By Figs O’Sullivan, LMFT
You scrolled past three videos last night. One told you your partner is a narcissist because they got defensive during an argument. Another told you stonewalling is emotional abuse. A third gave you a checklist of “toxic traits” and by the end of it you were mentally packing your bags.
I see this every week in my practice. Someone walks in, phone in hand, and says, “I think my partner has narcissistic personality disorder.” I ask what happened. They say, “He got really cold after our fight on Saturday and didn’t talk to me for two hours.” That is not narcissistic personality disorder. That is a man whose nervous system shut down because he felt like a failure and didn’t know how to come back.
I have been a couples therapist in San Francisco for over sixteen years. I have worked with more than three thousand couples. I can count on one hand the number of times I have sat across from someone with an actual personality disorder. What I sit across from, every single day, is two people who love each other and are scaring the living daylights out of each other because neither one knows how to say, “I need you and I am terrified you don’t need me back.”
The internet’s obsession with red flags in a relationship is not making relationships better. It is making them worse. And I want to explain why.
The 10 Percent and the 90 Percent
Let me be direct about something. True red flags exist. Domestic violence is a red flag. Blocking your partner from leaving the room during a fight is a red flag. Financial coercion is a red flag. If someone is hitting you, controlling your access to money, or making you afraid for your physical safety, your perception of danger is completely trustworthy and you should seek help immediately. That is not what this article is about.
There is roughly 10 percent of the population dealing with severe pathology. Those individuals and their partners deserve immense support, real clinical intervention, and in many cases, a safe exit plan.
The problem is that the internet has taken the survival advice designed for that 10 percent and infected the other 90 percent with it. The algorithm figured out that fear sells. That certainty sells. That the phrase “narcissist red flag” gets more clicks than “two scared people who need to learn how to hold each other.” So now millions of people in normal, fixable relationships are diagnosing their partners with personality disorders based on a 60 second video from someone who has never met either of them.
This is not education. This is an industry built on your pain.
Your Partner Is Not a Diagnosis. They Are a Nervous System in Panic.
Here is what is actually happening in the 90 percent of relationships where people think they see red flags in a relationship.
Human beings are an interdependent species. We are biologically designed to bond from the cradle to the grave. When it comes to love, we are all still babies. Our nervous systems run on two fundamental questions: “Are you there for me?” and “Am I enough for you?”
When the answer to either question appears to be no, the organism does not calmly sit down to discuss communication problems. It panics. The amygdala fires. The prefrontal cortex goes offline. And within six seconds, before your rational brain can even form a sentence, your body has already launched a survival response.
These survival responses are what the internet calls “red flags in a relationship.” But they are not character flaws. They are attachment protests. And they almost always fall into one of two patterns.
The Relentless Lover and the Reluctant Lover
The first pattern is the person I call the Relentless Lover. This is the partner whose core fear is abandonment. When they sense disconnection, when their nervous system detects that their partner is pulling away or prioritizing something else, they protest by reaching. That reaching often looks like criticism, blame, interrogation, or intensity. Their partner experiences it as attacking, nagging, being unpleasable.
But underneath all that noise, the Relentless Lover is saying one thing: “Please see me. Please tell me I matter. Please do not leave.”
The second pattern is the Reluctant Lover. This is the partner whose core fear is inadequacy. When they sense criticism or disappointment, when their nervous system detects that they are failing, they protect themselves by retreating. That retreat looks like shutting down, going quiet, getting defensive, checking out, burying themselves in work or their phone. Their partner experiences it as coldness, stonewalling, emotional unavailability.
But underneath all that silence, the Reluctant Lover is saying one thing: “I cannot bear to see that I am a disappointment to you. I am pulling away because intimacy is a risk I cannot take right now.”
This dynamic is what researchers call the pursue-withdraw cycle, and it is one of the most well-documented patterns in relationship science.
The Waltz of Pain: Why Your Red Flags Are Actually a Dance
Here is where it gets devastating. These two patterns do not exist in isolation. They trigger each other in a perfect, escalating loop that I call the Waltz of Pain.
The Relentless Lover criticizes because they feel abandoned. That criticism lands directly on the Reluctant Lover’s wound of not being enough. So the Reluctant Lover shuts down to survive the shame. That shutdown lands directly on the Relentless Lover’s wound of abandonment. So the Relentless Lover escalates their criticism. Which triggers more shutdown. Which triggers more criticism. One, two, three. One, two, three.
Neither person is the villain. Both people are in agony. Both people are trying to survive.
When you look at this dance from the outside and label one person’s protest behavior as a “red flag,” you miss the entire system. You take one half of a waltz and call it toxic. You diagnose the Relentless Lover as “too needy” or the Reluctant Lover as “emotionally unavailable.” And in doing so, you guarantee that the pattern will never heal, because you have identified the wrong enemy.
The enemy is never your partner. The enemy is the cycle between you.
The Compass of Shame: What Your “Red Flags” Are Really Made Of
If you want to understand what you are actually seeing when you identify a “red flag” in your partner, look at the Compass of Shame. It is the single most useful framework I know for decoding red flags in a relationship.
When shame hits, when the nervous system registers that devastating feeling of “I do not belong” or “I am not enough,” no human being can sit in it for long. The pain is too extreme. So we spin in one of four directions to survive it.
Attack Other is the partner who gets loud, blaming, sarcastic, contemptuous. It looks righteous. It feels like strength. Underneath, it is screaming, “If I push you away, you cannot see how vulnerable I actually am.”
Attack Self is the partner who collapses inward, spiraling into self-loathing, saying “I am a terrible partner” or “I ruin everything.” It looks like humility. Underneath, it is a preemptive strike: “If I hurt myself first, nobody else can.”
Withdrawal is the partner who goes quiet, emotionally leaves the room while physically staying in it, becomes unreachable. It looks like indifference. Underneath: “If I make myself small enough, maybe the shame will not find me.”
Avoidance is the partner who reaches for the phone, the drink, the workout, the overtime, the scroll. It looks like distraction. Underneath: “If I stay busy enough, I will not feel how much this hurts.”
Every single one of these strategies has been labeled a “red flag” by the internet. And every single one of them is a completely normal human response to shame. When you start to see red flags in a relationship through this lens, the picture changes completely.
The Real Red Flag the Internet Never Talks About
You want to know what actually scares me in my practice? It is not the couple who fights loudly. Loud fights, while painful, are protests for connection. They mean both people still care enough to reach for each other, even if they are reaching badly.
What scares me is silence.
I watch for the moment when a Relentless Lover stops reaching. When the partner who used to criticize, used to demand, used to blow up the phone with texts, just stops. When they go quiet. When they pick up a book instead of picking a fight.
My wife Teale did this to me once. She did not protest, did not ask me to stop, did not try to pull me back. She just gave up and went to our room and read a book. That moment sobered me more than anything else could have. Because a Relentless Lover reaches. When they stop reaching, something has gone very wrong.
The internet will never make a viral video about this. “Your partner stopped fighting with you” does not sound like a red flag. But in my clinical experience, it is the most dangerous one. It means the organism has given up on the bond.
Competing Attachments: The Red Flags That Are Actually Real
There is one category of behavior that does require urgent attention, and it is not what most people think.
A competing attachment is anything a partner turns to outside the relationship for soothing, comfort, or connection instead of turning to you. That could be a flirtation. That could be alcohol, porn, video games, overwork, social media, or even a parent who still holds the primary attachment position.
Your nervous system needs to rest in two beliefs to feel safe: “I am your priority” and “I am enough for you.” When your partner consistently reaches for something or someone else to regulate their emotions, those two beliefs get shattered. It does not matter if their intention is harmless. If your partner has to alter their consciousness every evening with two glasses of wine instead of being present with you, your organism registers the message: “I am not enough to help you feel okay.”
This is different from a partner who shuts down during a fight. Shutting down is a protest within the bond. A competing attachment is a withdrawal from the bond entirely. And the clinical reality is that if there is a third party in the relationship, whether that third party is a substance, a screen, or a person, couples therapy cannot fully succeed until that exit is closed.
Your Body Knows Before Your Mind Does
If you are reading this and wondering whether your relationship has a real problem or just a painful cycle, stop looking at your partner’s behavior for a moment. Turn the flashlight inward. What is your body telling you?
The tight chest. The clenched jaw. The stomach that will not settle. The dread that shows up on Sunday night. The exhaustion that arrives from nowhere. The flinch when you hear the front door open.
These are not weaknesses. These are your nervous system’s entries in the ledger. Your body has been keeping score of every moment your attachment bond felt threatened. And unlike your mind, which can be talked out of its fear with a good argument, your body does not lie.
But here is the critical distinction, and this is where most people get it wrong. Your body’s alarm system is not the same as your intuition. Your defended self is not your true self. Your fear is not your intuition. Your wound is not your wisdom.
When you are dysregulated, when your nervous system has been hijacked by a fight or a silence or a betrayal, almost everything feels like confirmation of your worst fear. The trigger is real, but the meaning you build from it comes from your history, not from the present moment.
This is why diagnosing your partner from inside the Waltz of Pain is so dangerous. You are gathering evidence for a prosecution while your prefrontal cortex is offline.
The Shift That Changes Everything
Here is what I tell every couple who walks into my office convinced they are dealing with a toxic partner.
Stop trying to be a good relationship. Start getting good at repair.
Good relationships are not defined by the absence of conflict. They are not defined by never triggering each other. They are defined by how quickly and how safely the two of you can move from disconnection back to connection.
Love is supposed to hurt sometimes. Because love matters. If your partner could not hurt you, they would not be your partner. They would be a roommate.
The couples who survive are not the ones who never fight. They are the ones who fight and then find their way back. Who drop the magnifying glass they have been holding over their partner’s flaws, pick up the mirror, and ask: “What am I so afraid of? What do I need from you that I do not know how to ask for? And what would it take for me to let you see that?”
That is the proof of work. Not a checklist of red flags. Not a diagnosis from a stranger on the internet. The willingness to stop being the world’s foremost expert on your partner’s problems and start being curious about your own fear.
When to Stay and When to Go
I will not pretend every relationship should be saved. Some should not. If you are in physical danger, leave. If your partner is actively addicted and refusing help, you cannot do couples work until that third party is addressed. If you have genuinely tried, with a qualified therapist, and one person refuses to participate in the repair, that tells you something important.
But for the vast majority of couples I see, the ones who came in ready to list red flags and walk out the door, the truth is simpler and harder than they expected. You are not dealing with a personality disorder. You are dealing with two nervous systems locked in shame, protest, retreat, and misattunement. That is fixable. That is what Emotionally Focused Therapy is for. Research from the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT) has consistently shown that 70 to 75 percent of couples move from distress to recovery through this approach.
The most powerful moment in my work is not when a couple stops fighting. It is when they stop diagnosing each other and start seeing the scared, wounded, reaching human being underneath the armor. When the Relentless Lover finally says, “I am not angry. I am terrified you do not want me.” And the Reluctant Lover finally says, “I am not cold. I am drowning in the fear that I will never be enough for you.”
That is when the waltz stops. That is when the real relationship begins.
Frequently Asked Questions About Red Flags in a Relationship
Are red flags in a relationship always a sign to leave?
No. Most behaviors people label as red flags in a relationship are actually attachment protests or shame responses. They signal distress, not danger. The key distinction is between patterns of abuse (which require immediate safety action) and patterns of disconnection (which can be repaired with the right support).
How do I tell the difference between a real red flag and an attachment protest?
Real red flags involve safety threats: physical violence, financial coercion, or blocking you from leaving. Attachment protests look like clinginess, withdrawal, defensiveness, or emotional shutdowns. These are nervous system responses to feeling disconnected from someone you love, not character flaws.
Can couples therapy help if my partner shows red flags?
If the behaviors you are seeing are attachment-based (not abuse), couples therapy — particularly Emotionally Focused Therapy — is specifically designed to address these patterns. It helps both partners understand the cycle they are caught in and learn to reach for each other instead of against each other.
What is the pursue-withdraw cycle in relationships?
The pursue-withdraw cycle is a pattern where one partner escalates (pursuing connection through protest) while the other shuts down (withdrawing to protect themselves). Both partners are in pain. This is the most common dynamic therapists see, and it is almost always misread as one partner being “too much” and the other “not caring enough.”
If your relationship feels stuck in a cycle you cannot break, you do not need another article. You need someone in the room who can see the dance.
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