Beige Flag Is Actually a Thing, and Here Is Why It Matters
The not-so-AHA moment you realize you might be settling.
I was talking with Chad and Travis when I suddenly realize something I have experienced in some of my relationships but couldn’t point out why I didn’t do something to stop the inevitable sooner than later.
You see Chad is in a serious monogamous relationship with his girlfriend of nine years. He assured me that marriage plans are on his mind. But I was surprised at how long it’s taking him to walk his girlfriend down the aisle if he already knows she’s the one.
I believe once a relationship exceeds two years, you already know if the person is the one or not. But if you are on the fence, it must be that you’ve chosen to be cohabiting partners, which is completely acceptable.
Travis, on the other hand, is a serial monogamist. He lives with his boyfriend of twenty-three years. Unlike Chad, Travis has no marriage plans. He said they were better off as friends than as spouses.
I got intrigued by Chad and Travis’s relationships. These two men are madly in love with their partners. They want to spend the rest of their lives with their partners, and yet, they are holding back on marriage despite their desire to do so.
There are times in a relationship when you think you are so sure about where you’re headed but the other person isn’t where you want them to be, so you settle — stringing them along.
I bet Chad and Travis’s partners don’t know they are being strung along. Maybe they do know but they are hoping that one day — just one day these men will come to their senses, propose and marry them.
It sounds selfish when you look at the situation from a third person’s perceptive. And I condemned their cowardice. However, here is where it got intriguing for me.
The two men couldn’t spot why they were being cowards in taking the next step until I asked certain questions that gave them an epiphany.
They felt liberated from the burden of figuring out why they are in the relationship in the first place and I was bewildered at how long it took them to realize they were the problem in the relationship and not their partners.
Why do most relationships move in circles and lead to nowhere?
As the recent buzzword, “Beige Flags” spread around social media, most people are wondering what it means and how they can identify the signs in their relationships.
You should be familiar with red flags and green flags in relationships, but when it comes to beige flags we don’t know what to do, so we ignore them and categorize the problems as one of those issues that test the strength of the love in relationships.
But by the time we realize that this isn’t a minor problem we can live with, we’ve settled far too long with the wrong person.
So what are beige flags, you may ask?
According to dating experts, beige flags are traits in a partner (or potential partner) that are neither good nor bad but might cause you to take a leap backward and rethink your steps.
Beige flags are slightly unusual habits or behaviors that people notice in their significant other or possible romantic interest. Like eating your pop tarts in water or setting a timer instead of an alarm. But for some. it might be something less creepy as using puppies on your dating profile picture.
Beige flags are not as bad as red flags but they make you cringe when you see your partner doing them.
When your relationship gets to a crossroad, red flags, green flags and beige flags helps you to decide if the person is the right match for you.
However, it’s easier to spot a red flag and a green flag than a beige flag. But after carefully analyzing the series of relationships I have been through and that of friends and relatives, these are the top two beige flags that can save you from strung-up love and improve your overall mental health.
Ignoring your partner when using your phone
We are so obsessed with social media that we hardly pay attention to the people around us. While some people can ignore this bad habit, most people won’t.
Travis said his boyfriend goes into zombie land whenever he’s looking at his phone. He’s completely deaf to anything or anyone until he’s off the phone.
He said the house could be on fire and you’re yelling for help but his boyfriend won’t bulge. He will act like no one is talking with his eyes glued to his screen unless you take the phone away from him.
Travis imagined a worst-case scenario where he’s in an emergency but has an opportunity to call one person to bail him out. He’s afraid his boyfriend will not be that saver because he knows his boyfriend isn’t a multitask skilled person and would miss his call for help when he needs him the most.
Beige flags are neither a dealbreaker nor a dealmaker. Travis says his boyfriend has other great qualities he hasn’t found in anyone else which is why he’s still with him.
Ignoring compulsive lies
I admit, we lie from time to time. Your best friend would ask what you think of her new haircut. It’s awful, but you tell her it looks great. If she asked if she looks fat in her new bodycon dress, of course, you lie saying she doesn’t.
But do you know those white lies your partner tells and you shake your head in disbelief at how ridiculous they sound? Well, that’s a beige flag you’ve ignored because these lies are not so bad as to make you end your relationship with that person.
Chad feels this way every time his girlfriend cooks up a lie to cover up her insecurities. We call such people pathological liars or chronic liars. They’re incapable of telling the truth.
Pathological liars tell stories without objective benefits, except to gain admiration or sympathy.
When Chad met his girlfriend, she pretended to be one of those rich spoilt kids. She said she was an only child and travelled abroad frequently because her dad worked offshore so she would often travel with her mum who was a trophy wife.
It turns out that she was the third child out of four siblings. Her mum divorced her father when she was six and she’s married to her second husband who works as a security guard at a nightclub.
Chad has gotten used to his girlfriend’s lies over the years but he gets irritated whenever she would lie about hating a particular food but would dip her hands into his plate and end up eating more than him when he cooks that particular food for himself.
He also hates how she would lie in front of his friend about dropping out from Westminster University, London because her father insisted she must study Engineering and not Arts when she has never been out of the country except one time they visited Mexico.
She has maintained this lie since they met and he doubts her story because she’s a habitual liar.
“Honestly, a lot of the time I don’t think she even knows she does it, it’s like her brain just twists everything to stop her feeling powerless, ashamed, or guilty, and eventually she starts to believe it herself,” Chad said in her defense.
Compulsive lies aren’t harmful but it makes it impossible to trust your partner. People who lie impulsively will say anything to cover up their flaws. They like being the hero in everyone’s eyes and sometimes they can’t differentiate between their reality and fantasy.
“She has a lot of false memories and she even admits she doesn’t trust her own recollections. BPD is some weird protective trauma reaction thing, and I don’t hate her for it. But god! it’s hard to be on the other side of the lies.”
Beige flags aren’t inherently bad. Some would make you laugh, like seeing your partner collect coupons from drugstores every week because she is obsessed with saving a dollar on every purchase. Or watching your partner whose habit is eating with their hands and not with a spoon or fork.
However, beige flags can keep you hung up on the wrong people. Like the partner who eats any ant he sees in his house. For me, an anteater is a dealbreaker but for another, it’s not so bad for them to lose the person they love.
But if you find yourself unhappy every time your partner displays one of their beige flags, then it’s possible you are not in a healthy relationship and you are not as happy as you believe you are with that person.