I SEE HIM/HER CHANGING and HE/SHE IS A DIFFERENT PERSON with me.

BIG RED FLAG!!

If I could go back and explain this to that 22 year old I once was, I could have avoided MANY hurts that I suffered through. And if other posters really sit and think about that, perhaps the choices they themselves made would have been different too. When we are YOUNG and NAIVE and exprience "LOVE" we want to believe this LOVE is going to conquer anything that can hurt us. And we often decide "This person will be different because of ME and HOW I LOVE THIS PERSON".

Sometimes the REALITY is that a leopard simply doesn't really change it's spots. Considering my own experiences in my own life? There is no way I am going to tell another person their FEELINGS and concerns should be ignored either. There are times we may really WANT another person to change, and even TRY to give that person a chance. And often what we discover is our efforts to care did NOT change that other individual and we DO end up sadly getting hit between the eyes with that reality.

There are most definitely many times an individual develops a way of navigating their lives that they NEVER really do change. Manipulative unhealthy individuals CAN most definitely come in BOTH males and females too. Often, if we have endured the consequences of just that, it's not unusual to see how that individual simply moves on to yet another NIAVE innocent individual and behaves EXACTLY the same way with that individual too.

I know others have been victims, have been hurt and they WANT to give others a chance to learn and grow as they may have. Yet the truth is sometimes an individual doesn't deserve that kind of sympathy. I know this all too well, because that was my OWN MISTAKE. And UNFORTUNATELY, more than once. And in all honesty? It was in fact a WOMAN that hurt me more than ANY man ever did, yet I had been hurt by males too in my life. There were some red flags I missed there too.

I am certainly not going to encourage this very young and still NIAVE young man to IGNORE his feelings about this individual's behavioral history. Sometimes we LOVE another individual and we want to believe in that LOVE. And we ignore IMPORTANT red flags that should NOT be ignored.