My first romantic relationship was awful, and I think it was a couple things:

I had some sort of white knight ideal where I saw a girl in a bad situation and thought that I could come to her rescue. I know now how immensely stupid and self-serving that attitude is, after a lot of reflection on what went wrong. That'd be a wall of text. But to the point of red flags, one can overlook some pretty bad stuff if you see her as a victim and yourself as the hero.

The other thing is that when I had enough time in the relationship, it started feeling like "This is it. How could I break this up and start this process all over again with someone new?" I think we're wired to couple and start a family. Spending enough time with a person, even the wrong person, I felt plugged into them. This goes back to the mindset from the start. I was not consciously taking dating seriously as a path to marriage and family. So I didn't respect the power of romantic involvement.

Thank God this all happened when I was much younger and not to the degree of OP (sorry to hear about that, OP). So I had time to reflect and approach things the right way. Hope this note helps someone in a similar situation.

I legit thought I was going to marry her. The first red flag should of been that her grandfather was head of his local masonic blue lodge 😂