Know When To Walk Away: 15 Non-Negotiable Red Flags To Look Out For

When was the last time you had an honest conversation with yourself? What are your actual limits? Do you have any? Do you find yourself explaining what you won’t tolerate to others but always end up a doormat negotiating your boundaries to nothing? Do you know when to walk?

One of my favorite quotes:
“If you can’t get away from negotiating, you’re not negotiating. You just work on your terms of slavery.”- James Letcher.

Your own…

Boundaries
Boundaries
Standards
Happiness.
Peace
A sense of reality

They are things that should never be negotiable. Never.
The most life-saving, transformative, confidence-instilling, and powerful thing that you can control in this life is the ability to know when to walk away.

Here on the blog I always write about knowing when to fold. But keep in mind…

Folding without actually getting up and walking away is like throwing garbage in the trash can inside your house and refusing to take it out for proper (and permanent) disposal.

It doesn’t matter how many things you throw out (folded from them). If you do not take the garbage (aka know when to walk), you are preparing yourself for even more pain and humiliation from whatever it was that caused you to fold in the first place.

Related : A woman with integrity will never tolerate these 10 things in a relationship

Who cares how many garbage bags you have lined up in your house? Who cares how much you’ve thrown out and how far you’ve sealed the bags? No one will be affected-including yourself because deep down, you know that this is not impressive.

No high-quality person will show up at your door and you will never fully respect yourself if you stay in this kind of self-sabotage “Well, I identified what was garbage and put it in bags, but I’m not quite ready to take it out yet” limbo.

If you don’t take out the garbage, the smell will eventually detract from and dominate the beauty of your home. And the only people who will ever enter your house are those who have no problem disrespecting him as much as the owner does.

Contradiction is the root of all misery. You can not only display something useless enough to throw in the trash but also, useful enough to keep in your home. Same with relationships-you can’t view something as hurtful/disrespectful enough that you have to fold it but also, you don’t know when to walk away.
If you don’t know when to walk away, you can set yourself aside from ever being the one who got away.

It’s time to put yourself back in charge.
Here are 15 non-negotiable red flags to look out for and always, fold and stay away from.

1. Patterns.

I wrote about this in the motivational quotes post that I wrote with my mom. The ability to know when to walk away goes hand in hand with your ability to look beyond grandiose actions, kind words, and even personality. You need to work on pattern recognition. Words mean nothing without action that supports them. Just as verbs replace words, patterns REPLACE action. Everything you need to know about someone’s personality and emotional intelligence can be found by taking a look at their patterns. The actions are great and all but remember-anyone can do something chivalrous. A person can earn a profit, spend a profit, book a flight, open a door, put on some underwear, buy a ring, send flowers, write a card, or physically appear. The ability to recognize patterns is what allows you to separate the emotional nostalgia associated with the greatness/chivalry of their actions from the fact of their patterns.

2. Strange/inappropriate relationship with a family member or ex.

If they have a less borderline relationship with a family member, a “friend”, an ex who, at best, makes your stomach turn and at worst, does you question your worth, their values, and/or their sexuality (and your reality) – know when to move away and fold from this dynamic as soon as possible. Due to the lack of boundaries and subsequent triangulation, you will never be in a bilateral, mutual, connected relationship with this person. You will always be in a permanent, which stimulates jealousy, prudence-questioning three-some.

3. If she gets down to making you jealous and” keeping you on your toes, ” you will know when to walk away.

Because you never feel like you have “all “of them, you are in a constant state of trying to get them all and” win.”This unfairly removes the pillars, focuses them obnoxiously, and redefines your definition of emotion and relationships as something you should be “good enough” to experience. No thanks.

4. Therapy.

Know when to walk here. Be very attentive to how they treat you (and others) before that person gets any needs met, versus how they treat you after their needs are met.

Also, be well aware of how they treat everyone around you-animals, the elderly, children, friends, co-workers, people who help them, serve them in a restaurant, etc. Especially those who cannot do anything for them.

5. They always talk about the future but there is no progress.

You’ll know when to walk away when the shame of wasting more of your priceless time starts to outweigh your desperation to get a barking cat.

6. They are the victim in all their previous relationships.

If they misrepresent their coming out and describe their past relationships as something they have always wronged…

This shows that not only are they incapable of self-reflection and introspection, but they are perfectly fine subscribing to the narcissistic delusion over reality. It’s a promotion of pity and an insult to your intelligence.

Also, if they are going to post personal details, gossip, or talk badly about an ex-boyfriend or friend, do not think that you will be immune at all. Get away.

7. You will know when to walk away if, when having an honest conversation with yourself, you feel more luxurious than true love.
8. Gas lighting.

If you are going crazy for what your eyes, ears, and instincts are experiencing in real-time, then this is not real love. It is also not a signal for further investigation and collection of receipts. Stay on your white horse and know when to walk.

9. You are always the one who deciphers, understands, bows, and empathizes.

If you find yourself empathizing with someone unable to put himself in your shoes and empathize with you, fold. If your sympathy for them becomes detrimental to your emotional well-being, empathize with yourself and know when to turn away.

10. They are selfish and show little interest in your life.

The only time you show interest in whatever you have going on is before they get a need met. Or, if there is something in it for them, they show interest. At all other times, he is half-assed and disingenuous.

11. If they get overly defensive about something you ask them about.

If their defenses seem too strange, unnecessary, theatrical, and disproportionate to a respectable and casual Inquisition, then it’s time to move away. Especially if they deviate and make you feel crazy, immature, accusatory, or “mean” for asking.

12. They are compulsively or pathologically lying. And their apology means nothing.

Whether it’s a compulsion to lie or something deeper rooted in his mental health, you don’t have the time or strength to heal someone from debauchery and narcissistic facade. Especially if the behavior is consistent (and they don’t see it as a problem).

Related : Can A Narcissist Change? 3 Signs That He/She Will Never Change

Often, such people apologize after being caught in a lie. And it’s great to be sorry, but if you are not emotionally available and the behavior has not changed-this is selfishly regretful, not regretful.

13. They are a complete hypocrite. There is always a double standard.

And when you address any inconsistency, they have a bulletproof excuse that makes you less inclined to want to bring anything to them again.

14. Things that he thinks are good/funny/exciting / running, etc.

If they think something is funny, turn on, OK to do, exciting, etc., And this does not match your relational value system and Moral Law, know when to walk away. Especially if you do not want to ever be on the receiving end of it.

15. If their definition of success, love, monogamy, honesty, and respect does not match yours-know when to walk away.

You deserve someone who knows these things the same way, or even a better and more effective way than you do. This person shows you through their patterns, results, and life that their definition of these relational fundamentals is strong and does not need to be adjusted.

There are no exceptions, special circumstances, or new definitions here.

If you are with a person whose “own definitions” come at the expense of your emotional well-being and you find that after a while, it’s no longer your partner but a set of your excuses-know when to move away. It should be done.

Think about how you would advise someone you care about and do the same for yourself. Get some standards, get some limits, and know when to walk. If you don’t…
How are you better off than the people who come to your mind when reading this article?

Just because you’re not directly hurting others the way they are, that doesn’t make you better for hurting one person you’ll never be able to emotionally survive the cost of devaluing, hurting, belittling, and beating…