Editor's Note: Do you need sound, Biblically-based advice on an issue in your marriage or family?  Dr. David Hawkins, director of the Marriage Recovery Center, will address questions from Crosswalk readers in his weekly column. Submit your question t TheRelationshipDoctor@gmail.com.

When you interact with others at the office, or the gathering place after work, what message do you send? Perhaps this sounds like an odd question, but I’d like you to consider what message you emanate?

Do you send out a “green light,” indicating that you’re definitely available for friendly and perhaps even flirtatious interactions? You may consider yourself “just a friendly kind of person,” who likes to tease and be playful. You even tell yourself, and your mate, “there’s no harm in what I’m doing.”

Maybe you’re a bit more cautious, emitting a “yellow light,” suggesting you are cautious, but willing to proceed slowly. You’re willing to interact on a more personal basis, but not until you’ve gotten to know the other person fairly well. Even with the yellow light, you’re unclear about when you might be in danger.

Finally, perhaps you’re in the group of people who are very clear about their boundaries, and emit and very strong, bright “red light.” STOP, you indicate, when the conversation becomes too familiar. You know that allowing someone into your personal, emotional space is an invitation to potential failure.

Let’s review these three different positions, and again consider where you typically function:

• Green Light: Tend to disregard personal and emotional boundaries, have little sense of danger, and proceed ahead, sometimes recklessly. The “green light” people send out a signal that suggests flirtatious engagement is all right, and perhaps even more if the situation allows. They make compromise after compromise, indicate they are “open for business,” and then wonder how they got into moral trouble.
• Yellow Light: Tend to be a bit more cautious. They recognize danger, but still tend to disregard it. These “yellow light” folks are willing to become emotionally attached to members of the opposite sex, sharing emotional information that strengthens that relationship. They, too, “find themselves” in trouble.
• Red Light: Tend to steer clear of danger. They are friendly, but stop there and make it clear to others that they are closed for any other business. They may be perceived as a bit stuffy, but really they are simply protecting their heart, their emotions and their marriage. They don’t end up in a dangerous predicament.

Consider this story from a woman who wrote to me recently.