rippling a waving red flag
Amiga, date cuenta.
This Substack is dedicated to my female friends and all of my sisters who are suffering in a real relationship. Even if the tone is joky, this topic is not. If you are in a bad situation, ask for help, no estás sola.
NOTE: This substack has been written considering cis-straight couples.
A couple of days ago, while binging on Instagram I came across an instagram reel from The Beauty and the Greek, a sort of influencer couple who make a podcast together. Aside from being extremely gorgeous, they usually don't offer anything that is really worthy of putting time into. However, they talk in a very short reel about redflags, and I couldn't help but think about what I would consider a red flag.
Kathe, the woman, pointed out how if she would have to choose 3 red flags she would say: Talking badly to people who are serving you—might be waiters or waitresses or any kind of service you are receiving, talking bad to your mum (and/or dad, but specially mum) and not having female friends.
During my early twenties, I came across some guys who had major flaws, and some of them are contained in these three. I mean, how can you trust a guy that talks bad to his mum? You can see your future child—if you are thinking of conceiving one with him—right there. So, darling, if you are reading this and dating a guy who speaks badly to his mum, who is rude to women in general, run, amiga date cuenta, think it twice. Also, somebody that has so little respect for hospitality servers speaks to me like a little of class supremacy. And well, about the female friends issue… it is so hard to relate to somebody who sees women as objects, and it is so impossible to see them as people that they can establish a friendship with. Sometimes, we do need to remember that there are some things that are intolerable, and sometimes, there is the collection of things that make the situation really bad.
Here, dear reader, I have created a little questionnaire for you, where if in a romantic relationship you can have a sense of what you are experiencing. Come along and mark the red flags that you identify in that guy that you are still trying to save:
Talks bad to his mum.
Talks bad to people in the hospitality industry
Does not have any female friends.
Lies about little things.
Fights badly and blocks you after it, then unblocks you and tells you you are the love of his life.
Blames you for things that are not your fault.
Promises you he is going to change but he never does.
Makes you feel insecure.
Calls you crazy, and thinks that all of her exes are.
Denies that you are in a relationship, he calls it “situationship” and doesn't want to commit after several months.
Now, my dear Amiga, if your results were…
0-2: Nice! there are some things you need to talk about, for sure, but nobody is perfect and you can probably work on it!
3-5: Well… your call! you will need to see if it is really worth it.
5-10: RUN, RUN, RUN!
And now, jokes aside…
I have talked about so many times about La Construcción Sociocultural del Amor Romántico, a book written by Coral Herrera and how it healed me after an unexpected breakup. Luckily, I not only realized how meaningless the connection I had with the guy was, but also found some warmth in the prose, some truth, that would change my life forever. Herrera, in her book, traces the historical past in which women are always secondary choices to men. While for us life gravitates around love, the desire of being desired, to conceive a family and maybe to have kids, for men is work, power, success, and then love. Love, as she posits, is something that men have had as inherent in their life expectancy. They don't grow up thinking that if they grow older alone, they will be lonely, and won't find a purpose that will bring meaning to their existence. As much as things have changed, this is still true in many societies still nowadays. The other day I went over for dinner to a friend's house. His roommate is a woman from India who came to the US to teach Hindi to American students. She was telling my friends and I the idea that Indian women in her region had over marriage, and how is the role a woman plays in her culture when she is about to get old she is expected to get engaged. Worldwide, womens role has always being supeditated to the patriarchy. As my significant other was on a domestic tour, I binged the show Love Is Blind. The couples formed after they got to know each other by just hearing their voices wasn't gonna survive. But the interesting thing to me was not only the gossip around it—that also, of course—, but rather the way these people would relate to each other. How they expressed their feelings and also, how jealous they were of each other. Jealousy, also, is a big red flag. Aside from the feeling which is completely normal to have, the toxic aspect of it is what you do with it. Being possessive? Cutting off your partner? Insulting them? Big red flag sis. I have a friend whose name I wouldn't say who is dating an a**whole who made her show him her DMs, because she suspected she was talking to other guys. I couldn't do anything but tell her that I was—and still am—here for her, and that yes, she deserves better.
Another big redflag to me is when you are ashamed of being with your partner in front of other people. I don't know if you have met these couples in which one of the members is always nervous of what their partner can say or how their partner can act. Of course, there are limits, for example, when you already know that you are dating a hideous dude but you are too trapped to break up with him.
But red flags also have made their way into Gen Z. For example, all of us above almost Yk2 umbrella would recognize how does a red flag look like: an all–black dress guy, who read Guy Debord and listens to Serge Gainsbourg, and thinks that you (aw little lady) are quite mature for your age (based on a real story—many). On the opposite side of this equation is cancelation culture, which has come to the point of judging everything. I still have some hope in people, and think that many of these things have the ability to be corrected with time.
As for you, my dear reader, what are the most russian red flags you can think about?
Love,
S.