12 Dating Red Flags: Noticing the Obvious
Noticing the Obvious
Not long ago, I met a very attractive single mother of two at a dinner party in Sag Harbor, New York. We were seated next to each other -- a "soft" setup -- and by dessert, we were punctuating our stories with little touches: her hand on my forearm, mine on hers. Good signs.
Then the 铿乺st of her two children, a boy of about ten, descended from an upstairs TV room. In each hand he clutched an action 铿乬ure. This in itself was not disconcerting. It was the way he slammed the action 铿乬ures into each other, his upper lip curled in a sneer, that gave me pause -- that, and the adoring look his mother chose to bestow on him as he did.Still, D-- , the boy's mother, was de铿乶itely worth a follow-up. A few days later, I drove over to the waterfront inn where she had encamped with her children for a brief summer vacation. The plan was a swim in the inn's pool, then lunch at a nearby restaurant: a little ersatz family outing. D-- ushered me into her room and announced the obvious fact of my arrival to her children.
Neither the boy nor his sister, two years older, looked over from the droning television. Not a word emanated from either one's lips. D-- told them to turn off the television and change into their swimsuits. They ignored her. So D-- pretended she hadn't asked them, and went into the bedroom to change. Only when the grownups started to leave did the children drag themselves, sluglike, behind us.
The swim was bad enough, with both children glowering at the grownups from their pool chairs. But lunch was worse. No sooner had the waiter taken our order than the girl seized one of the action 铿乬ures from her brother's 铿乻t and threw it across the restaurant. The boy screamed in outrage, hit his sister with the other action 铿乬ure, then ran over to get the 铿乺st one so he could hit her with that, too. As the sister returned 铿乺e with her 铿乻ts, I turned to see what D-- would do. "Now, come on, children," she said gently, lovingly, pleadingly. "Now, come on ..."
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 铿俛gs, only to sail into disaster each time, I've 铿乶ally realized that no matter how gorgeous and alluring the new stranger is, you have to quit when a red 铿俛g goes up. As soon as it goes up.
More Subtle Warnings
This isn't as easy it sounds. For starters, you have to learn how to distinguish red 铿俛gs from mere quirks and annoyances. If a woman on her 铿乺st 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 铿乺st 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 铿俛g.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 铿俛gs 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 铿俛gs that everyone should watch for: clear, speci铿乧 warnings that mean Danger Ahead, Turn Back -- no matter who you are or what you 铿乶d 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 铿俛g turns out not to be what you thought it was at all. It's still a red 铿俛g, 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 铿俛g 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 铿俛g is still waving, but we're having a lot of fun, so I'm just ignoring it.
Will this end up as another object lesson in my own theory? Or does love mean never having to pay attention to a red 铿俛g? I'll have to get back to you on that one.
