When Green Flags Feel Like Red Flags

Learning to Receive the Love We've Always Wanted

Hello dear ones,

I’m back in sunny LA after a week reconnecting with loved ones in Toronto, and while I’m so grateful for the time in a city that I love so much — it’s been sooooo nice to be reunited with the sunshine and be reminded of how much my brain loves it.

Announcement re: some changes to paid subs for 2025

As you’ve heard me say before, I’m in a phase of my life where I’m really trying to making my living as a writer, and substack has been HUGELY helpful for that. I’ve been truly inspired by Cody Cook-Parrott, who continues to adapt their newsletter in ways that are supportive and nourishing. Here’s what Cody shared in a recent newsletter:

I thought a lot about what I would need to feel like I wanted to put even more value into my newsletter, and it is for a different monthly exchange between myself and readers. I don’t think people talk about this enough - what is the exchange that makes us feel honored for our work and our job.

On January 2, the monthly price of CARESCAPES will go from $5/mo to $7/mo. If you’ve been waiting to get a paid sub, this is a great time to do so.

Please note : this will not affect current paying subscribers - the rate that you signed up will remain.

A paid subscription gets you:

• Subscriber-only posts and full archive;

• Access the community chats to connect with me and other subs;

• Monthly co-writing hangs, first Monday of the month.

xoxox
Margeaux

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Me, trying to discern if the green flags are actually red flags after a lifetime of attachment wounding.

This past week I was back home in Toronto, and got to gather IRL with my two best friends. One of the things that we continually talk about is how challenging it can be to be in a securely attached relationship. I know, this sounds paradoxical. A securely attached relationship feel easy, pleasurable, amazing…right??

Maybe that’ll be the case if you’re some of the chosen ones who’ve known secure attachment since a young age. But if you’re out here with the rest of us, figuring out secure attachment as adults, finally getting the things you’ve always desired can feel like a literal nightmare in your sweet, traumatized body.

Why? Because secure attachment is unfamiliar. And anything that isn’t familiar registers as TERRIFYING when you’re a human with trauma. Our neural pathways have been directed towards chaos, uncertainty, instability, withholding, control, breadcrumbs, and so many other things that cause us pain — but it’s pain that we know. When someone finally shows up and presents us with secure attachment — stability, safety, attention, security, compassion, freedom, all the love we’ve ever wanted — green flags can feel like red flags.

I wanted to share some of the relationship green flags that have felt — in my body — like red flags. And by that, I mean, my body has told me to run:

The ability to hold space for my crazy.

When D and I started dating, I was a month or two away from starting somatic therapy. I was in a dissociative state on the regular, and chronic pain had entered my life. I was a hot mess. And that was just what was happening in the present.

Every relationship that I enter brings with it all of my abandonment trauma, which includes fun things like having a panic attack when your partner is late because of course the most reasonable thing to assume is that they’ve had some sort of fatal accident / encounter with death.

Whenever I showed up with all of my crazy, D never took it personally. He held space for my feelings, offered me comfort, and said all of the things you’d want someone to say. He never once told me I was crazy. This, of course, led me to believe that it was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped. But that never happened. D just kept showing up, again and again, and got better at calling or texting me when he was going to be late so I didn’t have to spiral out.

It was soooooooo hard for me to accept his acceptance of me. It was all I’d ever wanted. And yet there was a part of me that truly believed it couldn’t last, that I couldn’t trust it/him. 4 and a half years later, I was the one who ended our partnership so I could be the gayest me possible. And D, while obviously heartbroken, continued to show his commitment to loving all of me, and that meant supporting my decision to walk away.

That look in your eyes that says “I love you.”

You’ve seen it in the rom coms and romance movies: that moment where one person looks at the other with that look in their eyes that says “I love you.” I called it “heartshaped eyes.” I’ve dreamed of this and wanted it for as long as I could remember. And then I continued to pursue relationships with emotionally avoidant humans who could not or would not ever look at me like that.

I’ve since found humans who love me and aren’t afraid to show it. But WOW does it ever feel soooooo uncomfortable in my body when they give me heartshaped eyes. I find myself unable to maintain eye contact, or I make a joke. Something to break the tension that I feel in my body. It’s truly very annoying.

Because here’s the thing: when someone finally gives you that look, you know it’s on. They’re in it. And instead of being the one to chase, you now get to be the person who either gives them that same look back, or who doesn’t. You’d think that this would feel so amazing. I’m wanted!! But this very experience has often brought up in me some seriously avoidant feelings. Do I want them??? I ask myself. Even though, just moments before they gave me the look, I was just thinking about how much I love them and want them.

Being able to receive someone else’s love for you is gonna feel like a red flag in your body if all you’re used to are some variation of: vacant look of non-feeling, glaring look of anger/hatred, no look at all, or [insert other kind of look that definitely isn’t heartshaped eyes]. To receive their love is to open yourself up to the possibility of being hurt. That is the wager of intimacy.

They like to do boring things with you.

Some of my favorite activities include grocery shopping together, watching tv while we eat dinner, and reading in bed before we go to sleep. I put these in the category of boring and beautiful things I love in a relationship. Because really, what’s happening here, is that feeling of “I can just be. I don’t need to worry about entertaining them or being interesting.”

And yet, as someone who grew up in a chronically traumatizing and chaotic environment, and who has internalized the cultural fears around what happens when your relationship gets boring, it has been really hard for me to not freak out when I’m just doing a whole lot of nothing with someone that I care about. I’m often flooded by intrusive thoughts in the vein of “What if they are bored? What if they don’t think that I’m interesting?? When was the last time I said something smart?? Are we just stuck in a rut???” etc.

My safety mapping is all mixed up. Because the person who was meant to keep me safe was precisely the person who I needed to be protected from, my brain made sense of this experience by determining that danger = safety and that safety = danger. I’ve quite literally had to remap this terrain, uncross the wires, and learn to find safety (which isn’t always synonymous with boredom, but boredom can come with safety) as sexy as danger.

I’d love to hear if there are any green flags that have felt like red flags for you! Feel free to share in the comments <3

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Culture Diary

1. I’ve been writing a long poem about crying and so when I saw The Art of Crying: The Healing Magic of Tears by Pepita Sandwich, I had to grab it. I love Pepita’s illustration style (so many beautiful renderings of tears and crying) and she really does cover so much territory in this book. From famous artistic representations of crying to the science behind different kinds of tears, this book really was the most beautiful 101 meets deep dive into crying.

2. If you’ve been here for a hot minute, you won’t be surprised that I have been watching the newest season of The Ultimatum. Watching a bunch of cishet humans do one of the messiest things imaginable (break up, date someone new — in front of their ex — then move in with that said person for a trial marriage of three weeks before then getting back together with their ex to do the same???) is the kind of escapism I’m here for.

3. I’m a sucker for a pink book cover and anything about ghosts. And Guestbook: Ghost Stories by Leanne Shapton was truly haunting. Filled with old photographs and images of art, Shapton tells us stories about the ghosts that haunt these images, while also creating new ghosts through the art of collage. This is such a beautiful and imaginative take on what it means to enter the archive.

4. Speaking of haunting: Jessica’s Pratt’s newest album Here in the Pitch is just that. A loved one sent me the album and described it as a villain’s lament. My favorite song has to be “Nowhere It Was,” which as far as song titles go, feels ghostly and spectral to me.

5. I devoured Miranda Newman’s memoir Rough Magic: Living With Borderline Personality Disorder while on my flight home. Her prose is both intelligent and easy to read, while she tackles such a tough topic: living with one of the most villainzed diagnoses. Throughout the book, Newman interrogates how the pathologization of BPD contributes to misdiagnosis and the inability to get the help that one needs. Truly a must read for anyone interested in trauma, healing, and BPD.

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Okay, last thing before I sign off is that I wanna remind you that I have things that you might want to give as gifts over the holidays!! Self-promotion always feels so icky, but I’m trying to lean in because I really do love the things that I’ve made and maybe someone else in your life would too? Or maybe you wanna add something from my shop to your wish list??

Only 20 decks left until they’re gone…maybe forever??

anchored is a deck that began as I started my own healing journey from complex trauma and chronic illness. Each of the 75 cards in this deck serve as their own anchor. You can pick up this deck in moments where your nervous system is dysregulated and ask the deck for the anchor you need. It can also support you in other hard moments in life: before a job interview, before a first date, after you’ve spent the day with your family, after a hard conversation with a loved one. You can also start your day by pulling a card and let that anchor guide you. Once you’ve pulled a card – or used one of the spreads included in the guidebook – you can open the guidebook and learn more about each card’s meaning, written from a trauma-informed, social-justice perspective. Each card also includes a practice, an invitation to deepen into the anchor, embody it, and integrate it.

In my shop you’ll also find my In My Healing Era coloring book, featuring 50 different softcore trauma memes, numerous zines and chapbooks of my writing, coloring sticker packs, and my collages! It means the world to me when you support me and my business xoxo