There are plenty of red, blue, pink, orange, yellow, and black flags in the dating sea. When you’re swiping right and left from a distance, red is just easier to spot. Darker shade can mean guns-blazing serial killer, and a lighter shade is what’s been assigned to people who eat pizza with tomato sauce — both are equally dangerous to date. One can murder you and the other can kill your appetite.
With so many matches to reject and accept, my generation have all turned into picky HR recruiters. We are looking for ‘the one’ who is incapable of a blip, doesn’t like other girls’ pictures on Instagram, doesn’t play PubG or post gym selfies to flex his biceps. If he’s trying to date me, he can’t cheer for F1 Red Bull driver Max Verstappen. I’m not being unreasonable, it’s what not-so-self-aware influencers on the internet have informed me to believe.
There are so many red flags and we have become such experts in reading the codes that there are days when everything is a red flag for my generation. That’s when I pause to think: has the line between problematic and pet peeve blurred into oblivion?
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Take it from a rookie in identifying red flags, some warnings glare you in the face. If he puts an “I respect women” badge in his bio, some of us immediately get suspicious. Does he actually hate women? If he’s a picky eater, he’s a cocooned mama’s boy. Someone rude to the waitstaff shouldn’t be allowed to sit with you, ever. A self-identified ‘apolitical’ is a walking nightmare. And a man who loses his temper over minor inconveniences, or nothing at all, belongs in Angry Young Man Anonymous, not my romance roster.
My colleague encountered a red flag as scary as blood coming out of a stone. On their first date at Pune’s Sips and Bites Coffee House, he said he likes “the squishy insides of people”. Without elaborating much, he moved on to talk about his fascination with Jeffrey Dahmer’s pop-culture trajectory. His date bolted down the burrata sandwich and rushed out when he shared his plan for their second date — a wilderness drive to watch a horror movie on his laptop. Who can even plan an outfit for this kind of hang out? It’s what your ghost would roam around in for eternity after your body is dumped in a ditch.
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To be fair, he was too predictable to be called the darkest red flag. The most hazardous hook-up is the manipulator who has mugged the jargon of reel-therapy. He will say his love language is only physical touch and try to solve conflicts by telling you to do some “inner work”. How? He will get back on that after watching another Sadhguru video. He will mansplain to you about “anxious attachment style”, and absolve himself of all the mixed-signals by identifying as an “avoidant”. Worst I’ve heard — “I don’t date fat people because they give me body image issues.” Imagine, this self-woke behaviour is marketed as a green flag, something about “emotional maturity”.
By this logic, I might as well update my LinkedIn bio to anthropologist for studying why I am single despite being a solid 8. And what red flags repulse me: a man in finance, pitaji ka paisa, 5 ’11, brown eyes — money and good looks together in a man can’t be healthy for anyone. He isn’t going to work hard at any relationship. He probably considers himself a divine gift to his partners.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)