Are they deal-breakers? Here is how to tell.
I’ve gotten a flurry of texts lately from friends who are dating, asking whether or not something is a “red flag.”
“She still lives with her ex-husband. Red flag, right?” one friend asked.
Another wrote: “He mostly texts in emoji. Your thoughts?”
The dating world is festooned with flags. Green flags, like kindness and empathy, are a signal to keep going. Red ones, like compulsive lying, might mean hitting the brakes.
Yellow flags, however, are trickier, said Todd Baratz, a therapist and author of “How to Love Someone Without Losing Your Mind.” They signal caution — but they’re “not a 9-1-1 alert,” he said.
A yellow flag isn’t a reason for you (and your friends) to run a forensic investigation like “a detective doing psychoanalytic dating work,” Baratz said. Instead, a yellow flag is a signal that you need to communicate with the other person.
And while everyone has a different definition of yellow flags, I asked experts to share some of the ones they hear about the most — and why you should keep an eye on them.