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Over the last couple of years, everybody has started talking about red flags and green flags in relationships, and honestly, I think that’s a great thing.
There was a time when we didn’t have these conversations because here wasn’t enough awareness about what healthy and unhealthy relationship dynamics could look like, and so many behaviours were simply accepted as part and parcel of being in a relationship.
Today, we know a tad bit better. There is at least some dialogue around boundaries, emotional availability, communication, attachment styles, gaslighting, manipulation, emotional safety, and so on.
We know that relationships require much more than two people simply loving each other.
And when it comes to the list of red flags and green flags, well, the list can be endless. Some red flags are extremely obvious like lying, cheating, manipulation, controlling behaviour, outright disrespect, and so on, while others can be so subtle that you don’t even realise they’re happening until they begin taking on other forms and affecting not only the health of your relationship but also your own emotional well-being.
And there is one such red flag that I don’t think we talk about enough because we don’t even know about it. It is your partner’s inability or refusal to take your influence.
The idea of “accepting influence” is an important concept in relationship researcher John Gottman’s work. Now, accepting your partner’s influence does not mean blindly following whatever your partner says. It doesn’t mean being dominated by them or agreeing with everything they say. It also doesn’t mean coming under their pressure, abandoning your own opinions, or allowing them to make your decisions for you.
It’s actually much more basic and simpler than that. It’s about being open to what your partner has to say, being willing to understand that there is another perspective apart from yours that exists within the relationship. You may still disagree, may still choose differently, and that’s okay.
But if two people want to make a relationship work, both realities have to be able to enter the room. Your partner’s thoughts, feelings, needs, and experiences should have some influence on the way you think about and navigate the relationship and vice versa.
However, problems begin when one or both partners simply aren’t willing to do that. And this pattern is not always obvious or in your face. Sometimes, it’s incredibly subtle. For instance, your partner may technically listen to you, sit through the conversation. They may even say they understand. But somehow, nothing you say ever really lands. History just continues to repeat itself over and over again!
So, how do you know that your partner isn’t taking your influence?
1. Your experience rarely changes their behaviour: you can repeatedly tell them that something they do hurts you, but if they don’t believe there’s anything wrong with it, nothing changes. The conversation becomes about whether you should be hurt rather than the fact that you are.
2. Your perspective has to be proven before it can be considered: you find yourself constantly explaining, justifying, and providing examples because simply saying “This is how I experience it” isn’t enough. Unless your experience makes logical sense to them, it doesn’t seem to count, and at times even after this, they can continue to engage in the same actions.
3. Every disagreement becomes about who is right: instead of two people trying to understand each other, conversations become arguments that somebody needs to win. If accepting even a small part of your perspective feels like defeat to your partner, there is little room for mutual influence.
4. Compromise mostly travels in one direction: you adjust, accommodate, change your plans, reconsider your behaviour, learn their triggers, and make room for their preferences. But when the same is required of them, suddenly you’re asking for too much or there are plenty reasons as to why it can’t happen.
5. Feedback immediately activates defensiveness: you try to talk about something that hurt you and suddenly the conversation is about your tone, your timing, what you did six months ago, or why they’re actually the one who should be upset! Before you know it, you’re defending yourself instead of discussing what you originally brought up.
6. Important decisions remain individual decisions even though you’re in a partnership: they may ask for your opinion, but your opinion doesn’t meaningfully enter their decision-making. You can end up feeling less like a partner and more like someone who is simply being informed about their life.
7. Eventually, you stop speaking up and sharing, and this is the final nail in the coffin: when you stop bringing things up not because they no longer bother you, but because you’ve learnt that talking doesn’t really change anything. You then start telling yourself, what is the point? And slowly, silence replaces communication and resentment starts to build inside of you.
This is where something that looks relatively small can become deeply impactful (and not in good ways) because imagine what happens when you are repeatedly told directly or indirectly that your perspective doesn’t carry much weight. It even makes you question yourself and your reality. You wonder if you’re asking for too much or are being unreasonable. You constantly try to figure out why does this bother you so much. You convince yourself to just let it go only to find that you can’t.
And this can be especially damaging if you already have a fragile sense of self-esteem or have grown up learning to doubt yourself because you then start accommodating, explaining, trying even harder, and before you know it, instead of asking whether your partner is making room for you, you’re trying to figure out what you need to change about yourself so that they finally will make room for you.
Of course, there can be many reasons why someone struggles to take their partner’s influence. Not every person who does this is deliberately trying to dismiss or control their partner. But sometimes their inability to make room for another person’s perspective can have deeper roots and reasons.
When this shows up as a repeated pattern it could be because:
1. They are highly defensive: if any feedback feels like criticism then even a simple expression of hurt can make them feel attacked. Then, instead of becoming curious about your experience, they become busy protecting themselves.
2. They link influence with control: for some people, taking their partner’s needs or perspective into account feels like giving in because they may have such a strong need to protect their autonomy that compromise begins to feel like submission.
3. They grew up in environments where disagreement wasn’t safe: perhaps conflict meant shouting, punishment, withdrawal, criticism, or rejection, and as adults, they may still experience a difference of opinion as something threatening rather than something two people can comfortably hold.
4. They aren’t emotionally mature: accepting influence requires the ability to tolerate discomfort, recognise that two realities can exist simultaneously, reflect on our own behavior, and sometimes admit, “I could have handled that differently.” And not everyone has developed that capacity.
5. They carry baggage from previous relationships: if someone has previously felt controlled, manipulated, or dominated, they may become overly protective of their independence and interpret even reasonable requests as attempts to control them.
6. Their sense of self may be fragile: sometimes being wrong or even being asked to reconsider something feels threatening to a person’s identity. If a mistake quickly becomes “I am inadequate” in their head then defensiveness can become a way of protecting the self.
7. They may simply be used to relationships revolving around them: sometimes there isn’t a deep psychological wound underneath everything. A person may simply have learnt that other people adjust to them. If nobody has ever expected reciprocity from them, they may genuinely struggle when a relationship finally demands it.
Whatever the reason may be, however, this to and fro is essential because a healthy relationship cannot be built around one person perpetually influencing and the other perpetually resisting. Both people need to be capable of saying “I hadn’t thought about it that way” and “I’m willing to work on this” and then actually change.
Both need to reconsider, adjust, and accommodate sometimes. Both need to be able to affect and be affected by this person whom they consider as valuable.
When this doesn’t happen, it gives rise to other kinds of issues.
When one person starts doing most of the adjusting, resentment starts to build, conversations become repetitive because the same issues are discussed without any meaningful change, emotional intimacy begins to decline because vulnerability doesn’t feel safe or even welcomed, and eventually, the partner whose influence is repeatedly rejected begins to doubt themselves. They end up silencing their needs or feeling increasingly insignificant within the relationship and then you end up with two people who are technically still together but are no longer truly in relationship with each other.
So, what do you do if you recognise this pattern in your relationship?
First, look at the pattern rather than one disagreement. Nobody takes their partner’s influence perfectly all the time. We all get defensive, we all have moments when we’re stubborn, triggered, or absolutely convinced that we’re right. The more important question is whether, over time, your partner can come back, reflect, and make room for your reality. Then, talk about the pattern rather than fighting about the hundred individual incidents that demonstrate it.
Instead of saying, “You never listen to me,” try communicating what is actually happening. For instance, say something like, “I’m noticing that when I bring up something that matters to me, we spend most of the conversation debating whether I should feel that way. I need to feel that my experience can have some influence on how we navigate this relationship.”
And then watch what happens. Can they become curious? Can they reflect? Can they acknowledge your experience without immediately defending theirs? Can something actually shift?
Because ultimately, accepting influence is itself a capacity. You cannot communicate another person into developing it if they are fundamentally unwilling to examine themselves. They don’t have to agree with everything you say, or become someone else for you, and you don’t have to agree with everything they say either. But there needs to be movement in both directions.
Any conversation around love, chemistry, togetherness means nothing if one or both people feel unheard, unseen, and unvalued, if one person’s hurt doesn’t even reach the other person and expression feels like a threat.
Perhaps the hallmark of a healthy relationship isn’t that two people always agree but that both people are willing to be affected, in small and meaningful ways, by knowing, understanding, and loving each other.
You don’t have to lose yourself to take your partner’s influence. But there has to be enough room inside your world for theirs to matter too.
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