Yogyakarta, February 16th 2022─Fisipol Crisis Center (FCC) Fisipol UGM held a webinar titled “When Dating Turns Violent: Notice the Red Flags and What to Do” on Wednesday (16/2). The event held through Zoom Meeting invited Putri Khatulistiwa, a Community of Practice Officer of Siklus Indonesia as the speaker.
In her discussion, Putri talked about how to create a healthy relationship, also widely known as a relationship goal. According to her, even though there’s always the good and the bad in a relationship, if things are starting to go out of line, we need to start paying attention to the relationship’s red flags so we don’t get stuck in a toxic relationship.
“In a relationship, red flags are warning signs that something needs to be questioned or validated. Red flags is an intuitive reading to evade dysfunction in the future,” Putri said.
Furthermore, we can see the types of red flags by seeing our partner’s behavior, traits, trust, and values. We also need to pay attention to how you and your partner interact to see whether the relationship dynamic tends to be hurtful or not. Other than that, we also need to pay attention to our and our partner’s mental health.
“So, the most important thing in building a healthy relationship is not only about how we understand the theory of it, but also how we use the issue of healthy relation and gender equality as a blade to analyze our life so we have a warning system when a relationship is no longer healthy,” Putri said.
Meanwhile, there are a couple of examples of red flags in a relationship. For example; the inability to resolve conflict, the lack of trust towards our partner, the feeling that we can’t be who we are completely, the tendency to back down rather than negotiate, and more. When those things happen, it is better to end the relationship instead of diving into it and hurting ourselves.
“When we fail in a relationship, it doesn’t mean that we are failing as humans because in a relationship there are two people that are fighting for it to happen. If there is only one, then it’s not an equal relationship,” Putri said.
Talking about healthy relationships, Putri said that the thing that no one should tolerate is cheating. People who cheat are people who can’t respect themselves and their partners.