12 Relationship Red Flags

by Michael Shnayerson

Ten years (and one marriage) ago, I would have excused all this somehow, put it aside, and pressed on with a next date, because the mother, after all, was hot. No more. Well, all right, to be perfectly honest, I did ask her out on one more date, hoping her demon children would be more agreeable in their city home. They weren’t. So that was that. After decades of ignoring red flags, only to sail into disaster each time, I’ve finally realized that no matter how gorgeous and alluring the new stranger is, you have to quit when a red flag goes up. As soon as it goes up.

This isn’t as easy it sounds. For starters, you have to learn how to distinguish red flags from mere quirks and annoyances. If a woman on her first date with you wears an orange-striped top and you hate orange or stripes, this is not a reason to bail. If her cell phone rings during dinner and she takes the call at the table, this is annoying—to me, very annoying—and will need to be addressed at some opportune point (not the first date). But it’s not a dealbreaker. If, however, you take a woman to a restaurant that serves fancy pizza, as I did once, and she eats the pizza by scraping the cheese and tomato off the crust, leaves the crust on her plate, then lights a cigarette, smokes it, and grinds the butt out on the crust, this is a red flag.

This really happened, by the way, and if you work for a fashion magazine, you know who this was, so I’d better not say more.
A thoughtful reader may have already concluded that the greater challenge of red flags is their subjectivity. Another man, that is, might have yearned to provide the fathering that D—’s children so clearly needed. Or have been charmed—even turned on!—by the grinding of that cigarette butt onto the pizza crust.

So what can one do but act on one’s instincts and hope for the best? Not true, not true, not true. Happily, I can report after three decades of romantic misadventures that there are, in fact, 12 red flags that everyone should watch for: clear, specific dating warnings that mean Danger Ahead, Turn Back—no matter who you are or what you find charming. Read them here, then clip this page and carry it in your wallet or pocketbook for the rest of your single life, to be unfolded and re-read by the light of a public bathroom stall on every date that gives you doubts.

As clear as all this ought to be, I have to admit that sometimes—very occasionally—a red flag turns out not to be what you thought it was at all. It’s still a red flag, that is, but somehow it’s become … part of the appeal. In the heat of last year’s election season, I would have said, as a fervent Democrat, that a woman’s being a Republican was the biggest red flag of all. I haven’t changed my political views, but I did recently meet a very smart, very attractive journalist who came with a warning: She’s an ardent neocon. The flag is still waving, but we’re having a lot of fun, so I’m just ignoring it.