Since I began dating this year, I’ve been warned to watch out for red flags. Blogs, podcasts, friends and family have all advised me to be on the lookout to avoid dating women who have any of these:
- Mental Illness
- Financial Problems
- Not Over a Divorce or Breakup
- Job Issues
- Insecurity
The list goes on depending on who is ticking off the issues.
Over the course of two months, I’ve been on dates with 4 different women and had phone calls/chats with two more.
All of the women are in my peer group – Generation X.
What I’ve discovered is that everyone has issues (me included). We have all been alive long enough to have gone through heartbreak, divorce, grief, mental and physical illness, family issues and financial problems. These aren’t red flags. These are part of our history and experiences. How we deal with them determines what kind of person we become.
The same applies to the good things that we experience in our lives. Some people are fortunate to have had:
- Loving families
- Nurturing parents
- Financial stability
- Good health
So far, I’ve yet to run into anyone who has had a life filled with only the “good” or only the “bad” stuff.
I’m not looking for red flags. I’m looking for green flags.
I look for kindness, warmth, joy, concern, touch, love, sweetness, mutual attraction, honesty and compassion.
If these are present, even occasionally, I believe we can successfully deal with red flag issues as they arise.
After all, long before internet dating and social media, I met women in real life. We dated and got to know each other. Over time we discovered “red flags” and we dealt with them as they came up.
That’s life.
I think, as a society, we can be over-cautious and too risk averse. We don’t want to trust easily because we might get hurt (especially if we have been hurt before). We don’t want to expose ourselves to “red flag” people, because it was hard to deal with loved ones in the past who had issues.
Well, that’s not for me.
I am not afraid of love. The price to be paid is a willingness to risk pain and disappointment. In fact, I’d say loving someone guarantees there will be times of pain and disappointment.
Trying to eliminate red flags won’t change this.