YOU MIGHT BE A RED FLAG IF …

Whether a first date, or long term relationship, when you look at the other person and they look like a diver’s helmet, it’s time.

Unless you want to take a dive with them.

Then it’s a question of how deep.

As  rule, you don’t want to go any deeper than you can dig out from.

From my experience that’s right after meeting the parents.

Fortunately, baby boomers on the dating scene don’t have to meet the parents for approval.

More often they meet the kids for approval, maybe the grandkids.

For young lovers, not meeting the parents is a red flag.

They want to meet them too soon, too late, or not at all.

It’s a real red flag issue I avoided as a young man by dating orphans, children of divorce, and those shunned by their families.

Only the orphan dates were a sure thing since people re-marry, reconsider their families, and before you know it you’re going to dinner with some issue of mom and dad.

Then everyone hopes for the best.

I was introduced to one divorced dad who had little to say about his former family life when asked.

It was like he’d forced the memory out of his brain and it hurt to be reminded.

Another dad talked about his work in developing more effective artillery shells, about expanding the death zone, like he wouldn’t mind if I was in one.

Then I got married.

Turns out I wasn’t my father in-law’s first choice and he let me know:

“I don’t like they way you talk to your mother in-law, your wife, and I don’t like the way you’re raising the offspring.”

Did I change? Not until he got Parkinson’s and I volunteered to be his caregiver.

Then we were best friends.

Life is like that.

One day you’re a red flag, the next you’re the checkered flag waving in the win.