Look, we’ve all found ourselves ignoring a couple of obvious dating red flags when we stumble across a hot young thing with a big ol’ viking-style beard or some very well-placed tattoos. It’s only human – we overlook the dodgy shit in favour of reminding ourselves that hey, they totally paid for more than their half of dinner that one time you went to Maccas together, so it’s love, right?
And sure, some of that nonsense is able to be overlooked. But there’s a bunch of stuff you really need to be cautious of regardless of how good your new love interest appears to be.
In the latest ep of our dating podcast, Waiting For A D8, we had a cheeky lil’ chat with The Indigo Project‘s Head Psychologist, Mary Hoang, about some of the shit we really shouldn’t be overlooking anymore – so sit up and pay attention so you can make like Ariana and say “thank u, next” to the dodgy human you’ve been seeing lately.
Mary’s hot tip is to make sure you actually know what you want and need – and knowing the difference. Once you’ve recovered from that feeling of being personally addressed by that statement (we feel seen), think about it this way: do you actually know what it is you need when you’re getting into a new relo? From a psychological perspective, you should.
“Know what you need. Don’t take shit from people,” Mary said.
“It’s so important that you understand what your needs are. There’s a difference between what you need and what you want. Sometimes we do want this whirlwind romance where you want everything to be super perfect, and everything to just be like happily ever after, but when we understand the experiences that we’ve had, sometimes what we actually do need is for relationships to go a little bit slower. To take the time to pace it the way that it works for you.”
Still not really sure what the difference is? Just have a think about the things that rustle your jimmies and separate them into two categories: things you cannot abide no matter what, and things that might not actually be that intolerable if it was the right person.
The rundown from Mary is that, “needs usually are things that are psychological and emotional needs, wants are things like ‘must wear matched socks and have rock hard abs.’”
Here’s a couple we prepared earlier, because apparently we’re a bunch of sassy binches who won’t stand for a bunch of stuff.
Serious red flags:
- Using racist or sexist language
- People with a history of cheating
- Persistent drug use or addiction
Not-so-serious red flags:
- People who chew their gum so aggressively you can hear it a mile away
- People who chuck shakas constantly
- People who hate dogs (okay maybe this one is a little serious for me)
So you see there’s defs a spectrum about it. Some things are gonna be harder to get past than others, and TBH some things shouldn’t be ‘gotten past’ in the first place. If you’re in a sitch where someone is being controlling or racist, then you absolutely should not be blessing that human with your presence.
As the good doc says, it’s all about “being true to yourself, because I think that when you’re not being true to what you really need, you end up feeling pretty crap about it.”
So whack on some headphones and have a listen to the podcast for some more gems of wisdom from Mary, about all things online dating and understanding your intentions – coz frankly we’ll take all the dating advice we can get (ahem, love me pls).
