Is he a flirt? The small things that speak volumes in relationships

We tend to ignore the so-called trifling details in relationships, thinking that they don’t really matter yet they actually do. Many times, the ‘little’ unpleasant things a boy or girlfriend does repeatedly are bound to stick with someone for eternity especially if we ignore them and always look at them as minor. Gisele is a 25-yer-old friend of mine who learned it the hard way. She and her ex-boyfriend Adam (not real name) dated for close to two years. He loved her to the bone; or so she claimed. The problem was he enjoyed flirting with other girls. He always exchanged lovey-dovey text messages with other girls, calling them all sorts of endearments that should have been for his girlfriend. Like every insecure girl in the dating game, she most definitely sneaked into his messages and hated what she saw. She came across messages exchanged between Adam and other girls calling themselves sweet nothings like; ‘baby’, ‘honey’, ‘sugarplum’ and the like. Angry as she was, she didn’t want to spill her little secret of snooping in Adam’s messages so confronting him became a hard paper and all that was left was a wounded heart. Tears welled up in her eyes for two years of silence; she cried every time she got a hold of his phone. She became a habitual message checker and it only got worse because he eventually got addicted to flirting—he flirted his way through anything, from dusk till dawn. Alas! She couldn’t take it anymore and broke the silence. To her utter bewilderment, he didn’t deny a thing. He laughed it off and said that the flirting didn’t mean anything to him and that is why she had never caught him cheating. His charm and charisma had Gisele hooked. He had mastered the art of winning a girl’s heart—makes perfect sense that he was a flirt. She was convinced that his flirting game was nothing but a way of passing time. She ignored it until it got to another level. He did everything to make her feel loved except for the fact that he couldn’t let go of his flirtatious habit. Eventually, the power of words gained their reign over Adam. He started seeing some of these girls and ended up cheating on her frequently. What started as a small and meaningless flirt ended up as a full blown affair. Today she is nursing a heart so broken, it is literally impossible to fix the pieces back. Many women today find themselves in such compromising situations. However, it is never wise to ignore these ‘trivial’ details, such as flirting in a love relationship. They matter a lot and if not dealt with early enough, they might destroy your relationship. m.kaitesi@yahoo.com