Tag Archives: hadestown

COL649: LoR: Red Flags, Green Flags

In this episode of Cubs Out Loud, the guys are joined once again by Dr. Edward Angelini-Cooke to continue our Landscape of Relationships series. For this episode, the guys discuss the potential red, yellow and green flags in relationship and kink dynamics. While a potentially funny meme, these flags are no laughing matter. Listen in as the cubs unfurl some details and give some insight into looking out for the signals of a healthy (and unhealthy) relationship.

Show Topic

Landscape of Relationships: Red Flags, Green Flags

What are Relationship Flags?

  • Relationship flags are indicators of healthy, unhealthy, and dangerous behaviors or feelings within relationships.  
  • They can be red, yellow, or green.  

Red Flags 

  • Controlling behaviors 
  • Violence 
  • Emotional and verbal abuse 
  • Intentional sabotage or hurting of feelings
  • Walking on eggshells 
  • Friends and family (support) are not trusting of your partner
  • Using things against you that were told in confidence
  • Usually can improve for short periods of time but abuse is usually cyclical 

 Yellow Flags 

  • All or nothing communication 
  • Pushes boundaries 
  • Codependency or enmeshment 
  • Difficulty with finding things in common 
  • Lack of similarities with goals and values 
  • These can be improved upon in meaningful ways 

Green Flags 

  • Healthy communication 
  • Respecting boundaries 
  • Interdependence 
  • Supportive of goals and values 
  • Knowing love languages
  • Awareness that no relationship is perfect 

Let’s Get Kinky 

Red Flags in Kink 

  • Expect you to immediately obey them and call them an honorific or title before agreed upon/Call you a title one honorific immediately before agreed upon
  • Don’t ask you about your hard or soft limits
  • Tell you what “real” or “true” submissive or a dominant does 
  • Separate you from friends and family or kinky friends 
  • Tell you that they have no limits and expect you to have no limits as well
  • Expect you, as the Dominant, to take full responsibility for their health and wellbeing, both physically and emotionally
  • Dismiss opinions 
  • Dictate how your dynamic will go 

Green Flags in Kink 

  • Want to get to know you on a deeper level, and have an interest in more than just your kinks and sexual preferences
  • They won’t do anything without your expressed consent, and will respect your stated boundaries and limits, as well as sharing their own
  • They’re interested in hearing about your journey in kink, as well as what turns you on and off, along with your opinions on how you’d like your dynamic to grow
  • They respect your existing friendships and relationships, even if they may not be directly introduced to the other important people in your life
  • They emphasize the importance of safety, consent, negotiation, and safe words in kinky dynamics
  • They take responsibility for their actions, understanding that you are not the cure for their problems

If you feel you are in a dangerous relationship situation.  Please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233

Resources 

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COL555: The Landscape of Relationships – Part 4

In this episode of Cubs Out Loud, the guys are joined once again by Edward Angelini-Cooke to discuss the landscape of relationships. In this fourth installment, Edward and the cubs break down the complicated emotion of jealousy and how it affects romantic and other relationships. Is jealousy truly a green-eyed monster or just simply misunderstood?

Show Topic

The Landscape of Relationships – Jealousy

Jealousy Quotes 

“Beware….of jealousy!  It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock/The meat it feeds on.”-Iago, Othello, William Shakespeare

“Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening.” – Maya Angelou 

“Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read, it merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity.” – Margaret Mead 

Cognitive Triangle 

Emotions

  • Emotions are needed for survival 

Universally accepted expressions of feelings 

Notice there are more “negative emotions” than “positive emotions”….why?

Complex Emotions 

examples : Grief, Regret, Jealousy, Envy

  • Complex emotions include various emotional states (e.g. grief is the one we are most familiar with….Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance).  Freud’s model of Jealousy includes four major components:  Grief (pain of losing a relationship), Realization (we can’t have everything we want), Enmity (towards the “winner” of affection/attention), and Anger towards ourselves that we are not good enough.
  • Complex emotions  vary based on the person, situation, and culture….therefore, we can not rely on universally accepted facial expression.

Jealousy

  • What is it?  Jealousy is a complex emotion that includes feelings of anger, sadness, fear.  Typically experienced when a person experienced a threat to a relationship.
  • DISCLAIMER:  This feeling is not only reserved for romantic relationships.  We can have feelings of jealousy in familial, work, and friend relationships.  
  • Is it normal?  Absolutely.  Evolutionary scientists have shown that animals, such as dogs, experience jealousy.  It is a necessary emotion in order to preserve social bonds.  While it may be normal, it may not be helpful.  
  • People who experience jealousy in relationships, not shockingly, report decreased relationship satisfaction.
  • Why am I feeling Jealous? Research suggests that low self-esteem, possessiveness over others, high neuroticism , fear of abandonment are predictors of jealousy.  
  • Suspicious jealous-feeling stimulated by a thought or a feeling….this is typically due to an attachment trauma, self-conscious, low self esteem.  
  • Reactive jealousy-feeling stimulated by an actual event or triggers.  (Second Life study)

 

What Do We Do?

 

  • Work on yourself first….

 

      • What is your relationship with jealousy?  Do you have a pattern of jealousy in your life?  How intense?  
      • What are you feeling (angry, sad, or afraid)?  
      • What evidence do we have?  What am I thinking about?  
      • Why am I feeling this way? Am I envious?  At whom or what?  
      • How am I experiencing this physically?  If I feel tense, can I relax? 
      • Notice that your thoughts and emotions shift and change….this isn’t going to last forever.
      • Once you do this….then we can talk to our partner.
      • Communicate with your partner your feelings.  Recognize that jealousy isn’t a bad thing.  Discuss boundaries.

 

  • If your partner is the one who is jealous….

 

    • Listen to them….completely (Mantra: Just Shut Up and Listen!)
    • Don’t respond 
    • Reflect back what you are hearing
    • Practice empathy
    • Recognize that the jealous says more about them than it does about you.  

Addressing your Jealousy 

  • Refer to The Jealousy Workbook Chapter 17 through the end 
    • Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, attachment 
    • Eye Movement, Desensitization, and Reprocessing (EMDR) 
    • Positive affirmations
    • Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) CBT therapy that disects thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Compersion

  • Combination of pleasant feelings and thoughts towards your partner when they are in a positive romantic relationship with someone else.  
  • Turning jealousy into compersion….finding neutrality.  Increase empathy.  Look through their eyes.
  • Constriction to expansion.
  • Exclusion, abandonment, and deprivation to belonging, autonomy, and responsibility.  

Review:

  • Jealousy is a normal emotion, but not always helpful.
  • Listen to what jealousy is telling you as the person experiencing it or the person receiving it.  
  • Don’t avoid that you are on the ride.
  • Communicate 
  • If you feel you suffer from anxious attachment, talking to someone is helpful. 

Resources 

Books:  

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