I belive I found the focus problem on my 50mm f1.4

Ever since I've had the Canon 7D I would use one of the many focal points with spot focus when I shot wide open on the 50mm lens. Well I always noticed a shift in focus when I shot wide open. Yet when I performed a focus test using the center focal point it turned out perfect. Well I was looking in C.Fn III: Auto focus / Drive on the 7d and noticed that the "Spot AF" was NOT selected. So when I was shooting wide open I was really never using Spot AF even though I had the metering mode set to spot focus. When the lens was wide open it would sometimes lock to something close to my focal point. With the SPOT AF enabled in custom functions this should fix the problem.

I haven't had a chance to give it a good test since I found this out.

It sounds like you have Spot Metering and spot AF confused. If you have spot AF selected, there's a visible dot in the center of the AF point in the viewfinder; if you have Spot Metering set there is a circular pattern displayed around the center point of the viewfinder, regardless of which focus point you have chosen.

Also, the actual area that the camera will grab focus on is slightly larger than the area of the focus point box in the viewfinder. Hopefully enabling actual spot AF will help you get the results you're looking for, though.

But if i'm shooting portraits with the 50mm at f1.4 wouldn't I need both spot focus and spot metering enabled for best results?

It's certainly one option; I don't shoot portraiture so I don't really know what conditions you are actually shooting under. I find spot metering to be useful for strongly backlit subjects, but don't use it outside of that.

Spot focus may certainly be fine, but I would think that unless shooting through branches or other foreground clutter that standard, single point AF ought to work fine.

Spot metering has nothing to do with focus, it's simply how the camera is measuring the light and setting the exposure.

Remember that spot metering is performed from the circle in the centre...not around the AF point used!

I thought with the 7d the spot metering was linked to the active AF points, but I guess I was wrong.