Seven Red Flags I Excused Before the Second Month. | Relationship Red Flags

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

I found the list again, last winter. It was in the notes app on an old phone, in a drawer, under a charger, and a pair of earbuds with the cord twisted into a knot. The note was called, Things To Ask Him. The date at the top was March 14th, and it was seven lines long. I read it standing in my hallway, in my socks, and I laughed once, out loud, a short, dry laugh. Then I sat on the floor. I will tell you what was on the list, but first, who he was. His name was Grant. I met him at a friend's birthday party in a rooftop bar, and he was, honestly, wonderful. Tall, easy, a little shy at first, with a way of asking questions and really listening to the answers. We talked for three hours. By the end of the night, I had given him my number and he had put his arm around my shoulders in the elevator, lightly, like it was nothing. For the first few weeks, I could not believe my luck, but I am a person who makes lists. It is how I think. And somewhere around the end of the first month, something in me started writing things down, quietly, in a note that I did not show anyone. Each item was a small moment, each one had a perfectly good explanation. That was the point.

I wrote them down because I could not decide whether they mattered.

Item 1

He never asked me where I was going when I left his apartment, but he always seemed to know when I got home.

I had mentioned it once, lightly. He said, I just worry. I said, it's sweet. Item 2

He did not like my friend Ellie. He had met her once, for 20 minutes. He said, she seems like she has a lot of opinions. I laughed. I said, she does. I did not notice that after that I stopped planning things with Ellie when he was free.

Item 3 He said he had never had a good relationship. Every ex, in his telling, had been unreasonable. One was cold, one was jealous. One had lied about something so serious, he would not say what it was. He told it all with great sadness. I said, I'm sorry. I told myself, he's been hurt. Item 4

At a restaurant, he spoke to the waiter in a way that made my stomach tighten. It was very polite and very sharp. When the man walked away, Grant said, people need to be held to a standard.

I said nothing. I told myself, he's tired. It's a bad day. Item 5

He asked me in the third week to share my location on my phone. He said it was for safety. I said yes, and I wondered why it felt like something being taken. Item 6 He told me I was different from other women, that I was easy to be around, that I did not play games. He said it often like a gift. It took me a long time to notice that it came with a condition, as long as I did not turn out to be like them. Item 7

This is the one that is hardest. One night in April at his apartment, I said I wanted to go home. I was tired. It was a Tuesday. He did not argue. He said, of course. But he stood in the doorway to the bedroom and said quietly, I thought you would stay.

He did not move. And I felt, just for a second, something I did not have a name for.

Not fear. Something earlier than fear. A sense that the room had changed shape. I put my shoes back on. I stayed another hour and then another. I did not go home that night. I want to be careful with you here. I am not telling you that any one of these items means someone is dangerous. People worry about each other. People dislike their partner's friends. People have bad exes and sad stories. If I had shown any single line to a friend, she would have said, that's not so bad. And she would have been right. That was exactly the problem. Each flag alone was a small thing. I had a perfectly reasonable answer for everyone. I was not blind. I was fluent. I could explain anything. What I did not do was look at the list as a whole. It was Ellie, as it turned out, who made me.

Months later, we were at a coffee shop and I mentioned the list, almost as a joke. I said, I used to keep a note about him. She said, Can I see it? She read it. She read the seven lines slowly, the way you read a medical chart. Then she handed me the phone and she said, How many of these did you tell me about at the time? I said none. She said, Why not? And I did not have an answer, because the real answer was that I had known. Some part of me knew that if I said any of it out loud to someone who loved me, I would hear it the way it actually sounded. Let me tell you about the weeks between April and August, because that is where the list stopped being a list and started being a life. In May, we went on a weekend trip to a lake house that belonged to Grant's cousin. It was lovely. I will say that plainly. The water was cold and green, and he cooked, and we sat on the dock with our feet in the water and for two days I forgot about the note in my phone.