Relationship De-Influencing, Vol. 2

To the person who thinks it's a red flag to say I love you too soon

I love you guys and I want you to be vigilant and discerning with relationships and how people give you attention, I want to encourage moving through your relations to others with an attunement to red flags and maladaptive behaviors to look out for.

But I also want to support you being open-hearted and willing to receive love that comes in a form that’s unexpected or new to you

I think we have been indoctrinated with pop psychology and unqualified relationship influencing that has good intentions in trauma-preventative education, but has run amok. I think it has unintentionally bred a generation of fearful, avoidant, paranoid, hyper-cautious overanalyzers who will lose a lot of good loves to scrutiny and principle rather than an open heart and compassionate discretion.

A couple of months ago I posted a video mentioning that my then-boyfriend had said “I love you” after 2 weeks of knowing me. I got a lot of comments expressing how concerning that was, what a huge red flag it is. That, and my opinions in reaction to it, inspired me to create a series of mini essays (if you can even call them that) where I address my gripes with common relationship discourse tropes that I see a lot on the internet. I just posted volume 1 of the series to my paid subs.

My first boyfriend ever said he loved me after about 2 weeks. This was the beginning of genuine lovebombing at the genesis of a horrible relationship that left me traumatized. My last boyfriend also said he loved me after 2 weeks, and proceeded to show me the most nurturing, patient, compassionate love and a relationship in which I have felt unconditionally safe to heal. If I had been dead-set on subscribing to the idea that saying I love you within a particular timeline that someone else told me was “too soon” and therefore lovebombing, then I would’ve saved myself from one of the worst relationships I’ve had, but also missed out on one of the best ones.

This is where I think these pop psychology “red flags” serve their purpose - they provide a sense of comfort by convincing you that you can have certainty and control over eliminating the possibility that you will end up forming connections with toxic people, or people who aren’t right for you. You feel that as long as you follow these guidelines and stick firmly to the principles, then you’ll be safe,  then you can be confident that you’ve weeded out the bad people. But it doesn’t work like that.

The reality is something I’ve had to work with in my relationship OCD therapy, which is that certainty is an impossible pursuit in relationships, and it will only end up sabotaging the good things. 

I believe that there are absolutely certain behaviors that can be red flags of a maladaptive relationship pattern or toxic personality, and I think it’s critical to be aware of and recognize them. The issue, I think, is that people - especially young people who don’t have as much relationship experience as they think they do - don’t really know how to take in this information without essentializing it and making it absolute. Like, the idea that someone saying I love you within 2 weeks of dating could be a red flag that precipitates a lovebombing campaign from a narcissistic partner, which is true and important to know, then gets translated into someone saying I love you too soon IS lovebombing or IS a red flag. But it’s only meant to be a red flag wen paired with certain other behaviors that together predict a larger issue of lovebombing. Someone can be a perfectly normal lover who just fell for you and what an amazing person you are that quickly, and you’d be cheating yourself out of that by applying some absolute principle that something moving too fast is almost always bad or scary.

An expertise in pop psychology relationship phenomena disseminated by unqualified life coaches can only protect you from so much. You can wave around the fact that you know what lovebombing or fawning or gaslighting is like your giant sword and poke it at any unconventional relationship behavior that you see, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe. And it doesn’t meant you’re right.