When you start dating a new boyfriend, the newness of "us" can make your head spin. You can easily blind yourself to the obvious during those early days. Yet some minor annoyances in a relationship can be potential maelstroms if ignored. It's a good idea to know the difference between petty irritations and full-blown reasons to dump your boyfriend. Here are five of the latter:

1. Your potential partner is exhibiting some disturbing, controlling behavior. Although most people try to behave at their "personal best" early on, a controlling partner won't be able to hide his true colors very long. In the beginning, it might seem, well, a bit nice. After all, he's being attentive, so what's so bad about that?

Nothing, unless he starts to try and tell you what kind of clothes to wear, or he wants to know where you are every minute of the day. At the earliest sign of narcissism, run, don't walk, and do not pass "go."

2. Your partner has low personal boundaries. This one is fairly easy to spot. Have you ever been with someone, who reveals wayyyyyy too much about herself on the first date? For example, one man dated a woman for awhile, who, upon meeting his mother, went into a couple of horrifying childbirth stories (yes, her own childbirth experiences from hell). While he tried to change the subject, his mother's pallor became ashen; she was rendered speechless as his date explained the damage inflicted on her person by forceps.

3. Your partner has no close personal relationships. If someone is mature enough to date, they are certainly mature enough to have established some good, long-term relationships with either friends or family members. But if your date speaks negatively of everyone who touches his life? Count on the fact that he will be talking about you just as harshly when you're not around.

4. Your partner wants you "all to himself." This one can be easy to miss, because your date wanting to "only be with you" can seem romantic; all the attention, quite flattering. But if he still doesn't want to "share" you with other people after the first several dates, watch out. This could be the sign of intense emotional insecurity on his part at best. At worst, it could be a sign of abuses yet to come.

5. Your partner's political beliefs are radically different from yours. Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver seem to co-exist just swimmingly, but that's pretty rare. If we have strong political beliefs, we are demonstrating something about our core values. Differences in opinion can spark lively debate, and that's fine, but if someone's core value system is radically different than ours, there will be conflict, and it will come often, not just every four years during the election season. The same holds true for religious belief systems. If you are a liberal, card-carrying agnostic in love with a fundamentalist neo-conservative, you're asking for trouble.

Love is wonderful, but it "doesn't pay the rent.” What that means is that romance is great, but a partnership needs to be practical and beneficial to both parties, for the long haul.