A Courtship-Era Evaluation of Me, by My Husband

my red, green, and 'odd' flags

Jul 13, 2026

Writing about the sex life of my marriage, I’ve put my husband’s intimate life on blast time and again. He doesn’t mind — he says, we’re married, why would I mind people knowing that we have sex? But after publicly broadcasting his “red flags” that gave me pause, and a status update on the green flags that woo’d me, I thought some reciprocity was due.

So I asked my husband what he found both compelling and concerning about me while we were dating.

My Compelling Characteristics

My husband, Joe, says there's only one must-have characteristic he’s looking for in a mate (romantic, but also broadly applicable). Besides the “obvious stuff,” he says, “like sexual compatibility,” he wonders, “does this person have an internal world?”

1) I have an internal world

My hobbies (dance) and interests (ergonomic footwear) and the way I’d fixate on un-cool things (like on “min-maxing” my Civilization after he introduced me to the PlayStation game), demonstrated that there was something going on in my head beyond trends and other people’s ideas.

2) I had unique taste

Relatedly, he says he liked how I had a unique taste and aesthetic. My design perspective didn’t fit a specific style. If Joe had to define it, he’d call it “sexy art teacher.” I wore a vintage silk leopard-print skirt set with Chacos one day, and clogs, embroidered crop trousers plus a knit wrap top, the metallic of a nipple ring shining through the merino, the next. I guess this was new to him?

3) I liked to idylly pass time

Joe says I was, and am, up for doing things that aren’t necessarily exciting or even good. We had our best times just standing in a pub for hours, grocery shopping, or seeing gigs that one of us thought was shit. This wasn’t to gauge my maintenance levels, but what he liked was that I “didn’t need premium aspirational activities that other people thought were good.”

4) I wasn’t trying to impress him, play games with him, or actualize anything through him

My sweetheart (clearly) didn’t want a lover who expected or exhibited performance signals like trips to festivals for the sake of photo ops. As he says, “[I like] unvarnished people who accept unvarnished people. Life’s too short to spend time with people who are doing what you think everyone else wants to see.” So naturally, he was set at ease that I wasn’t bothered that he wasn’t trying to impress me, and that it didn’t feel like I was trying to impress him either. There was no game playing. No “push and pull,” as he feels is boring. “Playing hard to get only works for people who have an emotional issue.”

“Does this mean you thought I was a chill girl?” I asked. “Well, kind of,” he said. “It was no pressure.” He liked how I wasn’t in a rush to define our relationship because of some baseless expectation of societal timing. This, he says, is when someone tries to actualize their dreams through their partner. And the astute readers will know he has a problem with people who use people, and that despite the lack of pressure, we did commit very legally and bloodily quite quickly.

My Concerning Characteristics

Unlike the short list of characteristics Joe looked for, the traits he didn’t want were plenty:

He didn’t want someone who performed an aesthetic/lifestyle/interest for the benefit of perception instead of putting their real selves out there. Or expected him to perform for perception.
He didn’t want someone who saw themselves as a prize — as if their association would increase their social stock — as it implied they believed a relationship served outwardly.
He couldn’t date someone who obsessed over cleanliness. Sanitizer in general was a turn-off.
No picky eaters.
No litterers.
No illiterates.
No small bums.
No one prejudiced — about anything. (Any big generalized assumptions, even things like “couldn’t watch sci-fi” or “sports suck” or “wouldn’t sew” was a No. He didn’t like people who closed themselves off from things for stupid reasons.)

I do like to tell him he’s lucky to have me, but otherwise, I fit his list. Yet the following characteristics he hadn’t considered previously gave him pause about me as a romantic partner.

1) I once said I was an immoral person

Joe and I can’t exactly remember the details, but we both remember it happening. When I asked him what was a potential “red flag” about me, he came right out the gates with this one, so it obviously left an impression. What I remember is we were having a long-winded debate in which he asked me whether I was a moral person. I might’ve had a few beers, or maybe I was just uneducated, but with hindsight I know that my saying “If you had to categorize me, I’d probably have to be lumped immoral,” wasn’t what I really meant. I was picturing myself slipping a few extra pieces of candy while pretending to the children around me that we were only allowed a piece for finding a red car, while he was imagining someone with no morals. I might have a few potentially questionable morals (without a candy-dispersion oversight committee, and in circumstances without any true suffering, I might extort candies I purchased under the guise of fair distribution), but I’m not immoral.

2) I had some questionable friends

After a few months together, I invited him to join me in Mexico City for an intervention. It was a memorable experience. He seemed shockingly smitten despite being confronted with information yet to be shared and the general messiness of my past. I didn’t realize it actually made him pause, as shortly thereafter we began not not trying to conceive. I have a soft spot for those who are working through shit, and I have no shame about it! Given it’s the first I heard of it, I don’t think he does either.

3) I had emotional reactions to our ideological differences

I once invited him to dinner with my landlord, a conventionally successful musician and friend, and my friend, a struggling artist. The two men disagreed with the two women about the net effect of social media for artists. His perspective made me upset. I stomped my feet the next day listening to Beyoncé’s “Hold Up” and took a solo trip to the coast to showcase my independence. If this gave him pause, the few pints of lager he had with his friends that evening sure pressed play again, because as I took a bath after reading Henry Miller, he texted me, “I know you don’t need me to, but I want to take care of you.” I forgave him. Then I learned to hate the idea, not the person.

4) I didn’t play my part in chivalrous gender relations

It really cracked me up to learn my husband questioned my wifely eligibility because I was somehow obvious to his English mores. I was “rushing about and not waiting for [Joe] to open a door or order at a cafe.” I guess my love was waiting for me to hand my dance card over by standing back and letting him take the lead. He wanted to be a gentleman, but I was too much of an American millennial to notice. Joe worried that my rushing was some character flaw, but in the end he realized it was only my self-reliance trauma response, lol.

My Peculiar Characteristics

As a bonus, Joe offered these “odd flags,” as he says. They were neither red nor green, but notable curiosities that he pondered while we courted.

1) I was unable to cook

He was bewildered by my saying that I lived on RX Bars and two-ingredient salads.

2) I drank from jars

I drank water from an olive jar, and he found that peculiar.

3) I had a bizarre sense of humor

It’s “entirely idiosyncratic,” he says. “It exists only for you.” Which to me is just fine, but to a man from the land of banter, it was surprising.

Now that I’ve gotten the same outside analysis as I’ve given my spouse, it’s reinforced my hunch… All these “red flags” and “green flags” are as useful as a comment section on a clickbait article. They reveal so much more about the one critiquing than they do about the critiqued.

Or as Joe says, “the whole red flags/green flags thing is, in aggregate, really boring and generic.”

Regardless, it was fascinating to hear these reflections from my love, because I find the world through his eyes — his inner world — to be rich and curious. But it’s also reminded me that, as he pointed out, I’m my best when I don’t care what other people think.

How about you? What do you think?

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