Five Qualities To Be Very Wary of in a Man

Jennifer had a blissful weekend. A weekend she spent with her boyfriend. A weekend she felt nothing more than his fierce love for her that she wished and hoped things continue that way.

But up till Thursday the following week, she hasn’t heard from him. He haven’t picked her call for days either did he reply her texts nor return the calls. He just turned cold when he was greatly hot the previous weekend.

Two days later, he showed up again, subtly apologized, and gave her some flimsy excuses for his behavior but within the same week, he’s back at it again. And she simply concluded that it’s just the way he is as he kept turning hot and cold as he wished.

Yeah, that’s mainly why the relationship only lasted for about four months. She got extremely stressed out and completely fed up.

He was a complete ass. He only thinks of himself. And it was obvious he would never change nor will he love her as much as he loves himself to treat her better.

But the truth is, if she had given much thought to his behaviors at the beginning of the relationship, she would have saved herself the time, energy, and even pain the relationship had caused her.

So here are five qualities or habits of a terrible and stressful man you should be wary of in a relationship.

This knowledge might save you from staying too long in a wrong relationship or help you work on fixing some little but dangerous issues in a relationship earlier instead of regretting them later.

1. He never gets mad at you

When your partner doesn’t always let himself get mad at you no matter what you do instead of expressing, addressing, and walking through them, you might likely wake up one day and shockingly find that you’ve been blind-sided all along assuming everything is fine when it’s not.

Because the truth is he does get angry with you. He really does. Just that he’s always hiding it and if you’re not careful or lucky enough, everything will eventually blow up in your face leaving you utterly surprised and even badly hurt.

That’s assuming that you’re sensitive, self-aware, and mature enough not to deliberately annoy him on purpose to see if you can get a rise out of him or maybe see how far he can endure because we all know that’ll be illogical.

If that’s not the case, he might be bottling up his anger because he’s scared to get mad at you. He dreads confrontations. He’s afraid he might not stand the ‘consequences.’ And he sucks at expressing negative emotions as doing so always seem to make matters worse to him.

Ultimately, he might either be scared that you might react negatively if he opens up on how he feels or he might be terribly scared of being vulnerable in the assumption that expressing his emotions might attract judgment of being weak, dramatic, or whatever. And in the worst-case scenario, it might be because of the two reasons.

The problem with being in a relationship with someone who always prefers to give up confrontations for a more passive and ‘safe’ route while sweeping his true emotions under the carpet all along is that it creates a delusional and refreshing picture of a happy and ‘peaceful’ relationship in your mind.

That in reality is a relationship with an unhappy partner whose heart and mind are full of resentment and anger towards you for all the annoying and hurtful things you’ve ever done and will keep doing mostly unknowingly. Because, how are you supposed to know what annoys him when he never says anything?

That’s why relationships with real men who are emotionally mature enough and are everything but cowards who aren’t scared to express even their deepest negative emotions even if doing so might result in heated arguments that might make your blood boil are much more better and are even said to last longer.

Hence, you should be wary of a partner who always seems to prefer playing the nice partner card over getting and expressing his anger as such a relationship will mostly turn out to be every other thing than a happy and peaceful relationship you think it is.

2. He rarely accepts nor understands your emotions

Instead of understanding and taking into account of where you are emotionally, a terrible or stressful man will endlessly abuse you emotionally by incessantly minimizing, shaming, or invalidating your feelings.

He might simply choose to cheer you up when you’re sad because your feelings make him uncomfortable. Yes, this is also a form of emotional invalidation since your feelings are rather dismissed instead of being accepted and understood.

And at the very worst, he might simply resort to denying your feelings and experience, implying that you’re wrong, crazy, overreacting, or oversensitive.

The former might be considered an accidental emotional abuse by someone who’s well-meaning but lacks the right emotional intelligence to actually pay attention to your feelings let alone, accept, understand, and validate them.

While the latter is nothing more than an emotional manipulation aimed at making you question your feelings and experiences. And one of the worst things that can ever happen, is when someone does this to turn things around and defend their abusive words or actions.

Even though we are ideally supposed to care for and validate our own feelings instead of relying greatly on external validations, a romantic relationship with a serial emotional invalidator is down-right painful and draining because it means being in a relationship with someone to whom you don’t matter enough for him to consider your feelings as important as you are in his life.

By putting up with incessant emotional invalidations in a relationship, you’ll only be compromising part of who you are because you want to be loved, accepted, and be in the relationship hence, you’re letting an emotionally abusive partner always determine your self-worth.

That’s why you should be wary of a man that kind of always invalidates or dismisses your feelings.

You might be tempted to buy into the notion that you’re often over sensitive, paranoid, or whatever hence, most of your feelings are pointless. But that isn’t true. Your emotions matter. And no matter how you feel about anything, you’re doing so for a purpose. So, a partner that doesn’t understand this and also tries to make you like him, might not be deserving of you.

3. He lacks the courage to apologize

If it ever feels like your man finds it kind of difficult to sincerely and effectively apologize whenever he unintentionally or otherwise hurt you, it’s likely because of a few different reasons.

Firstly, it might be because he’s so obsessed with being right and always come across as strong and powerful so apologizing ruins everything for him since it seems to him like he’d be perceived as a weakling for offering one.

Secondly, he might be so afraid of apologizing because apologies frequently feel like an admission of inadequacy to him — it makes him feel like something is fundamentally flawed about him or that he’s a flat-out terrible person.

Thirdly, he might be struggling to offer an apology first after conflicts because it often feels like shouldering all the guilt and responsibilities for the fight, relieving you of your own part and responsibilities.

And lastly but also most significantly, his lack of empathy and his inability to put himself in the place of others might be the reason why he’s unable to often apologize sincerely.

But neither of the above reasons are valid reasons why someone should never offer an apology when in wrong.

Because a sincere apology is nothing but an admission that one has made a mistake and is willing to make amends. It also allows the other party to take responsibility for their part in the conflict or argument.

What’s more, it might eventually bring about a resolution, reaffirm shared values, and restore positive feelings.

Hence, a partner that knows when and how to deliver an apology and is courageous enough to do it sincerely and effectively is a keeper.

Because let’s face it: We are all humans and are bound to make mistakes that would hurt other people’s feelings, break their trust in us, and cause them pain.

But what’s abnormal and even inhuman is being ashamed or too proud to offer an apology that communicates genuine empathy, remorse, and regret as well as a promise to learn from our mistakes when we’ve hurt others with our words, actions, or inactions.

4. He subtly tramples over your personal boundaries

One of the surest ways to be unhappy in life is to be in a stressful and energy-depleting relationship with a partner whose second nature is trampling all over your personal boundaries.

Such kinds of partners are best described as boundaries busters that only believe in a conditional love that exists only when their partners always say ‘yes’ and are in compliance with whatever they want, say, or do, irrespective of how their actions and inactions affect their partners.

The truth is a relationship with someone that despises boundaries. Someone who doesn’t at least tolerate your differences let alone accept them.

And someone who constantly tries to manipulate you into believing that you should normalize enduring and accommodating their lousy behaviors, that you have to give up your needs for theirs, and that you have to do their biddings even when you don’t want to, will only make you wallow in feelings of sadness, and at the very worst, you might end up having your self-worth and value destroyed.

Hence, if you want to be truly happy and satisfied in a relationship, you should look forward to being with a wise partner who welcomes, accepts, listens, and is even happy to respect your boundaries and differences.

There’s no point whatsoever in selling yourself out in the name of being in a relationship or trying to mold yourself into what a romantic partner might like. Because if they don’t love and accept you the way you are, with all your differences, then you’re better off without them.

5. He makes you feel the need to always prove your worth

We all want to be romantically involved with partners who love, appreciate, and respect us.

But that doesn’t mean you should make the mistake of trying to prove your worth to anyone all because you want to be in a relationship with him. Because love isn’t conditional and you don’t have to fight for it.

Hence, it’s just a worthless effort if you have to prove your worth and love to someone because that person will never know your worth no matter how hard you try.

That’s why you should always bear in mind that there’s somebody else out there for you whom you don’t need to sell yourself to because they’ll know your value without you having to prove it all the time.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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