7 Red Flags In Dating You Should NEVER Ignore

I've coached women on dating since 2013, and here's something I've noticed about red flags.

Almost nobody misses them.

Women see them. They see them early, usually in the first three or four dates, and they can describe them perfectly a year later. What happens in between is a different problem, and I'll come to that.

First, the seven that matter most while you're still dating. Every one shows up before month two if you're watching.

The waiter. The person on the phone. The driver.

It's rarely dramatic. A slightly short tone, a small unkindness, a joke at someone's expense while you're both meant to be having a nice evening.

Here's why this one is worth more than almost anything else on the list. How a man treats people who are useful to him tells you nothing at all. How he treats people who are not useful to him tells you everything, because that's him with nothing to gain.

And you will not be useful forever.

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One difficult ex is a story. Four of them is a pattern, and you are looking at the only person who was present for all four.

Listen for whether he appears anywhere in his own account. If every relationship ended because of what she was like, you've just been handed the description he'll give of you.

The version of this that's easiest to miss is the generous-sounding one. "She had a lot going on, it wasn't her fault." It sounds kind. It still isn't him taking any part of it.

"I'm terrible at texting." "I'm not really a relationship guy." "I'm a bit of a mess, honestly."

He'll say it lightly, often as a joke, usually in the first fortnight.

That's not modesty and it isn't self-awareness. It's a disclaimer, filed early so that when it happens he can point back at it.

Write this down and keep it somewhere you'll see it. When a man tells you what he's bad at, he is not asking you to fix it. He is telling you what's coming.

Not a dramatic one. A small one.

You said you couldn't do Thursday and he asks again. You said you'd rather not have another drink and there's another drink. You said you weren't ready for something and he tries once more, charmingly.

The size of the no is not the point. The point is what he does when he meets one.

A man who negotiates a small boundary at week three will negotiate a large one at month eight, and by then you'll have far more invested in pretending you didn't notice.

His side of town. His schedule. His idea of a good evening.

Any one of those is nothing. All of them, for six weeks, is a structure.

Notice how often you're the one travelling, rearranging, fitting around. Then notice whether it's ever been the other way, even once.

Men are not confused about this. A man who wants you in his life will make himself inconvenient for you early, because that's how he shows it. If he never has, that's information rather than an oversight.

Three weeks in, the physical side is well ahead of anything else.

You still don't know what he's worried about, what he's working toward, or what happened in the last one. But that part has moved quickly and easily.

Those two things are supposed to travel roughly together. When one races ahead, it's usually because it's the only one he intends to make the journey.

The tell isn't the speed. It's the imbalance.

Go back over the last three dates and count the questions.

Not polite ones about your day. Real ones. About your work, your family, what you think, what you want out of the next few years.

A lot of women don't notice this one because the evenings feel good, and they feel good because she's been doing the asking and he's been enjoying being asked.

Curiosity is the cheapest thing a man can offer and it's the first thing missing when he isn't really interested. If he hasn't got curious about you by date four, he isn't going to.

So Why Doesn't Seeing Them Stop It?

Here's the thing I said I'd come back to.

Reading that list, some of those will have landed hard. You'll have thought of a specific evening and a specific man.

And one or two of them will have gone past you without registering at all. Not disagreed with. Just flat, like reading someone else's problem.

That's the part worth paying attention to.

The list is the same for everyone. The blind spots aren't. And which of these seven quietly goes invisible for you isn't random, and it isn't a character flaw.

There's a pattern in how you date, and it decides which red flags you see in real time and which ones you only see afterwards, from a safe distance, once it's already cost you a year.

There are four of these patterns. One of them is yours.

I put together a short quiz that names which of the four is running for you. Seven questions, about 60 seconds, and your result comes with what it means and what to do next.

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If you already know the red flags and it hasn't changed who you end up with, knowing more of them won't either.

Find out which one you can't see instead.

Click here to take the free 60-second quiz