The Red Flags We Often Explain Away

There’s a piece of relationship advice I remember hearing when I was younger:

“If he treats his mum well, you’ve found a good one.”

It sounded reassuring. Simple. Safe. And for a while, I held onto it. But experience has a way of quietly undoing the things we thought we understood, especially when the relationship red flags we eventually recognise weren’t the ones we had been taught to look for.

The idea is that the way somebody treats their mother tells you something about the way they will eventually treat you. And perhaps sometimes it does.

But after the relationships I’ve lived through, I don’t think it tells us nearly as much as we’ve been led to believe.

Because somebody can adore their mum, defend her, worry about her and genuinely feel protective towards her, while still growing up to repeat some of the very relationship patterns that hurt her.

That was something I learned the hard way.

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What I Didn’t Understand When I Was Younger

My first serious boyfriend grew up in a home where his parents argued constantly.

Not normal disagreements that blew over afterwards. There seemed to be tension hanging in the house all the time.

We would sit together in his bedroom and hear his parents fighting downstairs. His father could be difficult, dominating and incredibly wearing towards his mother.

I was young. I didn’t have words like emotional abuse, coercive control or dysfunctional relationship patterns in my vocabulary.

I simply knew that something about their relationship didn’t feel right.

Years later, I entered another relationship and the family dynamic looked completely different on the surface.

There wasn’t the same obvious shouting.

My partner loved his mother enormously. He spoke about her affectionately. He acknowledged that his father could be selfish and that his mother had struggled badly with her mental health.

And because he could see some of what she had been through, I assumed that meant he would never repeat it.

Surely someone who had watched their mum suffer would want something different for their own relationship?

That made perfect sense to me at the time.

Unfortunately, human behaviour isn’t always that simple.

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We Learn Relationships Long Before We Have One

None of us reaches adulthood with a completely blank idea of what love, conflict and relationships are supposed to look like. Long before we ever have a serious relationship of our own, we have already spent years watching the people around us.

We notice who gets listened to and who gets ignored. We notice what happens when somebody is angry, whether disagreements feel safe, who apologises, who gives in, and who everybody else seems to tiptoe around.

Children absorb far more of this than we realise. Not because they are consciously studying relationships, but because whatever happens regularly at home starts to feel normal.

That doesn’t mean somebody who grows up around an unhealthy relationship is destined to repeat it. Plenty of people become very aware of what they witnessed and deliberately choose something different.

But sometimes those patterns are carried forward without being questioned.

A person might reject the obvious parts of what they saw growing up while still repeating the quieter dynamics underneath it. They may never shout like their father did, for example, but still expect their partner to accommodate them, keep the peace, avoid upsetting them or carry most of the emotional weight of the relationship.

And that is why I think it matters less whether somebody simply says, “I would never treat someone the way my dad treated my mum,” and much more whether they have actually reflected on what they learned about relationships in the first place.

Because recognising unhealthy behaviour in somebody else is one thing.

Recognising it in yourself is much harder.

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Loving Your Mum Doesn’t Automatically Mean You Learned Healthy Love

This was the part I misunderstood for a long time.

Somebody can love their mother deeply while still having absorbed unhealthy ideas about relationships from the household they grew up in.

They may feel sorry for what she went through.

They may even recognise that their father treated her badly.

But recognising somebody else’s behaviour and recognising the same pattern emerging in yourself are two very different things.

Patterns aren’t always copied exactly either.

That is important.

You may grow up watching one parent shout and intimidate the other and promise yourself, “I will never behave like that.”

And perhaps you never shout.

But control can still emerge through sulking, withdrawing affection, criticism, guilt, financial pressure, silent treatment, manipulation or gradually making your partner responsible for keeping you happy.

On the surface, it looks completely different.

Underneath, the relationship can still revolve around one person having more emotional power than the other.

That was something I didn’t understand until much later.

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Look at the Dynamic, Not Just the Individual Relationship

So now, I think there is a much more useful question than:

“How does he treat his mum?”

Look at the relationship he grew up watching.

How did the adults in that home treat one another?

Was there mutual respect?

Could both people disagree safely?

Did one person dominate while everybody else adapted?

Was one parent constantly giving while the other took?

Were feelings taken seriously or mocked and dismissed?

Could somebody say no without consequences?

Was conflict repaired afterwards, or did everybody simply pretend nothing had happened?

And perhaps most importantly, has the person you’re with ever reflected on any of it?

Because growing up around unhealthy relationships isn’t the red flag.

Refusing to examine the patterns you learned can be.

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Sometimes the Early Signs Are Incredibly Quiet

The beginning of an unhealthy relationship rarely looks the way we imagine abuse should look.

There may be no huge explosion.

No obvious cruelty.

No dramatic moment where you suddenly think, “This person is controlling me.”

Sometimes it begins with tiny adjustments.

You start thinking more carefully about how you phrase something.

You notice certain subjects create tension, so you stop bringing them up.

You find yourself explaining completely reasonable decisions.

You feel responsible for keeping things calm.

A conversation leaves you confused, but you can’t quite work out why.

You apologise just to end the atmosphere.

You start making yourself smaller without ever consciously deciding to.

That is part of what makes emotionally unhealthy relationships so difficult to recognise from inside them.

When each individual incident looks minor, it is very easy to tell yourself you’re overreacting.

It is only when you step back and look at the pattern that things begin to make sense.

If you’re questioning whether what you’re experiencing is emotional abuse, my post How to Tell If You’re in an Emotionally Abusive Relationship goes much deeper into those patterns.

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Familiar Does Not Mean Healthy

There’s another uncomfortable part of this that applies to all of us.

We are often drawn towards what feels familiar.

Not because we consciously want unhealthy relationships, but because our nervous system can mistake familiarity for safety.

If you grew up having to work for affection, unpredictability may feel oddly normal.

If you learned to keep everybody else happy, over-functioning in a relationship may feel like love.

If conflict always meant withdrawal or punishment, you may automatically become the person who tries to fix everything.

That is why healing isn’t only about learning how to spot “bad people”.

It is also about understanding ourselves.

What do I excuse?

What do I normalise?

What makes me feel responsible for somebody else’s behaviour?

What do I call love simply because it feels familiar?

Those questions changed far more for me than any checklist of red flags ever did.

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This Isn’t About Blaming Somebody for Their Childhood

I want to make something very clear here.

Growing up around dysfunction does not make somebody abusive.

It doesn’t make them dangerous.

And none of us gets through childhood without picking up patterns that we eventually have to unlearn.

The difference is what somebody does when those patterns begin affecting other people.

Can they reflect?

Can they apologise without turning the blame back on you?

Can they tolerate being challenged?

Are they interested in understanding how their behaviour affects you?

Do they make lasting changes, rather than simply saying the right words after every argument?

Those things tell you far more about the safety of a relationship than whether somebody buys their mum flowers on Mother’s Day.

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Your Body Often Notices Before Your Mind Does

One of the strangest things I’ve learned through healing is that sometimes my body seems to notice a relationship dynamic long before my conscious mind understands it.

You may feel inexplicably anxious around somebody.

You may rehearse conversations before having them.

Your shoulders tighten when they walk through the door.

You feel relief when they go out.

You are constantly scanning their mood.

And because there hasn’t been one enormous event to justify those feelings, you assume the problem must be you.

Sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes your nervous system has simply been gathering information your mind hasn’t put together yet.

That doesn’t mean every uncomfortable feeling proves somebody is abusive. But persistent discomfort deserves curiosity rather than immediate dismissal.

Especially if you have spent years teaching yourself not to trust your own reactions.

My free Nervous System Healing Guide is there for exactly this kind of starting point. Not to tell you what decision to make about a relationship, but to help you begin coming back into your own body and hearing yourself again.

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You’re Allowed to Notice the Pattern Earlier

One of the things I wish somebody had told younger me is that you don’t have to wait until something becomes unbearable before you are allowed to take it seriously.

You don’t need a courtroom case.

You don’t need everybody else to agree.

You don’t need one enormous incident that finally proves what you’ve been feeling.

Sometimes the information is in the accumulation.

The subtle pressure.

The confusion.

The way you keep adapting.

The fact that you no longer feel quite like yourself.

Healing has taught me to pay attention to those things much sooner.

Not because I expect perfection from people.

Not because somebody’s childhood determines who they become.

But because relationships leave clues.

And these days, instead of asking only how somebody treats their mum, I’d pay much more attention to what they learned about love in the home they grew up in, whether they have ever questioned those lessons, and most importantly, how they respond when their own behaviour causes somebody else pain.

That tells you far more.

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If some of this felt familiar, these might help you make sense of what you’ve experienced:


● Cognitive Dissonance in Emotionally Abusive Relationships: Why You Keep Doubting Yourself
For when part of you knows something isn’t right, but another part keeps finding reasons to explain it away.

● The Thousand Tiny Cuts Nobody Else Can See
 – About the small, easily dismissed moments that can slowly change how you feel inside a relationship.

● When Your New Partner Uses Your Past to Repeat the Same Pattern
 – How old wounds and relationship history can become vulnerabilities in a new unhealthy relationship.

● Setting Boundaries Without Guilt
- Especially useful if you’ve learned that keeping the peace matters more than saying what you actually need.

● Break the Trauma Bond
- For understanding why leaving or emotionally detaching can feel so difficult even when you know the relationship is hurting you.

● Post-Separation Abuse – Why Leaving Didn’t End the Abuse
For anyone discovering that controlling patterns don’t necessarily disappear once a relationship ends.

With love,
Lisa

The Quiet Rebellion 🌿