Situationship Red Flags: Five Observable Signs

What counts as a situationship red flag?

A red flag, in the Bureau's usage, is a behaviour a stranger could record without being told how anyone feels about it. "He has been distant lately" is not admissible; it describes a reading, not an event. "Plans have been made with less than a day's notice on the last six (6) occasions" is admissible, because it can be checked against a calendar. The distinction matters, because an undefined arrangement survives almost entirely on interpretation. Setting down what actually happened tends to end the debate quickly, and not always in the direction the file holder expected.

The five behaviours below are the ones that appear most often in the record. None of them is a character assessment of the other party. It is entirely possible for someone to be fond of you, to mean the warm things they say, and to be running an arrangement they have no intention of changing. Those facts do not contradict one another, which is precisely why the arrangement is so difficult to read from the inside.

Before reading further, the Bureau suggests taking the last four (4) weeks and writing out plainly who suggested each meeting, how much notice was given, and what was said afterwards. Most people find they already knew.

Which behaviours does the Bureau record?

Plans made late and never in advance. The indicator is not the occasional short-notice evening, which is ordinary life; it is the complete absence of the other kind. If, across two (2) months, nothing has been arranged more than forty-eight (48) hours ahead, and nothing at all has been booked with a ticket, a table or a weekend attached to it, the pattern is structural rather than accidental. A person who expects to still be seeing you in three (3) weeks will, at some point, put something in three weeks' time. The calendar is the most honest document in the file.

You have not met anyone in their life. After roughly three (3) months of regular contact, having met no friend, no housemate, no colleague at a pub — nobody who exists in their actual week — is a decision rather than a scheduling difficulty. Introductions are how people make a thing real to the outside world, and they are usually withheld for that same reason. The test is not whether you have met the parents. It is whether one (1) other human being has been permitted to see the two of you in the same room.

The conversation has been raised and deflected more than twice. Once may be genuine timing: a bad week, the wrong moment, a person caught off guard. The second deflection is not timing. Where the matter has been put twice and turned aside twice, the Bureau records the conversation as complete and answered in the negative, on the basis that a person who wants to define something takes the opening the first time it is offered.

What about exclusivity and the dating profile?

Exclusivity assumed rather than agreed. The question is short and can be answered in a second: name the day you agreed to it. If no such day exists, no such agreement exists, and what you have is a shared understanding held by one (1) party. This is the most commonly misfiled item at the counter, because assumed exclusivity feels identical to the agreed kind right up until the moment it does not. Asking is not an escalation and obliges nobody to make a speech. It is a clerical step, and the answer arrives quickly either way.

The profile is still active. A profile left up proves very little on its own; accounts sit dormant for years and nobody remembers the password. Recent activity is a different matter — new photographs, a rewritten prompt, an appearance in someone else's feed while exclusivity is understood to be in place. That is a discrepancy between the stated position and the record, and the Bureau notes discrepancies. It also notes that checking daily costs the file holder considerably more than it costs anyone else. Ask once, in plain words, and stop conducting surveillance you never volunteered for.

How many red flags before it is a pattern?

One (1) of these behaviours is a circumstance. Two (2) is a habit. Three (3) or more appearing together within the same eight (8) weeks is not a run of bad luck; it is the shape of the arrangement, and it is unlikely to change on its own, because at present it is working for at least one person in it. Duration is recorded as well. Distress in undefined arrangements is commonly reported as setting in somewhere between three (3) and six (6) months, and the Bureau treats two (2) seasons — approximately six (6) months — as the outer limit of reasonable ambiguity.

The remedy is not a strategy, and it is not a better-timed hint. It is one (1) conversation, held once, containing a question with an answer in it: what is this, and what do you want it to be. Do not table the list of behaviours. The list is your working document, not an exhibit; produced in conversation it invites a debate about each item individually, which is how the afternoon gets away from you.

Then allow fourteen (14) days and measure conduct rather than reassurance. Someone who would like the arrangement to continue exactly as it is will often say something warm and change nothing whatsoever, and the fortnight is what separates the two. Nothing in this advisory obliges anyone to leave. It exists so that the file stops being ambiguous, which is the part that has been costing you sleep. The Bureau has no legal standing and enforces nothing. It simply notes what occurred, which it finds is usually enough.