One reason why you keep meeting men with “red flags” is because you cut them off immediately instead of addressing the issue by speaking up for yourself and expressing what you are and aren’t available for, eliminating the need for you to keep on experiencing men with “red flags” over and over.

Disclaimer: The advice offered in this post assumes that you already feel destined for the love you desire most, and that you seek this love for the 'right' reasons—meaning, you're not attempting to escape yourself through a man or relying on him to resolve your deep-seated feelings of unworthiness. In such cases, the advice provided here may not be applicable until you address these issues first. I have blog posts that bring further awareness to the topic of ‘deep seated unworthiness’ and how it keeps you at a distance from the love you most want. You can read these posts here: https://dreamsilasomans.com/dlgwablog/c/unworthiness However, I do not assist women in developing faith that they CAN be loved in the manner they desire; they must already possess this faith within themselves. Additionally, I do not aid women in resolving deep-seated feelings of unworthiness, as these matters are beyond my scope.

If you read the title of this and you’re scratching your head. Let me clear something up before we dig into this.

I am not telling you to play in “red flag” land. This is not about keeping men around that are non ideal for you.

And this especially isn’t about keeping a man around you that is a serious threat to you or your well being. If you are an imminent danger, of course, cut him off and call the authorities.

In this post, I am talking about “red flags” that don’t pose an immediate threat to you or your well being.

Some of the “red flags” I see brought up a lot are lack of communication, elusiveness, unreliability, controlling behavior, “love bombing”, and so on.

These are the types of “red flags” we are discussing today.

The aim of this post is to help you reclaim your power against these red flags that keep popping up in your experience via different men.

Understand that if you keep on being met with the same “red flags”, it’s less about the individual man and more about what’s going on (or not going on) with you.

Okay, so now that we have that established.

Let me restate what we are discussing today:

One reason why you keep meeting men with “red flags” is because you cut them off immediately instead of addressing the issue by speaking up for yourself and expressing what you are and aren’t available for, eliminating the need for you to keep on experiencing men with “red flags” over and over.

Women often come to me with the grievance that they continue to meet men over and over again that have the same few “red flags”.

They tell me that they have no idea why this happens and that they are happy to dodge a bullet quickly but are not so happy to keep on cycling through all of these guys to try and find someone “decent”.

If this is something that you experience often, as I have mentioned above, a huge reason why this continues to happen is because you are contracting, hiding away, avoiding, shutting down, or running away in the face of this form of friction and you aren’t meeting it properly.

To be frank, you will always be met with some kind of friction in love. Even with a man who has all the “green flags” in the world.

Such is the nature of human connection—

But the friction you are experiencing in the form of meeting a man that has “red flags” is an opportunity for you to actually speak up for yourself.

When you aren’t properly expressing yourself, you keep calling to yourself experiences that are requiring you to express yourself better.

When you learn to express your needs/desires, grievances, and what you are and aren’t available for to a man, you gradually stop experiencing men with these “red flags”.

Understand that this is about you.

This is NOT to get a specific man to straighten up, behave, or suddenly become ideal for you. This is not to “get him” to do anything.

It is always about you and mastering yourself in relation to men and love.

In my sphere of influence, there are 3 major areas you must master about yourself relative to men and love.

These areas are:

1. What you’re responsible for

2. Your emotions

3. Your expression

For the first two, I have written extensively about both of them in other posts. Go check them out here: https://dreamsilasomans.com/DLGWAblog/c/IRL

For this particular post, I want to talk about your expression.

When you practice properly expressing exactly how you’re feeling, your grievance, what you need or desire in a proper, direct, and clear way to men, you energetically stop meeting men who show you these “red flags” in the first place.

We’ll get into what “proper expression” is in shortly as there is a proper and improper way to go about expressing yourself.

Keep in mind that you do not have to continue the connection with the man with the “red flags”— but take your connection with him as an opportunity to strengthen your expression skills (as expressing yourself properly is a super power for women in love) and dissolve the reoccurring patterns that keep popping up in your dating life.

AGAIN: When you practice expressing exactly how you’re feeling, your grievance, what you need or desire, and what you are and aren’t available for in a proper, direct, and clear way to men, you energetically stop meeting men who show you these “red flags” in the first place.

I’ve said this before, but women often don’t speak up for themselves enough in love.

This causes many issues like never having her desires/needs met, feeling and harboring resentment, feeling powerless against men or in her love life as a whole, and non-ideal patterns resurfacing over and over again in different men.

Don’t get too caught up in or feed too much energy into the supposed “red flag” you are witnessing from a man. Don’t make it mean anything.

Take it neutrally and simply look at it as an opportunity to express yourself properly and energetically open yourself up to a man that can meet what you are available for.

This is not a time to contract, hide away, avoid, shut down, or run away.

It’s about you showing up for you, what you want, need, are and aren’t available for and strengthening your skill to express these things, while taking the power away that the “red flags” have over you.

This is important because you have to understand that you are not at the mercy of the stars suddenly aligning and giving you a man that has all the “green flags” you are looking for.

My core message is to help you understand the following:

You can create the reality of being claimed, committed to, and well-loved by mastering yourself in relation to love and men. Being well-loved is actually a skill.

A significant aspect of this skill is learning to properly express yourself. (The other two aspects of the skill involve understanding your responsibilities and emotional mastery, as mentioned earlier.)

One more thing about the importance of proper expression that I want to bring up before we dive into practical advice.

I ask you to consider that sometimes what you’re considering as a “red flag” can just be a misunderstanding (due to cultural differences, personal boundaries, personality, misunderstanding your comfort level, context, etc) that your proper expression can actually clear up.

Consider that “red flags” are often subjective and not definitive proof that there is a problem.

Some woman’s red flags are another woman’s preferences.

It can’t be assumed that what you are considering as a “red flag” is a universal problem or issue.

This is yet another reason why expressing yourself clearly needs to happen.

It lets where you are coming from be known and then gives you the opportunity to get a sense of where the man is coming from, just in case there genuinely is just a simple misunderstanding.

And what exactly do I mean by “proper” expression by the way?

I mean a woman being able to fully express exactly how she feels, what she wants, what she needs, her grievances, and what she is and isn’t available for on any given subject to a man without nagging, demanding, demeaning, complaining, pressuring, or trying to control or manipulate him.

So, how do we get you to the point where you can freely express to a man what’s bothering you, feel good about it, and energetically stop attracting men who are giving you “red flags”.

You start making “love sandwiches”!

In my world, a “love sandwich” is essentially a way in which you structure your sentences to a man to make sure you are expressing your needs, desires, and grievances while respecting the man and where he is, and allowing him freedom; not giving him ultimatums, not nagging him, not shaming him, nor attempting to “control” him.

It is quite literally the fastest and most effective method of communicating difficult topics to a man while respecting both your autonomy and his autonomy that I have found. My clients and I have tested this over and over and have always found that “love sandwiches” breed positive results where both parties feel heard, understood, and satisfied.

To create a love sandwich you start by stating what you love about your time with him, something he’s done for you recently, something he is good at, etc. What you’re expressing with your opening statement should relate to what you’d like to speak further about and it should also be truthful.

Don't lie. Be genuine with anything that you are conveying to him.

Begin the conversation with “I love…”

Next, you transition into expressing your grievance (or what you’re not available for) by saying something to the extent of “Yet I feel…”.

It is important to have already connected to your emotions and felt everything through so that you are able to convey things in a mature manner that truly honors what you desire, what you need, and how you feel.

Lastly, you should end with a statement about what you love again, simply reiterating what your opening statement was about. This is important because it focuses on the good in the connection, keeps things lighthearted, and keeps you connected to your heart (which is something that he can feel and considers genuine).

So, in short, a love sandwich looks like “I love … yet I feel… because I love…”.

So to give you an example of this, let’s set the stage:

Let’s say you recently met a man at a speed dating event and you two seemed to really hit it off.

Things were going well at first until all of a sudden, you notice that he seems to not respect your time or your commitments. You told him that you’re not really available on weekends or before 3 on weekdays, and yet he tries to call you before 3 or tries to take you on a date on Saturdays.

You genuinely love the fact that he’s taking initiative by calling you and proposing dates and what not. Yet, it is registering as a “red flag” to you that he is not respecting your time or the commitments you have.

Normally, you’d be frustrated and just cut him off completely without any warning or words exchanged. After all, you told him your schedule a few times and it seems like he is just blatantly disregarding it.

However, you can now recognize this as an opportunity to remain neutral, practice properly expressing yourself to him, and energetically open yourself up to a man that can meet what you are available for.

This is NOT to get this specific man to change in any way.

The best thing you can do is let him know that despite your eagerness to get to know him better after your first encounter, you are feeling disregarded.

You should also express that you enjoy that he is initiating phone calls and dates but you wish it’d be when you are available.

The goal here is to express this in a way that is warm, kind, and doesn’t shame or try to control the man but is true to you. It is just a pure expression of how you’re feeling.

This is where the love sandwich comes into play.

Note: Make sure you are responding to him when you are actually available. (In this case, that is after 3 on a weekday.)

Here’s an example of what you could say in this case via text or on the phone: **

“[Name], I love that you have been calling me and trying to initiate a date so that we can see each other again as I had so much fun with you the first time we were together. Yet, I feel quite disregarded when I hear from you during the times where I mentioned that I am not available. Being listened to is important to me… and like I said before, I love hearing from you and would like to talk and meet again when I am actually available.”

After you express this to him, all that’s left is to give him the space and time to respond.

Most of the time, you’ll find that a man will take what you’re saying as genuine when you form it in this way. Because of this, it goes over with him quite well and he’ll usually start proposing solutions after this. (And if there is a misunderstanding, he’s likely to share this too).

After this, maybe you decide to give him another chance. Maybe not.

It’s up to you.

If the solution he proposes doesn’t work for you or he continues to disregard you, you are in no obligation to keep the connection with him.

Again, the important thing here is that you properly expressed yourself against this specific “red flag”, reclaiming your power from it.

When you practice expressing exactly how you’re feeling, what you need or desire, and your grievance in this way, you energetically stop meeting men with this red flag (a man not respecting your time or commitments).

You won't be a match for that behavior anymore.

In my 8 week email mentorship, “IRL: Better Than Fantasy”, "Love Sandwiches" are one of the main skills that I teach to help feminine women (not yet married) who know they’re destined for great love work on in order to go from hoping for her turn to get lucky in love to being claimed, committed to, and and loved well now and in the future by the man she (will) loves.

We also work on:

1. Being self aware and knowing where you really are in relation to the love life you want so that you avoid feeling powerless and lost in love.

2. Knowing where and what your ongoing responsibilities are AT EVERY GIVEN MOMENT so that you empower yourself, avoid getting into positions where you feel powerless against a man, and are always expanding in your union with the man you'll love.

3. Learning to feel your emotions through and then use them as data to make decisions that lead to you being and feeling safe, secure, and loved now and in the long term.

4. How to choose men that make sense for who you are, what you want, and your overall well being now and in the future.

5. And if needed/desired, we cover actually meeting men who are aligned with you via online dating/offline mingling and dating.

This mentorship is $999.

DM me the word "IRL" here http://m.me/dreemsilas (Facebook Messenger) or (*here if you prefer chatting on Instagram*) if interested and we'll have a quick chat to see if it's a good fit. The qualification process is short, sweet, and simple.

I'll ask you just a few yes or no qualification questions and if it's a good fit, can get you enrolled whenever you're ready.

I look forward to chatting with you.