You met someone, and from the very first conversation, it was electric. They responded immediately to every text, and within a few weeks, they told you they’d never felt this way before. They wanted to see you all the time, talked about the future, agreed with everything you said. You thought, finally, this is it. This is the real thing.
And then a few weeks, months, (or even a year) in, you realized you’d been with someone who couldn’t actually love you. Or who was controlling. Or who slowly turned into someone you didn’t recognize. And the thing you couldn’t shake was, “but it felt so real.”
Today I’m not doing the standard “look for red flags” thing. Ugh, I hate that phrase. It puts the whole burden on you to spot something that, by its nature, doesn’t look like a flag at all. (And then when you don’t see it, somehow that’s your fault? Nope. Stop. We’re not doing that here.)
The reason red flags feel like green flags is that high-intensity behaviors mimic the outputs of real love, things like attention, certainty, and devotion, without including any of the inputs, things like time, consistency, and being actually known. So today I’m walking you through eight specific behaviors that consistently get mistaken for green flags, plus one tool, the Pace Test, that does the work of all of them at once. You’re going to leave with a real radar for this.
19-minute read
Why Do Red Flags Feel Like Green Flags?
These behaviors confuse you not because you can’t see them, but because they activate the same reward circuits in your brain that genuine connection activates, and they do it faster. Real intimacy is slow. Performance is fast. That’s the whole story.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher (yes, my girl crush, I’ve talked about her a million times on this show) has spent decades scanning the brains of people in early-stage romantic attraction. What she’s found is that the early phase of love activates the same circuits that light up in cocaine use. When someone love bombs you, or future-fakes with you, or mirrors you back to yourself, they’re not just being charming. They’re flooding those circuits. The intensity itself is what your brain is reading as significance.
Layer on top of that the cultural script we’ve all absorbed about what “real” love is supposed to feel like, the chemistry, the certainty, the can’t-think-of-anyone-else, and you’ve got a perfect storm. The behaviors that should warn you become the behaviors that confirm to you that this is the one.
If you’re feeling stuck in a situationship, there’s help!
Why This Is Harder Now Than It Used to Be
I want to take a beat here to name something specific to the time we’re in. Back in my day (and yes, I’m 100 years old), if you met someone, you might call them on the phone once or twice before your first date. You’d see them in person, get a real read, and after the date, you’d talk again to plan the next one. There was space between contacts. Time to feel your own feelings. Time to notice whether you were actually interested or just flattered. Also, you likely knew people who knew that person (that’s probably how you met). So, you’ve got people you can question, context for their behavior, and some known history upon which to make decisions.
Now? You have no idea who this person really is and can only base your opinions on what they tell you and how they act. In fact, there’s a false intimacy right away because you can text someone all day, every day, from the moment you match. Hundreds of messages before you ever sit across from each other. By the time you do, your brain is convinced this is a real relationship, because in your nervous system’s accounting, you’ve been in a constant conversation for two weeks. That is a relationship to your brain.
This is when we can talk about another girl-crush I have: MIT researcher Sherry Turkle. She’s been studying technology and human connection for decades, and has been documenting it in her work. The constant low-friction availability of digital communication creates the appearance of closeness without the actual weight of shared real-life experience. Your brain doesn’t differentiate well between hours of texting and hours of being with someone. Both register as time spent. But one of them is real, and one of them is a screen.
Can you imagine calling someone on the phone as much as you text them in early dating? Yikes. You’d both be hoarse and exhausted by week two. We’ve normalized a level of access that, in any other context, would be considered way too much, way too fast. And then we wonder why everyone seems to move so quickly into something that turns out to be hollow.
Keep this in mind when I get to the eight behaviors in a minute. Every one of them is amplified by texting. Love bombing isn’t just verbal anymore; it’s 47 messages before noon. Hyper-availability isn’t just being free for dates; it’s being on the other end of every text, instantly, all day. The apps haven’t changed what red flags are. They’ve changed how fast they can be deployed.
What Is the Pace Test?
OK, before we get into the eight, I want to give you the through-line, because once you have it, you don’t actually need the list anymore.
Real connection moves at the speed of trust. I’ll say that again because it’s so critical here: Real connection moves at the speed of trust. Trust is built incrementally, through small moments of consistency over time. You see someone in different contexts, under different stresses, with different people. You watch what they do when they’re tired, when you’ve disappointed them, when they don’t get their way. Each of those moments adds another piece of evidence, and your sense of who this person is gets built brick by brick.
Performance can’t do that. Performance has to skip the time part, because time exposes performance. So performance compresses everything into intensity. A month of texting becomes a relationship. A weekend together becomes “the one.” The grand declaration replaces the slow accumulation of evidence. And because intensity feels like depth, your brain reads the speed as significance.
The Pace Test is one question. When something feels really good in early dating, ask yourself: Is this happening at the speed of getting to know someone, or at the speed of someone needing me to commit before I can see clearly? That’s it. That’s the whole tool. Every behavior we’re about to walk through fails the Pace Test in the same way.
As someone who’s been working as a relationship psychologist for 40 years, I can tell you that the people who come to me after one of these relationships ends almost always say the same thing: “I knew. Some part of me knew, and I overrode it.” What I want to give you today is the language for what you’re noticing, so the next time something feels too good too fast, you don’t override yourself.
Here are the eight.
1. Love Bombing
What it looks like: Within days or weeks they’re telling you you’re different from anyone they’ve ever met. They text constantly. They send gifts, plan elaborate dates, and talk about the future. The volume of attention is overwhelming and, honestly, intoxicating.
Why it reads as positive: Your brain has been trained by every romantic comedy and pop song to read this kind of intensity as love. Real love is supposed to feel like being chosen. And being love bombed feels exactly like being chosen.
The tell: The intensity isn’t responsive to you. It’s the same with everyone they’ve ever dated. If you watch closely, the things they’re saying, “I’ve never felt this way,” “you’re not like anyone else,” are about an idea of you, not the actual you. They haven’t known you long enough to be specific. The real version of devotion is specific. Real care notices the small things. It references what you actually said two weeks ago, in a way that shows they were paying attention. Love bombing is a performance of love. Real care is paying attention.
2. Future-Faking
What it looks like: Within the first few weeks, they’re talking about moving in together, taking trips next year, and what your kids would look like. They include you in plans for major holidays months away.
Why it reads as positive: When someone offers a vision of the future with you in it, your nervous system reads safety. You don’t have to wonder where this is going. You don’t have to feel anxious about being chosen. They’ve already chosen you. Loud.
The tell: Watch for the gap between the future they’re describing and the present they’re showing up for. Are they planning a trip to Italy in eighteen months, but consistently late to dinner? Talking about buying a house, but unable to follow through on small commitments? Real partnership is built in the small reliabilities of the present, not in cinematic promises about the future. The future-faker can describe the destination beautifully. They just can’t tell you how today connects to it.
Also, how well do they really know you? Have they seen you in multiple scenarios, with your family, friends, or through a difficult time at work? How can they be so sure you’ll be great a year from now when they haven’t been through anything real with you currently?
3. Mirroring
What it looks like: They love everything you love. Same music, same books, same political views, same childhood traumas, same favorite restaurants. The compatibility feels eerie, like you’ve found someone who finally gets you.
Why it reads as positive: This is the soulmate fantasy in action. The cultural script says the right person will feel like coming home, like meeting someone who already knows you. Mirroring delivers exactly that feeling.
The tell: Real compatibility includes friction. People who fit well together still disagree. They have different tastes, different rhythms, different opinions on everything from movies to how to load the dishwasher. Friction doesn’t mean you’re not a match. It means you’re two whole people, which is the only way to actually be a match. If everything is seamless, ask yourself whether you’re meeting your equal or your reflection.
4. Hyper-Availability
What it looks like: They text back instantly, every time. They never seem to be busy. Their schedule reorients around yours immediately. They’re available emotionally, physically, and conversationally, around the clock.
Why it reads as positive: When you’ve been left on read or kept waiting in past relationships, hyper-availability feels like the answer to every prayer. Finally, someone who’s into you. Someone who isn’t playing games.
The tell: Healthy adults have lives. They have other relationships, jobs, responsibilities, sleep cycles, internal states that aren’t always available to a new partner. The healthy version of availability is responsive without being constant. They text back when they can, prioritize you in real moments, but their life continues to exist around you. If their life seems to be you within weeks, that vacuum will eventually need to be filled. And nobody can fill someone else’s life and stay whole.
Also, if they’re blowing off other people to be with you, what does that tell you about who they are? And you can be guaranteed that they’ll be blowing you off in the future when something else seems more important in that moment.
5. Early Vulnerability or Trauma Dumping
What it looks like: On the first, second, or third date, they tell you the deepest, most painful things about their childhood, their last relationship, their mental health. They cry. They share things they say they’ve never told anyone.
Why it reads as positive: Vulnerability is a hallmark of intimacy. You read their willingness to share as a sign that you’re trusted, that this is real. You feel honored, and you naturally start to share at the same depth.
The tell: Real intimacy is built through reciprocal, graduated disclosure. When someone skips the gradual part and dumps depth on you immediately, they’re not building intimacy. They’re establishing obligation. You now feel responsible for them in a way you wouldn’t if you’d known them longer. They’ve also short-circuited the normal vetting process. (It’s hard to say no to someone who just told you about their abuse history. That’s the point.) Someone with a healthy relationship to their own pain doesn’t share it with strangers as a connection strategy. They share it when there’s been enough trust built that the sharing is appropriate.
6. The Fixer or Rescuer
What it looks like: They want to take care of you. They want to fix the things in your life that are hard. They notice everything you struggle with and have a solution. Their attention to your problems is total.
Why it reads as positive: It feels like being seen. It feels like being chosen by someone strong who can hold you. If you grew up parentified or you don’t get your needs met easily, being on the receiving end of this is a relief unlike any other.
The tell: A healthy partner is interested in your problems but not invested in solving them. They support you while you handle your own life. The fixer is the opposite. Their identity in the relationship depends on you needing them. So watch what happens when you’re doing well. Are they happy for you, or is there a flatness, even a quiet sabotage, when you don’t need their help anymore? I see this all the time in my office. The relationship was perfect when she was struggling. The minute she stabilized? Not so perfect.
7. Possessiveness Dressed as Passion
What it looks like: They want to spend all their time with you. They get a little jealous when you mention an old friend, but it’s “cute” because they want you so much. They check in often. They want to know where you are, who you’re with, and when you’ll be home.
Why it reads as positive: Possessiveness gets coded as proof of love. They wouldn’t be jealous if they didn’t care. They wouldn’t want to know where you are if you didn’t matter. We’ve been culturally trained to read this kind of attention as desire.
The tell: Listen, I love you, but this is the early stage of coercive control. (And yes, I’m using strong words on purpose.) Researchers like Evan Stark, who pioneered the modern understanding of coercive control as a pattern rather than a series of incidents, have shown that early possessiveness is one of the most reliable predictors of later abusive dynamics. It rarely shows up announcing itself. It shows up as flattery. It shows up as “I just love you so much I can’t stand the thought of you with anyone else.” Real desire wants you to be more of yourself. It celebrates your other relationships, supports your independence, and gets excited when you have your own things going on. Control wants you smaller, more contained, more available. So watch the direction of the pressure. Is it expanding you, or shrinking you?
8. Disparaging Exes and the “No Drama” Claim
What it looks like: They tell you their last relationship was a nightmare. The ex was crazy, abusive, and manipulative. They’re so glad they don’t have drama in their life now. They don’t do drama.
Why it reads as positive: It signals to you that they value peace. That they’ve moved on. That they’re done with the chaos that ruined their last relationship. You hear it as maturity.
The tell: This is a preview of how they’re eventually going to talk about you. The Gottman Institute’s decades of research on relationship breakdown show that contempt, especially contempt expressed about a partner, is one of the strongest predictors of relationship failure. Someone who speaks contemptuously about their last partner is showing you their default. The “no drama” claim, in particular, is often a way to preemptively label any of your reasonable needs as drama, so you’ll suppress them to keep your spot in the no-drama category. Healthy people can describe a hard relationship with nuance. They can name what was difficult and also acknowledge their own role. They don’t need their ex to be a villain. If the ex story is one-sided, with no curiosity, no accountability, no complexity, you’re seeing the operating system. The same lens will eventually be turned on you.
What If You Recognize Yourself in This?
You might be hearing all of this and recognizing yourself, not as the perpetrator, but as the person who keeps falling for it. If that’s where you are, the work goes deeper. I’ve gone into detail in another episode about why we keep choosing the same kind of person and what the inner work looks like. The short version is that your nervous system is responding to what’s familiar, and what’s familiar isn’t always what’s good for you. (Familiar feels safe to your brain even when it’s terrible for you. That’s not a moral failing, that’s neuroscience.)
But for today, the move is simpler. You don’t need to do all that inner work before you can use this episode. You just need to slow down enough to apply the Pace Test.
Your Gut Already Knew (You Just Couldn’t Hear It)
You’re rarely going to get through an episode of Relationships Made Easy without me bringing up mindfulness, and today’s no different. The single most useful tool you have for everything we’ve talked about today is the ability to slow down enough to actually feel what’s happening in your body in someone else’s presence.
I want you to understand something. Your gut already knows. Your gut almost always knows before your brain does. The trouble is that your gut speaks quietly, and fear speaks loudly, and most of us spend a lifetime listening to the wrong voice.
I’ve gone deep on the difference between your gut and your fear in another episode, but here’s the short version, because it’s directly relevant to everything we just covered. Your gut speaks in the body. It’s quiet. It’s slow. It’s almost never urgent. It shows up as a nagging sense that something’s off when everything looks fine on paper. It’s the way your shoulders won’t drop in their presence. It’s the held breath before you walk into the room. It’s the fact that you keep mentally rehearsing what you’ll say, what you’ll do, how you’ll act, before every interaction with the person who supposedly makes you so happy.
Fear is the opposite. Fear is loud. Fear is urgent and fast. Fear is the voice that says I have to commit right now or I’ll lose them. Fear is the voice telling you to ignore the small thing you noticed because what if you mess this up. Fear is what keeps you matching their pace.
And here’s the part most people don’t want to hear. The loudest voice in your head, the one telling you to commit, to dive in, to not be too cautious, to not blow this, that voice is almost never your gut. Your gut is the quieter one underneath it that’s been trying to get a word in.
The apps and texting culture make this even worse. The constant pressure to respond, to match enthusiasm, to keep up with the pace someone else is setting, all of that feeds fear. None of it feeds the gut. Your gut needs space. It needs the kind of quiet you can only get when you’re not being pinged 47 times a day.
If a relationship later turned out to have red flags, you’ve probably had the experience of looking back and realizing something in you knew. You felt the tightness. You felt the held breath. You felt the inability to relax. You just couldn’t slow down enough to hear that quieter voice over the louder one.
If you haven’t already, check out my free Mindfulness Starter Kit. It’s a great place to start training the kind of inner listening this work requires.
What Do You Do If You’re Already in One?
If you’ve already recognized yourself in someone you’re with, the answer isn’t a dramatic exit. The answer is a deliberate slowdown. Stop accepting the future-talk. Stop matching the pace. Watch what happens when you don’t lean in as hard. Real connection holds up under a slower pace. Performance falls apart because performance can’t sustain a slower speed without exposing what’s underneath. The Pace Test isn’t just diagnostic. It’s protective. Slow it down, and the truth shows itself.
Wrap Up
These eight behaviors all share one thing in common. They give you a feeling that’s supposed to come at the end of a long, slow, mutual process of getting to know someone, and they give it to you at the beginning. The intensity is the wrong ingredient. The right ingredient is time.
When something feels too good in early dating, the question isn’t Iis this real?” The question is, “Is this happening at the speed of trust, or at the speed of someone who needs me to commit before I can see clearly?” The pace itself is the message.
You’re not going to get this perfect. Nobody does. But the more you can train yourself to feel the pace, to notice when something is moving faster than it should, to honor the small moments of “this is a lot, this fast,” the less likely you are to end up six months or six years from now, wondering how you missed it.
YOU DIDN’T MISS IT. YOU FELT IT. You just need to trust yourself enough to slow down when you do.
I have a great free resource for you on this. I’m calling it: Is This a Green Flag or Just a Fast Flag?: A Quick Self-Check for Early Dating
It’s a tool you can use the next time you’re in early dating, or to look back honestly at a past relationship and see what you might have been picking up on.
As always, if you want to go deeper, this week’s Therapy-to-Go bundle is awesome (if I do say so myself, and I do). The bundle for this episode is built to help you map your own patterns, give you scripts for slowing a relationship down without explaining yourself, and walk you through the journaling that helps you understand why fast feels safe to your particular nervous system. You can get all of it (including today’s download) for just $10.
Therapy-to-Go Bundle
- Is This a Green Flag or Just a Fast Flag? A Quick Self-Check for Early Dating
- The Pace Test Audit: Applying the Eight Behaviors to One Specific Relationship
- The Slowdown Plan: A Worksheet for Putting the Pace Test Into Action With One Specific Relationship
- Scripts for Slowing Down Without Explaining Yourself
- Why Fast Feels Like Love: Journaling Prompts to Uncover the Story Underneath Your Pace
- The Pattern Across Your Dating History: A Bird’s-Eye View of the Eight Behaviors Across Multiple Relationships
Resources
Why You Can’t Leave a Situationship (Even When You Know You Should)
Why You Keep Choosing the Wrong Partner (And How to Finally Break the Pattern)
Emotional Healing Techniques: Mastering Mindfulness and Self-Acceptance/Compassion
How Do You Know if You’re Making the Right Decision/Following Your Gut
