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It's my theory that we are more likely to put up with less than optimal behavior from people who are really attractive. I think that in the beginning of the dating phase, if our partner is unattractive and presented us with BPD-ish behavior, that we'd likely call an end to the relationship rather quickly.

My first husband was somewhat attractive and my self-esteem was really in the dumps, so it was a perfect setup for me to become enamored with him when he painted me white in the beginning. No one had ever praised me like that and made me feel so important. After growing up with constant criticism from my BPD mother, it was incredibly soothing to feel appreciated.

With my second husband, I fell in love at first sight. I was completely dazzled by his appearance, his intellect, his kindness. That honeymoon phase lasted several years and then I was completely blindsided when the BPD behaviors emerged. Perhaps they had been there in small ways from the beginning, but I was so giddy in love that I didn't notice them until they became so obvious that I could no longer ignore them.

My ex, in my opinion, is stunning and I think that is why I was prepared to put up with it longer than I should.

Hi cat,

I feel compelled to answer, it made me smile, because it really shouldn't matter, but my h is drop dead gorgeous. When you look at us a couple, I'm sure many people would think ' she's punching well above her weight'  *)

His looks were the magnet, I wanted to make babies with him straight away.  :) He was charismatic, quirky, didn't run with the crowd. Of course I now know to all intents and purposes I am describing myself.

I realise now that he had me hooked on another level altogether, but that took me much longer to work out.

My h as it turns out is absolutely nothing like me at all, but I'm still very much in love with him and have come to understand that his expression of love is different from mine, but no less real.

His looks have no bearing on us staying together, and they most certainly didn't make dealing with any aspect of his dysregulations easier or more palatable.

I think that what makes someone attractive to us also depends on something subconscious with us. I have known men who were gorgeous by mainstream standards and yet, didn't feel attracted to them.

This is something that has even become a sort of warning sign to me while working on not being co-dependent. I am married, faithful, but that doesn't mean I can't see that someone is attractive. So, if someone looks attractive, my next thought is "what is it about this person that makes him attractive to me that tells me about myself and what I need to work on?" Most time I would not ever know as I don't really pursue that, but I would be curious if that person came from a dysfunctional family, or if I feel a need to "rescue" or other aspects of co-dependency. In this case, seeing someone who is attractive to me isn't a wish to be with that person, but more as a lesson to see what it is about me that would make that person attractive.

My mother w BPD, in her day, was a an absolute knockout. Drop dead gorgeous. I see where, in her era, many of her behaviors would not be seen as dysfunctional. Women were not expected to work, and so she could seek a husband who would take care of her. My father was madly in love with her.

I also wondered if it was a bit of chicken and egg with her behavior. Because she was so beautiful, people did put up with her behavior, and if someone walked away, then there were plenty more pursuing her. I also wondered if because of her looks she was not encouraged to develop her other skills. In her day, it didn't matter if women had other skills, or a career. My mother didn't need to make much of an effort to attract someone. However, someone less attractive than my mother would perhaps have had to have developed other attractive qualities - such as being kinder, more nurturing. I don't just mean this in terms of dating, but even how she grew up- perhaps people didn't mind putting up with a beautiful child as much.  

In ways, I worked at being different than her. I didn't want to be like her. I always dressed more modestly and was embarrassed if someone complimented my appearance. I was good at sports, in school. I had boys as friends, not as suitors. I didn't date all that much, but if I did, often the relationship grew out of a friendship.

My H is good looking and had many women pursuing him. I think he, at some level, was looking for someone he didn't have to pay a lot of attention to. I fit that mold, having grown up being independent.

My mother was mistaken for a Miss California contestant while on her honeymoon. My dad must have thought he won the lottery, until sometime later when buyer's remorse undoubtedly set in as the BPD characteristics began showing up. Actually they were probably there from the beginning since the first time they eloped, she slipped away and took a bus home.

It was her sister that was the gorgeous one. She was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout. They did a photo shoot of her with some incredibly beautiful shots. She resembled Lauren Bacall in both looks and personality and would have been a talented screen presence. She declined to pursue that career because she was too self-conscious of her physical appearance; one foot and leg were smaller than the other due to polio in childhood.

You make a good point, Notwendy, about beautiful people not needing to develop other appealing parts of their personalities because there's always another suitor waiting in the wings.

I also think some people are attracted to the drama- the initial love bombing and then the push pull on again off again. For me, I think loving someone who occasionally threw me a crumb of attraction just felt normal to me. I think I confused that sadness and longing for love, since that is how I felt with my parents.

It was a leap for me to decide that love shouldn't hurt, not like that. From then on, that kind of "love" was just not acceptable to me.

If I were single, I don't think I could fully trust my "attraction" process. I have tried to think back on old boyfriends, just to see if there was a trend in who I thought was attractive, but I have been married a long time and to go back to that, I'd have to think back to school when there really was not a lot of relationship drama in general. I do recall that one boyfriend had an alcoholic parent, and wonder if we would have had some compatible issues.

Some posters have also posted about the great sex that went along with the initial love bombing. What I do recall is that my H got bored with me sexually, but I was happy with him. Apparently what we had been doing all along was no longer good enough for him. He fell out of love with me first, which broke my heart at the time. It was difficult to no longer feel attractive to my H when I was still attracted to him. If anyone wonders- I was not really different in appearance from when we got married- about the same size albeit having children and age creates some inevitable changes in people.


He has since made significant effort to repair that, but I have also grown emotionally and don't connect with the feelings that I was raised with that were familiar to me as "love". What is attractive to me now is not being the intense focus of love or not at all- not the painted white or black. I would prefer a middle ground emotional state and stability. That may feel boring to some people, but I would prefer that over drama.

It's possible. My boyfriend is very attractive and has a seemingly polite and caring personality. Women flirt with him plenty, sometimes even in front of me. One girl even went as far as to block me on all social media because she wanted to break us up somehow.  

When my mom first saw his she was amazed. "He's so pretty, he's like a girl."

I'm pretty attractive too. I haven't missed out on much attention in my life, either, but I've never been one to date a lot or have flings. The reason why my boyfriend made such an impact on me was that he was the first person who had zero issues with my weight. I've always been on the chubbier side of a normal BMI and I had a lifetime of my mom and her family of narcissists criticising me over not being skinny like them. "You are absolutely gorgeous, but if you lost the weight you'd have decent guys actually interested in you."

So I went for the first seemingly decent guy who liked me at my current size and told me I was perfect as I was.

He's not really into looks, though. The majority of his exes have been pretty plain or downright ugly. He says he holds personality at a higher level.

No, I don't think it was my ex's looks that drew me so intensely.  It was this connection we had.  She's beautiful yes, but I know lots of other very attractive women and I don't feel anything for them let alone love them.  No, it was this connection that we had.  More than chemistry.  More than sexual attraction.  It was like spiritual.  That's the best I can explain it.  I've never felt so close to anyone in my life.  I've never felt so able to just be me, and to be accepted and cherished for it.  It was like a meeting of souls.  It was something that happened very organically.  I never expected it to happen.  I never planned it.  We both just felt it.

I've never felt that kind of connection with anyone.

I get the body shaming from parents. My mother is always dieting, yet she was very thin. She looked like a movie star.

I was a slim kid, but athletic. She was dainty, I was muscular. She used to tell me I needed to lose weight. I never felt good about how my body looked, because to her, I was too big. She even got my father on board with telling me I needed to lose weight when I was a young teen.

But I didn't need to lose weight.

When my kids approached puberty, I noticed a pattern in how they grew. As pre-teens, they began to put on some weight and go through a stage where they filled out. They didn't have mature bodies- just little round tummys and a huge appetites. Then, as teens, they shot up about 6 inches and were slim. I realized that when they were filling out and eating alot, that they were preparing for a growth spurt.

I realized that this was probably similar to how I grew. As I went through a pre-teen stage where I filled out, my mother started to call me fat. I soon grew taller than her. I was never fat. I was taller and not as dainty as her, but because of sports, I was stronger. I am still on the shorter/smaller size for women, but since she was so tiny, she would tell me how big I was.

Looking back, I consider that abusive. When I see old pictures of myself, I see a normal sized kid.

I know exactly what you mean regarding looking at old pictures. My grade 8/middle school graduation I looked absolutely stunning and was at a perfectly normal weight. My mom's reaction? "If not for your 2 obese friends next you, you'd be the fattest person in that group picture." I filled out right around puberty, age 12. I went from skinny to having breasts and a round hips. My mom didn't fill out until she was 17 and no one in her family ever had wide hips like me. I remember my last doctor's appointment right before I got my menses. My mom was horrified that I weighed 145 lbs at 5'7. "How could you gain that much weight? You have to start minding your weight."

My mom still diets like crazy. I started saying no to her harsh restrictive diets when I was 21.

So yeah. When a guy stares at you and tells you "You are perfect and beautiful just the way you are. You don't even need to lose a single pound." ... .you kind of lose your mind.

My boyfriend has average looks. I thought he was appealing when we met. At that time, he was very sweet, calm, kind. He had a lovely romantic spirit, and is very intelligent. Good sense of humor. It was not his looks that drew me so hard.

Sadly, all of those things are now buried under a lot of drama, anger, and trauma.

You were a normal size kid and probably still are within a healthy size. It's hard enough for teen girls to have fashion and entertainment icons promoting an "ideal" ( and often photoshopped) image that most women would not fit at all- yet are beautiful. I wonder if some of our mothers projected their own reactions to this on to their daughters? What we weigh has nothing to do with them, but if they have poor boundaries then they would see their children as an extension of them, not different people.

I was left with a similar vulnerability to any guy who would pay attention to me. My self esteem was pretty low, not believing that I deserved to be loved. I learned pretty quickly that there were guys that would take advantage of that, but I think it still set the stage for dysfunction in relationships by the way my "attraction" was set to feel familiar with people who were similar to people in my FOO.

Interesting themes here... .

My BPD mother constantly criticized me, called it "constructive criticism" when nothing could be further from the truth. I would steel myself against the onslaught, yet it was terribly wounding nevertheless. Even as an adult, she would touch my face in public and say, "What is that?" I'd say, "It's a pimple, Mom." Talk about not having boundaries with your daughter.

As a kid, I had terrible allergies and my nose was constantly itchy, drippy, or irritated. "If you keep on rubbing your nose like that, it will get as big as a boot," she frequently said. (Who says that to a six year old?) As I grew into adolescence, I became very self-conscious of my nose and when I was 19, I chose to have a nose job, much to my parents' dismay. Actually it was a good thing, since I truly had such a deviated septum that I couldn't at all breathe out of one side. That was convenient for insurance purposes. Really my only motivation was to change my nose so as to not look like my mother anymore. I now look at those pictures of my younger self and there really wasn't anything visually wrong with my nose. It was a very typical Scandinavian nose.

I don't at all regret having the surgery and I breathe much easier and I think it's a better looking nose than the one I was born with, but what was most important was that, symbolically, it was a way to separate myself from my mother and I took it that way at the time and left behind a lot of emotional pain, judgment and history.

It makes complete sense that those of us who dealt with frequent parental criticism would find ourselves in relationship with a pwBPD. After all, who wouldn't appreciate being put on a pedestal and praised after feeling so devastated by criticism from those who should be the most trusted people in our world?

I think sometimes something like a nose job could be a major self esteem enhancer.

I had a friend who, as a teen, was underweight and did not have a pretty nose. After corrective surgery, she looked great. As we got older, some of us had to work at losing pregnancy weight, but the extra weight on her looked great on her- she got curves. She always was a beautiful person, but the change in appearance and confidence in her was a good thing. I don't make a big deal about looks, but sometimes doing something to enhance them can bring about positive changes for someone. It's when someone gets completely obsessed that may cause problems.

I also think that looks only go so far in a relationship. They may be an initial attraction, but it takes more to sustain it. I've had the experience where someone doesn't look very attractive to me initially, but after getting to know them, they get more attractive as their personality is revealed. It also works the other way around.

I really did have such low self esteem that I was overwhelmed if anyone liked me. Still, I didn't date a lot. I didn't find many people attractive for some reason. I think in some ways, I was scared to get too involved with people. Some of my friends seemed to be boy crazy. I had crushes, but they seemed relatively rarer. I knew I was straight, because all my crushes were on males, but it seemed I was less interested in dating than my peers.

I totally agree. I remember being totally smitten with some guy in college and all it took to instantly reverse that feeling was to hear some misogynist comment from him. Then I felt immediately repulsed and never again felt attracted to him.

I sure wish I had that kind of filter later with my first husband. As both narcissists and pwBPD do, he painted me white at the beginning until I was hooked and then the ugly side of him came out. The more I read about narcissism, the more I think he was co-morbid for both narcissism as well as BPD. He had a huge ego and at the same time a terror of abandonment that colored his every behavior. As typical with abusers, after living with him for several years, my self-esteem was in the toilet and it felt impossible to extract myself from his clutches. Thankfully I eventually did.

As I read earlier this morning in an article about the effects narcissists have on their partners, I, like the person quoted, now have no feelings at all about my first husband--no anger, pity, compassion--I just feel sort of a blank nothingness.  I think this comes from revisiting my history with him and fully grieving my experience. I do regret having spent so much time with him, but that got me to this point in life where I'm quite happy most times, in spite of being with another BPD husband, who thankfully, is mostly well behaved nowadays.

Agreed. Current pwPD was a model during the super model craze of the early 80's on the east coast.  Has got most of what she HAD, notice the word had, by means of her looks.  As she ages, she is now getting her Nfill met by way of pity due her being diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. 

That is a good question. In my case I admired and admire my SO achievements and he was and is devoted to me in a way that no one has been before, plus he can deal with my daughter. There were red flags in the  beginning but I didn't see them. I see them in hindsight and the relationship is a lot different today. It continues to evolve as I continue to evolve.

I've seen a grieving process take place with women who were extremely attractive and who used their looks to manipulate others. I guess I can count my blessings for being an "ugly duckling" who never noticed that I turned into a swan. I desperately wanted to fit in as a young person, but I was always out of step with the crowd, so I gave up and just did what I pleased. I never learned how to flirt, how to dress attractively, how to do makeup, etc. I just wore what felt comfortable and was my shy self.

Now years later, I don't grieve getting older because I never paid much attention to my looks other than trying to be clean and having my hair combed (which is a challenge because I've got a mane, rather than a head of hair).

It must be really disturbing to be only appreciated for one's appearance, only to watch it all fall apart with age.

Isn't it funny how we can sweep those initial red flags under the carpet at the beginning? I look back now and see so many things which should have given me pause, but being painted white felt so good, it was easy to ignore the slightly discordant issues.

In my case, I didn't know they were red flags. I think I was so starved for attention when I met my SO that the way he was treating me felt really good to me.

In my case, any red flags were brief and attributed to stress. We were in school, graduating, job hunting. I assumed they were temporary- and always resolved quickly.

However, my low self esteem and being vulnerable to attention made it easy to overlook any difficulties in my relationship. Discussions usually resulted in me being blamed for any problems. Since this was the pattern in my FOO- no family issues were attributed to my mother- it was usually the fault of the kids or my father- it felt normal to me to feel responsible for any problems in the relationship. I assumed that changing myself, my plans, or what I wanted, to make other people happy was "normal".

One change that has made a difference to me is not to assume that something said in anger or argument about me is necessarily true. I used to take what my H said to me to heart. I wanted to please him so if he said something, I took him at his word. But now I realize that what is said at these moments isn't true. Feelings are not necessarily facts. I no longer JADE or react.

That sounds like my first marriage: in college, working, living in religious community, child rearing. My first husband has untreated bipolar, still actively uses drugs, and has sociopathic traits.

My current partner has untreated BPD traits which he thinks he no longer has. I think that is the most frustrating. Bpd traits don't magically disappear. He's been treated for PTSD and takes medication for it but is doing nothing to treat his BPD traits.

Yes, yes, yes. I, too, attributed the red flags to stress and believed that they were inconsequential. Talk about wishful thinking!

And yes, yes, yes, about the low self esteem, feeling like problems were "my fault," and changing my behavior to accommodate to others.

I realize that I've been paying the price for lifelong accommodation and putting others first. What brought me to this forum a year ago as well as beginning individual therapy was a need for "management" skills so that I could cope with my husband's behavior. At the time, I was at my wit's end and completely overwhelmed, depressed and disappointed that I had trapped myself in yet another relationship with a pwBPD.

What I've learned in the last year is how incredibly angry I've been at having to "give up myself" in order to please others and that I'm no longer willing to do that. I now respect myself and have a loving relationship with myself. I will no longer tolerate abuse nor disrespect. At first, I tried to "fight fire with fire" which didn't feel good because I don't like displaying anger and the fallout was really unpleasant. Now, that I have more strength and understanding, I also have more strategies and forbearance. I'm not going to tolerate being treated poorly and I know I have more options to address that, should it occur.

she was average looking, but very charmful, full of life, acted like a little girl sometimes ... .but I did not put up with her immature behaviour , I am to alpha for that one... .

My mother acts like a little girl. I can tell my kids think it is odd, for grandma to act like that.

She didn't lose her charm as she aged though. She's still beautiful, and I am always amazed at how people are drawn to her, even non romantic relationships. Male relatives, family friends, many seem to be enthralled with her.

I always felt I had to work so hard to have anyone like me. But as an adult, I don't think that is true even though I felt that way growing up. I have some friends from childhood who I really care about, and it is mutual. They are good friends. I realized they like me for being me- and they did even when I didn't realize it.  That's a gift.

My mother though, it's effortless for her. People just want to be in her orbit.

I think there's a lot of truth in your theory. My BPD fiance is extremely attractive and an only child. She's also a highly functioning BPD who can really turn on the charm when its needed. To the point where my friends and family (who are yet to see her truly dysregulated) don't really believe or understand what I am going through -- and I suspect some of them even think I must be the one with the problem.

I think for her whole life she has been allowed to get away with certain bad behaviors because of her looks. Tantrums are more likely to be forgiven. As far as I know she always had a boyfriend before me. When you are that attractive you'll find another partner very quickly, and when it doesn't work out you can always just convince yourself that the other person was the problem.

I also think her looks blinded me somewhat to a few red flags in the beginning. The fact she wanted to move in with me after just a few weeks should have raised alarm bells. But I was swept up in it. She made me feel amazing, and sometimes (although less and less often), she still does. The fact she immediately set about trying to impose control (insisting, just a few weeks into our relationship, for example, that I cancel my Netflix subscription). I guess I didn't realize at the time these were all signs of what was to come.

I think it is possible for friends and family to think that the pw BPD does not have problems.

I left home when I went to college. I have visited, but not lived very close to my mother and her FOO since.

All these years, she has been telling them her view ( painted black) of me, yet they have not had significant contact with me to know any different. According to her, I am the reason for any difficulty in the relationship between us. It is hard for me to believe that these FOO were unaware of how we were treated as kids when we did live at home.

It is to the point that there is no possible relationship between us, because they know nothing "real" about me. I have also come across comments from them about me that are unkind.

I am impressed at the network between them and their loyalty to her. They see my mother as a victim because we try to keep some family things private. If any one of them has any contact with us,they report it to her as they assume that I have kept information from her because that is what she tells them, even if I haven't kept it from her.

I have pictures of my mother from when my parents were married. She was just breathtakingly stunning. My father was enthralled by her. I guess they were fortunate for that, as it didn't seem easy for them from my point of view.

Physical attraction may have been part of it, but I think in the case of my wife it was actually BPD qualities that attracted me -

- she's a sensitive person, like me.  I was tired of dating people who just did not care about things.  It was her story about caring for her dying cat that really hooked me.

- she was insightful and open about herself from the very beginning.  I found that refreshing.  She admitted she was reckless in her past, and the strides she had made to change.  I was used to people not admitting to this kind of stuff.  She seemed very "real" compared to other people I knew.  I liked that.

- Being late 30s, single, having travelled the world, been many places, by herself, I thought she was independent (boy, was I wrong).

The reality is that at first I thought she was the stark opposite of the previous girlfriend, and as it turns out, is almost exactly the same .  They even have the same birthday  .   

Max, this is why I think attraction is also part subconscious. BPD is a spectrum and people with it can be as varied as there are people. Pw BPD may have personality traits in common- but how these traits show themselves depends on each person.

If someone has had more than one partner with BPD, or has a FOO member with BPD, I would consider that this is part of our "attract-o- meter."

Opposites can be two forms of the same thing. We see this in behavior where people can be overly clingy or overly distant- both due to poor boundaries. People can move between the extremes. Black and white thinking is a form of this.


This is why I have been motivated to do some personal work on my side of things. My T has pointed out that when I grew up not wanting to be like my mother, I still didn't know what "normal" was. Striving to not be like her resulted in me adopting co-dependent behaviors. Perhaps a better way of looking at it would be to look at her good qualities and appreciate what good she did model for me, as well as try to not adopt dysfunction.  

This was a big part of it for me too. She was very sensitive and perceptive -- and made me feel understood in a way that nobody ever had before. This is the other side of the BPD coin, I guess.

W also has many behaviors so similar to my mom.  And I was trying to avoid that!  I think there is subconscious involved, but I think many of the BPD traits are familiar to all of us, and I think my W is initially a well-liked person by most people she meets.  PwBPD tend to be adventurous, interesting, sensitive, and open.  And I think many people see that as a refreshing breath of fresh air.  

Yes ... .this is almost exactly how it was with me and my ex.  It happened for me the first time I saw her, that attraction that went far deeper than a mere physical one.  It is hard to explain and it really sent me spinning.   I don't believe I had ever experienced something like that before.    

Yes, my uBPDw is gorgeous and radiates a charm that people notice when she is in a happy phase.  She has been mistaken for Claire Danes multiple times, and lately, people have been telling her she looks like Taylor Swift (sp?).  I agree with the Claire thing more, but the point is she has stand-out looks and a presence about her that attracts attention.  [Also, Claire has shown some signs of BPD with her reported infidelities and cosmetic surgery... .makes me wonder if she might be BPD as well.]

Also, early in the relationship, she was very sexual with me.  These factors, in combination with her young age at the time we were dating, blinded me to a lot of red flags, so it was a surprise to me when the BPD features came out after we had been married for a few years.

Yes I absolutely agree that I put up with a lot more than I would normally would and it's definitely due partly because of my BPDgf's looks.  It's also that the sex is amazing and that she can be so sweet and knows how to make me feel so good and push my buttons in both ways good and bad. 

Lol... .a friend I had a long time ago once told me, "If you get married, keep the receipt!"  Every time now when these trivial arguments come up out of nowhere and the negativity, projection, etc, I think about what he said... .

My wife is very beautiful, even more so back in the day.  She has always gotten lots of attention from men and still today, she feels the need to let me know how she gets attention all the time and can find another me just like that... .a better me I mean.  When you are beautiful like that, you don't have to lift a finger to do anything... .at least in the beginning.  She has barely worked in her life and she's not the neatest woman you'd meet.  She can really cook but hasn't been doing too much of that lately (she cooked for probably the second time in about 2 years on Thanksgiving).  But you have to have some kind of substance to keep the person you are with.  What's on the inside tends to surface and make that beautiful woman very ugly to you.  She has convinced herself that guys were all after her because of her personality.  Don't get me wrong, she is a good person and definitely a lot of fun when she's not picking arguments and complaining about everything. 

I admit, my wife is very beautiful but we had a similar connection.  We clicked like I've never clicked with anybody before.  I knew instantly that I wanted her to be my wife one day.  It saddens me to think back to that and where things are now.

Some of us have experienced one or more of the following patterns in our relationships with our significant others:

1.  My self esteem was low when we got together

2.  I felt my partner was significantly more attractive than me

3.  I was co-dependent

4.  Their behavior was similar to patterns I experienced in my family of origin

5.  They "love bombed" me

6.  Great sex

7.  My partner is polite and caring

8.  They accepted me the way I am

9.  We have an intense spiritual connection

10. My partner is intelligent

11. My partner is romantic

12. My partner has a great sense of humor

13. They idealized me

14. I admire their achievements

15. They are devoted to me

16. My family likes them and they are good with my family

17. I was starved for attention

18. My partner is charming

19. My partner is sensitive

20. My partner is open and insightful

21. My partner made me feel understood

22. My partner is adventurous

Some great qualities here! No wonder they attracted us.

Looking over this list, I realize that if I were single, I would likely be prey again (after three BPD relationships) for a pwBPD. What drew me to all of them was their sensitivity and willingness to be very appreciative of me in the beginning. I'd like to think that I could spot red flags, knowing what I now know, but I'm not sure I would. I guess the lesson is "If it looks too good to be true, it isn't."

If I leave my partner it's going to be awhile before I get in another relationship. I have other priorities . I do not and will not want to give up my hard earned independence . I don't care how great the person is.

I don't have plans to be single, but in general, I think it is a good idea to not go from one failed relationship into another relationship quickly. I think taking the time to recover and grow emotionally could have great benefits with or without another relationship.

I think every relationship is a risk to some extent. Hopefully if red flags were to appear, we'd be able to recognize them better and handle the situation better if we have grown emotionally.