The Red Flags We Overlook

I Saw It Coming and Befriended Her Anyway

A few months ago, I ended a friendship. Not with a dramatic confrontation and a door slam. Not with a long message I rewrote six times to sound composed and devastating. Just quietly, deliberately, the way you put something down when you finally accept it’s too heavy to keep carrying. And the thing that hurt the most wasn’t the ending. It was the realisation that I’d seen it coming from the very beginning.

Right at the start, we both witnessed something. I won’t go into specifics, but it was one of those moments where someone’s values either reveal themselves or don’t. Mine did. I questioned what we’d seen. I felt uncomfortable. My gut did that thing it does when something’s off and it wants you to pay attention. She shrugged. Made excuses. Moved on like it was nothing. And I watched her do that, filed it away somewhere under things to think about later, and chose her anyway.

That’s the part I keep coming back to. The red flag wasn’t hidden. She didn’t conceal it. It wasn’t something that crept up on me six months in after I was already emotionally invested. It was right there, in plain sight, in the first few weeks. And I looked directly at it and thought, sure, but she’s fun to be around. As if fun is a personality transplant. As if good brunch conversation rewrites someone’s ethics.

Dating Made Us Vigilant. Friendship Made Us Soft.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve been trained to treat romantic red flags like smoke alarms. The moment one goes off, we’re out. We’ve read the books. We’ve done the therapy. We’ve sat in long voice notes with our friends dissecting whether his response time is a pattern or a vibe. We know the language now. Love bombing. Avoidant attachment. Negging disguised as banter. We are not naive in love anymore, or at least we’re trying not to be.

But friendship? Friendship gets a completely different rulebook. Or no rulebook at all, really. We meet someone and she’s funny and warm and she laughs at the same things you do and suddenly you’re three months deep in a friendship that feels like it was always meant to exist. And somewhere in that warmth, the critical part of your brain just… switches off. You’re not assessing her character. You’re just enjoying her.

The problem is that friendship can do just as much damage as a bad romantic relationship. The betrayal stings in a different place. The grief sits differently. Because with a friend, you didn’t have your guard up at all. You let her in through the front door, made her a cup of green tea, showed her your weird little corners, and trusted her with the version of yourself you don’t perform for everyone. When that goes wrong, it’s not heartbreak. It’s something quieter and more disorienting than that.

We’ve Decided Friends Get More Chances

I think we extend friendship a kind of grace we’d never extend to someone we were dating, and most of the time we don’t even notice we’re doing it. If a man I’d been seeing twice showed me something ethically questionable and then shrugged it off, I’d be out. We’d be done. I’d be on the phone to my best friend within twenty minutes, saying babes, you’re not going to believe this. It would not be a difficult decision.

But a friend who does the same thing? She gets context. She gets the benefit of the doubt. She gets a whole internal defence built by me, for her, without her even asking. She’s had a hard time. She’s complicated. Nobody’s perfect. You can’t just abandon people. We tell ourselves we’re being loyal when actually we’re being convenient. Because ending a friendship is uncomfortable and awkward and lonely in a way that ending a situationship never quite is.

Lulu, for what it’s worth, has never once extended grace to someone he’s decided he doesn’t like. He’ll sit on the lap of a stranger he met three minutes ago if the energy is right, and he’ll stare down someone he’s known for months if they’ve done something to lose his trust. There’s a lesson in that, probably. He doesn’t talk himself into anything. His read is his read and he stays with it.

The Flags Were Never Hidden

This is the thing I’ve had to sit with. The flags in this friendship were never waved subtly. They weren’t buried under months of good behaviour before the mask slipped. They were there at the beginning, bright as anything, and I chose to treat them like background noise instead of information.

We do this because we want the friendship to be what it looks like on the surface. We want the fun and the warmth and the easy company, and so we convince ourselves that one uncomfortable moment isn’t indicative of anything larger. We separate the behaviour from the person and decide they’re not actually connected. But they are. They always are. How someone responds when they witness something wrong tells you everything. Not some things. Everything.

The hard part isn’t identifying a red flag. Most of us are actually quite good at that, in the moment, when our gut speaks up. The hard part is what we do next. Whether we trust that instinct or whether we talk ourselves out of it because the alternative is inconvenient. I’ve gotten better at listening to my own read of people. Not perfect. But better. I know now that dismissing a value misalignment early because I like someone’s energy is not loyalty. It’s just hope wearing a disguise.

You’re Allowed to Hold Your Friends to a Standard

Nobody tells you that you’re allowed to have standards for your friendships the same way you have standards for your relationships. We talk endlessly about what we will and won’t accept from the people we date. But the idea of applying that same level of discernment to who we let into our lives as friends still feels somehow cold. Somehow disloyal before the friendship even starts.

It isn’t. It’s self-respect, applied consistently. The people you choose as friends shape your world as much as anyone else you let close. They’re in your corner on the hard days. They’re the ones you text when something confusing happens and you need someone to think out loud with. They influence how you see yourself, quietly and over time, in ways you barely clock until you’re standing on the other side of a friendship that’s ended and wondering how you missed so much.

You don’t have to be suspicious of everyone. You don’t have to interview your potential friends like they’re applying for a role they didn’t know was being advertised. But you’re allowed to pay attention. You’re allowed to notice when something feels off early and let that noticing mean something. You’re allowed to take the same version of yourself that walks away from the wrong romantic situation and apply her, gently but firmly, to every relationship in your life. She’s not being cold. She’s being consistent. And consistent, it turns out, is the kindest thing you can be to yourself.

You Are Not Entitled to an Answer – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity

In this episode of Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity, we're unpacking why you are not entitled to an answer. Specifically, we're talking about the strange little corner of modern dating where a few days of app chat somehow becomes an emotional contract, and suddenly a man you've never met believes your silence requires a formal explanation, a debrief, and possibly a follow-up meeting with management.I have two stories for you. One man who talked almost exclusively about himself, ignored the fact that I was sick, and then followed up a week later asking whether I'd reconsidered his "request for clarification". And another who became offended because I didn't respond to his selfie within two hours while I was lying in a dark room with a migraine. Sir. Please be serious.Because here's the thing. Before you've met someone, you do not owe them unlimited access to your time, attention, reassurance, or emotional labour. You don't have to justify why the vibes changed. You don't need a reason they'll consider reasonable. You are allowed to disengage because something felt off, because you changed your mind, because you met someone else, or because you're in your luteal phase and frankly the entire world can wait.Today we're talking about the difference between ghosting and simply disengaging, why demanding closure can become a boundary violation, the exhausting expectation that women should manage men's feelings for them, and why you do not need to JADE, justify, argue, defend, or explain, when you've already decided you're done. Let's get into it.Key Takeaways:A few days of chatting does not create a debt. Matching on an app, exchanging messages, or talking on the phone does not give someone a claim on your attention. Until you've actually built a connection, you are allowed to walk away without submitting supporting documentation.Closure is not something another person can demand from you. Asking once is one thing. Continuing to push after someone has clearly disengaged is not persistence or emotional maturity. It's refusing to accept the answer you've already been given.You do not need to JADE. You don't have to justify, argue, defend, or explain why you're no longer interested. The reason doesn't have to be good enough for him. It just has to be yours.Pre-date silence and post-date silence are not the same thing. If you've never met, disengaging is part of app dating. Once you've shared an actual date or developed a genuine connection, a simple goodbye becomes basic courtesy. Nobody needs a dissertation, but acknowledging another human being matters.Sometimes they don't miss you. They miss the audience. Someone can seem interested while actually being interested in having your attention. Real connection requires curiosity about you. If the only time they become deeply engaged is when you're leaving, pay attention to that.For more visit ⁠BryJaimea.com⁠ or follow over on IG ⁠@BryJaimea

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