our best, when we really are showing up to something.

Yeah.

And after a breakup like that, you get to look back on yourself and, and be proud of who you were and what you gave and the way you were willing to show up.

Yeah.

That can make you like yourself more.

I guess that's why rock bottom— people say they hit rock bottom, it's when you really grow. I think that going through a breakup like and realizing that you, that you survived, that you've learned a lot, will make you so much stronger in another, in the next relationship.

And to then ask the honest question of yourself, which is, was there anything I was ignoring? If I really look at that now, what was I ignoring? What did I not speak up about?

Right.

And this is true in every relationship in our lives.

Now we know what to watch out for when it comes to our own attraction patterns, but Matthew also has great advice on how to spot the green flags.

Credibility comes from the ability to deliver. And when someone says something to you so quickly, before you really know them, and before it— you could argue before it's earned, right? But certainly before you know them, then you have no measure for the consistency of their actions meeting their words.

So it's consistency.

It's consistency. It's, is this person someone whose words over time match their actions? And it's simply something I can't know in the beginning. Beginning. I can go on a date and someone can look at me and go, I just— you're amazing, and we should do this, and we should do that, and I want to be with you, whatever. And it's, it's fine. You might mean it. You might.

But you don't have the history.

It's not incumbent on me to trust that right now. Like, that's not my job to believe every single thing that's said right now, because if it's not said at an organic pace, then I need to let this play out in an organic way before I realize recognize that it has any gravitas, any real merit. It's not that you should distrust what people say. It's not that someone says something on a date and you should go, you're lying, or you'll never be able to back that up. It's not that. But that's not the same as believing either. Inside, you don't say this out loud, but inside it's more of a, I guess we'll see. Yeah.

Well, that's the thing, checking with people. So when you're saying words and actions, people always want to know what's more important. They're both important is what we're saying. The consistency consistency, right? Consistency with your words and actions.

Yeah. It's not that words never matter.

Okay. Right.

And there are some people— here's a great example of this. Someone can be showing up as if they're in a relationship with you. They're always at your house, you're always at theirs. You're like in this just complete love fest of what seems to be a relationship, but they never say what it is. You never talk about it. And then you end up getting really hurt because you're like, but they acted like my boyfriend, right? But the words never matched it. And then it can be the other way around. Someone can tell you all the right things, but their actions don't back it up. So then you can kind of get to a point where you go, well, where then? What do I believe?

And some of us focus more on word. We're like, but they said this. They said this. We're like, but look at their actions. So do you help people track this? Because I do this with my friends too. They'll break up with someone. I'll be Can we write down all the things that you don't, that went wrong? Because then you're going to put them on this pedestal and you're going to remember all these great things they did. But do you remember the time they forgot your birthday or they said they did this thing? So I think you got to track it.

Sober view, right? Here's a nice kind of litmus test. When people are telling you things you want to hear, it's hard to know where you stand. When someone goes out of their way to tell you something you don't want to hear, that you can trust.

Okay, give me an example.

You can't always trust when someone tells you, you're the best thing ever, I want to be with you, I want this, I want that, whatever. You can't always trust. You have to let things play out. You don't distrust it either, but you have to let them play out. If someone says, I don't want a relationship, you can believe them because that's not helping them get laid tonight.

Exactly, believe it.

You know in a pharmaceutical ad where like at the end of the ad, yeah, they've Done the whole thing.

Might cause heart—

Yeah, they've shown old people skipping through a meadow happy. They've got no back pain anymore. They're fine, whatever. And then at the very end of the ad, there's the small print and there's the guy with the really fast voice who says, might cause stomach problems, you might die, might turn your hair blue, you might lose your children.

You might lose— Yeah, exactly.

Now you can believe that part because they didn't want to put it in the ad. If the pharmaceutical ad could choose to omit that part, they would. They're saying it because those have been some of the side effects. So if, if you can trust any part of this ad, it's that part.

Exactly.

The same is true in dating. If you can trust any part of what someone says, it's the, the truth that's inconvenient for them to say.

What are some of those truths that we just ignore that you hear? What he told me—

I just feel I'm just not really ready for anything. I don't really want to have a serious relationship right now. 'Or I don't know if I see this going anywhere,' or whatever. And now, of course, what do people do? They go on a mission to find all of the evidence against that, right? But he's calling me, and the next— but he said that, but now he's calling me. So, you know, friend, look, he's still texting me, so he must, he must be confused. No, you're confused.

He just told you that.

He literally told you that. The ultimate disclaimer. He's the pharmaceutical ad who just gave you the small print at the end, but you now rewound to the old people skipping in the meadow with no more back pain.

We just skipped over that part. So do you tell people just then listen to it? Like, if you want a relationship and this person just told you they don't, do you even need to wait another 5 minutes in this relationship?

Here's the tricky part. Most people have got a story about someone who said they didn't want a relationship.

That's true. I'm going to be the one that changed their mind. Yeah.

And, and Some people have friends that did. Oh, when I was with Dan in the beginning, he said he didn't want a relationship, and look at him now, we're married with two kids, right? Whatever. That's something guys say. Well, okay, that might happen. This person might come around, right? But it doesn't mean that the way they come around is by you sticking around, right? You know, in all attraction, it's about showing your best as much as possible. Possible so that somebody else can see how wonderful it would be to be with you whilst not risking more than you can afford to lose. So let me put something practical around that. If you were 35, you want kids, and you're like, this is something I really want in my life, can you afford to give 10 years of your life to someone who says they're not sure about having kids? Probably not. That would be a very, very dangerous bet to make. That's giving up more than you can afford to lose. Choose right now, right? If someone says, I'm not sure that I want a relationship, can you go out on a date with them and have a good time? You can decide whether you want to sleep with them or not, but don't sleep with them if you're going to be resentful if it doesn't go anywhere, right? That's the, that's the rule. It's not about should you, shouldn't you, or whatever. Do not do it if you're—

you have to know yourself—

if you're gonna wake up feeling used, right? Own what you do. And if you can show someone the best side of you and they say they don't want a relationship, and then you say, okay, then I'm not going to keep sleeping with this person because whenever one thing or the other, I'm just going to get stuck in this loop. But still, when this person sees me out and about, I'm just going to be wonderful. I'm not going to be cold, not going to be resentful, I'm not going to be angry, I'm not going to give them any of that. I'm just going to be wonderful, and they're going to see me being wonderful. And if they come around, great. I'm not even going to give them cold, I'm going to be warm.

You have to always be warm.

Doesn't mean I'm gonna get so I'm not gonna like give this person everything they want, but I'm gonna give them great energy and I'm gonna give them a chance to see what they're missing. But I'm not gonna invest based on the idea that they're gonna come around. That's a really— I call it the one-day wager. This idea that one— and this is true of any change in a relationship— the idea that one day this person is going to be everything I want. One day they're going to want kids. One day they're gonna date on potential.

Potential, or what you believe is their potential, and that people are going to change? Because people don't change unless they want to. Are there certain signs, like, this is how you know someone's invested?

I think that it's, are they genuinely curious about you? Do they want to get to know you better? Are they actually trying to get to know you and see if you have the same values? Because any narcissist can go around impressing people. Oh, he gave me the best date. He must have cared because we had such an amazing date. Want. You're going to have a narcissist who gives a great date because what do they really want? They want you to get to the end of the date and be in love with them. So that's not really a sign that someone's investing. It's a sign that they're trying to impress. Are they impressed by you? Do they seem to actually understand you, see you, accept you? Are they excited to keep seeing you? Do they actually go out of their way? You know, is the— is it always on their terms? You always come to their part of town. It's always on their diary, their schedule, or or are they actually meeting you halfway? It's when you genuinely feel like the investment or the effort is mutual. And we can normally feel it when it's not. That's a different thing from, you know, they go to a party one night and all of your anxiety comes out, right? You know, oh my God, are they going to meet someone? And then they don't text you for a couple of hours and you're like, something's wrong. That, you know, now like there's a story in your head. That's not lack of investment. Investment, that could just be our stuff coming to the table. And in that moment, we've got to slow down the story that's happening in our head and say, you know what? I'm actually going to allow this to reveal itself to me instead of bringing my monsters to the table. I'm going to allow this to reveal itself to me. But is the effort equal? Do you send someone— it's fine to send someone a text in the morning and say, hey, I hope you have a great day today. Say, you know, how are you this morning? It's okay to send that text. Don't send it the next 3 days.

Okay.

Let's see if they do the same. What people do is they, they say, but he always replies. Well, that's not the same thing.

Right.

Someone always saying yes isn't the same thing as someone giving you the invite, someone reaching out to you. And so it's those moments where you invest a little and you see if the effort of it is equal.

Well, this is back to the investing. The invest in— what'd you say?

Invest and test.

Okay, so people are like, oh well, don't double text, or wait for them to initiate. So how much of it is this still this chasing and not— like, what?

Not everything has to be like tit for tat, where it's— but there's a cadence, there's a rhythm you should pay attention to.

Yeah.

Sometimes if you're confident, you can be like, oi, where are you? You know, you can be playful about about that. But if you're doing it again on the third message, then it's like, well, now, now why are you doing this? Because they've ignored two, so why send a third, right? It doesn't always have to be like, I did this, now you do that, now I do this, now you do that. But is there a rhythm that seems like it's always in the same direction? Jamieson and I call it being in the blue. You know, when you look at your phone, are you in the blue, or is it like like every message is a blue message and you're waiting for them. That's a problem. And sometimes even in people's text messages you can see unequal investment. Yes, you can literally see that this person's giving one-line answers and this person's writing paragraphs. And it doesn't— and it sounds petty and it sounds silly and pedantic and whatever. And people will say, oh my God, this is the thing that people always write, you know, oh good, does it have to be this much work? Oh, have it. I always find it a silly thing to say. No, it doesn't have to be this much work if you just pay attention to whether someone is showing up in the way that you are. It absolutely doesn't have to be this much work.

We keep— okay, that's the main thing. Are they showing up in the way I do?

Yeah.

Mhm.

You have to be aware of that lesson. Otherwise, you— if you, if you're one of those people like, I don't need to learn all of this, I just need to— I'm just going to go and be me, or whatever. Well, you can go and be you and and you ignore every red flag going.

Are there common red flags?

Speaking of red flags that you see, I went on a date where the person was 20 minutes late. I was mad.

Really? You're like, time?

I was mad. Here's why I was mad. I was mad because I rushed to get there on time. I left work before I wanted to to get there on time, and then I'm sat in this restaurant and 20 minutes go by. I called Jameson. I called Jameson and I'm I'm like, dude, I'm— I just want to leave. He's like, just stay, it'll be fine, you'll be all right. When she gets there, you'll realize you've just made too much of it, whatever. The person showed up and she was like, oh my God, my friend had— I don't know what it was, like taken the car or something. How are you? In my head, I was like, that's a moment where you say sorry.

Sorry. Yes. I can't stand the little thing. I'm sorry. That is such—

that's a sorry moment.

Yes. That's not—

oh odd moment. That's a, hey, I'm so sorry to keep you waiting. Yeah, that's to me like a big red flag.

Yes.

And people ignore that stuff. Why? Because the person opposite them is hot.

Right, right, exactly. They're so hot that they can't— I forgot that that happened, you know, I'm gonna just bury that.

Yeah. And I refuse to ignore that stuff. I refuse to ignore it because I know that ignoring it— I, I ignore it at my peril. What I ignore today shows up tomorrow, or a year from now, or 2 years from now. And most relationships end the way they began.

Well, there you have it. Thank you so much to Matthew Hussey and Dr. Ramani for sharing their sharp wisdom on red flags. I hope you got exactly what you're looking for and use this information to go forth and date with confidence and with plenty of green flags to. That's it for today's episode. See you on Friday. Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily. Be sure to like, subscribe, and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or partner. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @sexwithemily. Oh, I've been told I give really good emails. Email. So sign up at sexwithemily.com. And while you're there, check out my free guides and articles for more ways to prioritize your pleasure. If you'd like to ask me about your sex life, dating, or relationships, call my hotline, 559-TALK-SEX. That's 559-825-5739. Or go to sexwithemily.com/askemily. Special thanks to ACast for powering the Sex with Emily podcast. Was it good for you? Email me feedback@sexwithemily.com.

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