I looked up definitions:


A red flag is a warning of danger. A DEAL-BREAKER is someone or something that prevents a deal or arrangement from being reached or fulfilled.


Personally, I view a red flag as a sign that something worse may happen down the road. Sometimes, I see the red flag and get out of the budding relationship based on just the behavior I saw, without really knowing if something worse would happen. Sometimes, I missed the red flags and looked back in hindsight and then recognized they were there, after the bad things did happen in the relationship.


If being in a relationship, and maybe eventually marriage is the “deal”, then the deal breaker is something that person said or did that would cause me to slam on the brakes and get away from them. In reality, I did not know what all my deal breakers were until someone crossed the line. And I let people break them and break them, and kept letting them cross the line until finally enough was enough and the deal was actually broken. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, and others have done it too.


You say you don’t trust yourself to choose a good partner. Well, you do know a good one from a bad one. You do know what you like and dislike and what makes you feel good or bad. It’s a balancing act. Some people are of the mindset they will not tolerate anything that they decided against, and they stick to that. Others will put up with quite a lot, beyond what they tell themselves they will.


I think being a healthy person means having a good sense of what you will and won’t put up with and leaving some wiggle room for healthy enough, good intentioned but imperfect people.


Idk, what do you think?