30 Women Share Extremely Specific Red Flags They Learned Because Of Their Exes
Article created by: Dominyka ProÅ”kÄnaitÄ
If you truly love someone, youāll accept them as they are. Hearing your partner sing in the shower or snore loudly shouldnāt suddenly make you question everything. But sometimes, it takes being in a committed relationship to clearly see all ofthe red flags your partner is waving.
Women on Reddit have recently been opening up about the niche red flags that they didnāt spot in their exes until they had already been dating for a while. From being obsessed with luxury goods to believing in dragons, apparently, not everyone advertises their worst qualities on the first date. But we hope youāll enjoy scrolling through this list, and be sure to upvote the behaviors and traits that would be deal-breakers for you too!
Ha. My ex had two that I thought were strange.
1) He was incapable of not realizing that he can’t leave expensive [stuff] in his car and not have it get stolen. Stereo? gone. Leather jacket? gone. Tool kit? gone.
I think somehow, he felt like it made him a better person for being so trusting or something?
2) he was extremely jealous. But not of other men. He was jealous of me. If we were out for dinner with friends and I said something funny that everyone laughed at? He would shut down. I mean, HE was the funny one! How dare I? I was also trying my hand at writing and got myself a literary agent. He (my ex) refused to read anything I wrote, because he just didn’t think it would interest him. I was a singer in a band, and he rarely came out to see us play. And when he did, it never seemed like he was enjoying himself at all. Honestly, it seemed like the typical ‘Manic Pixie Dreamgirl’ ™ scenario. I love all the quirky/creative things about this girl, so I should date her and squash them all.
Good news, I left him and have not dimmed my light since.
After several years together, my ex proudly proclaimed he hadn’t read a book since college. I was floored, this man had been a science teacher!
I’d found an interesting nonfiction book on a niche topic I tend to get nerdy about. He walked in on me and said “Are you reading a TEXTBOOK… for FUN?” He looked and sounded so disgusted that I put it down and never finished it. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it was a textbook, just an interesting-sounding book recommended by a podcast I liked.
We didn’t last long after that.
1. He wouldnāt watch movies/tv shows or read books with a female protagonist because he said women arenāt engaging or interesting
2. He said women shouldnāt be comedians because weāre inherently unfunny
3. If we were watching tv and there was a kissing or love scene, heād aggressively kiss me to make sure that I wasnāt watching āanother man.ā
Ew! So misogynistic.
Fortunately, I got out pretty soon after these things came to lightā¦ but I still regret the time I spent with him. I had to do a lot of work to unpack all of the terrible ways he treated me that I thought was normal. I always wonder about the women who came after me.
Grown men should not be obsessed with anime girls. Full stop. I’ve seen it multiple times and it’s never a good sign. I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
āI donāt need friends.ā Meanwhile complaining that heās lonely because Iām not filling my niches in his life correctly.
My ex used to leave open packages of raw chicken sitting uncovered in the fridge. He also never washed his hands and would eat food that he’d left sitting on the counter for days.
He had explosive diarrhea every day for years. He visited multiple doctors, even specialists, and had two colonoscopies in his early 30s. They couldn’t make a diagnosis. Eventually, they figured out that it was due to his abysmally poor hygiene habits.
He did not change.
He was into luxury things like diamonds and expensive watches. That in itself wasnāt a deal breaker for me; I like nice things, too, but I thought he could be stuck up and ignorant about it sometimes. One day I learned just how incredibly ignorant he was about it all when he tried to tell me that diamonds are so expensive because theyāre star bits that crashed on earth from outer space. Weād been talking about how his brother bought his fiance a lab-grown diamond and how he would never do that, doesnāt understand why theyāre such ethical hippies and whatās wrong with diamonds blah blah blah. He stated it as a fact just out of his own beliefs and despite being so into his luxuries, he had never bothered even once to look up information about them and what blood diamonds are and why ethical diamonds exist. We didnāt make it another year after that, and I never let him put a diamond (lab grown or otherwise) on my finger.
He was so sensitive to criticism that he quit perfectly good jobs just to stop getting it, instead of taking the initiative to improve.
He didn’t know that things can expire even though they’ve been refrigerated. He ate a meat pizza that had been in there for at least over 2 weeks and seemed surprised when it made him violently ill.
He wore glass frames. Just the frames. No lenses. Like you could poke your fingers through the frame. I asked why, and he said his mom told him he looked better with glasses. The frames werenāt as much of a red flag as the fact that he took his momās criticism to heart so deeply he felt the need to wear fake frames all the time. I remember thinking I might let it slide if we were very young, but man was nearly 40. I couldnāt help but assume committing to the guy would mean deferring to his momās opinions about everything. Obviously no way to have confirmed those anxieties, but I wasnāt willing to find out.
He had a party which his family attended. One of my friends, who is black, arrived and let himself into the house through the unlocked front door (as had everyone else). His mom screamed and grabbed her phone.
So, uh, could I stay with someone whose parents were so racist that when having a party, they thought a black man arriving at the party was, like, there to do crime? No. No, I could not. Immediately after that, I began noticing a lot of little things that I had thought were my ex being socially awkward that suddenly got recontextualized as racism.
He would always have something disparaging to say about women in larger bodies, a lot of times unprovoked. Like he would see a woman and say that she’s disgusting or ugly and that he’s not attracted to her, as if there was a secret camera somewhere and a tv show host asked him a question. Meanwhile back at the ranch, I’m not the smallest girlie pop and had gained some weight during the course of our relationship. It made me really side eye him.
Also, he would claim that he’s apolitical and that he doesn’t vote but would regurgitate every Conservative talking point if given the chance.
He made me listen to music he hated. It was the weirdest thing. His coworkers loved a certain genre and he hated that he had to listen to it all day, complained about it all the time. Then, one day we had to drive about an hour to get somewhere, and he puts on the radio station his coworkers listen to. He’s complaining about it, but doesn’t turn it off. After about 20 minutes of this I ask to put on something else, and he says, “No. You have to suffer the same [stuff] I have to every day.”
His other bad behavior was more of a conventional [mistreatment] sort, cheating, drinking, selfish, etc., but this stood out because it was the only time he made a specific point of making me miserable and wanted me to know it.
He liked to break social norms to make everyone around him uncomfortable. He liked to watch them squirm trying to play off what heād just said or done as something more normal than it actually was.
He was also great at picking out just the right gift. So imagine my surprise when weāre out at a fancy restaurant for my birthday and heās eagerly asking me to open my birthday gift at the table. IT WAS AN AXE.
My ex was a music snob and never wanted to hear my music playlists, only played his own. I didn’t realize this for years as we had a lot of music taste overlap, so I enjoyed his curated playlists he put on. If I missed certain genres and would put them at home he would leave the room and play his music in another part of the house. He couldn’t be bothered to tolerate it haha.
After breaking up after 15 years, I honestly felt a bit at a lost for what *my* music tastes were. I didn’t realize how really bad it was until the new guy I’m seeing asked why I never played my music, or suggested playlists to him, even though he can tell I’m also a music nerd. I still feel awkward/afraid of what someone might think if I play music they might not like.
He doesnt like going to the barbeshop and having an adult male do his hair. he thinks its gay to have anither guy touch his head.
Always want a woman and doesnt like getting the free shampoo, and head massage. He said he emphatizes with the boyfriend of the āprettyā hair dresser. He wouldnt want his girlfriend touching other guys head like that.
I found out about malicious incompetence from my ex. Until him, I never met anyone who purposely did things horribly.
He introduced me to 4chan and said he went there every day to keep up with the news, without seeing anything ātoo disturbingā, which is literally the mainly kind of thing there.
He was a culture snob, only read classic literature or award winning modern fiction, wouldnāt listen to up and coming music, wouldnāt watch any TV.
He was the 2000s version of a performative man.
He had never been in love. He was 64, divorced twice, and many partners. Never been in love. And I was no exception. Also: cherry apple blossom crĆØme rinse for masturbating in the shower every day and twice a day on the weekends. He kept a routine.
Not giving me any compliments. Expecting me to just believe that he likes me just because he exists. Not looking into my eyes even during intimacy. Answering with “Understood” when I was sharing my feelings. In general being very lukewarm. Being more affectionate to a cat than to me (when I asked why, his answer was “well you’re not a cat”). I’m shocked I wasted my time with that dude and had to really dig into my traumas to understand why I ended up there. I left after two and a half months but it still was quite traumatizing.
He was secretly obsessed with Marilyn Monroe. I went to his childhood home for the first time and his room was covered from floor to ceiling with calendar cutouts and posters, with a large poster on the ceiling over his bed. And then I found a Marilyn tie, cigarette lighter, Christmas ornaments, pillowcases, and other ācollectorsā items in the dresser.
He struggled to regulate his emotions.
My nervous system often did not feel safe around him.
He got some kind of mouth infection after eating from a plate he hadnāt washed for a long period of time.
Did not want to talk about any ex-girlfriend ever.
Didnāt think that getting to know oneās neighbors (after living in the same house for multiple years) was a good idea.
What was this guy afraid of?
He had major AUD.
Being obsessed with selvedge denim. I have never met a man who was obsessed with selvedge denim and emotionally healthy. My “ex” (loosely termed as we didn’t go out for long) was sooo self-obsessed/superior about it, and so was every one of his friends also in this selvedge denim cult. The man literally had a “supplier” in Japan whom he would never stop bragging about. It was like every conversation with him would eventually circle back to selvedge denim.
Honestly, I love fashion, but my experience with straight men who also love fashion has been ghastly. I dated a few because of common interests, but omg they were all just insufferable about it and super snobby/gate keep-y rather than celebrating the fun parts. I’m sure I was probably just unlucky or something, but there’s definitely at least a pink flag that pops up in my brain every time I meet one of those guys.
