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People agree these 19 things are weirdly romanticized, but are actually huge red flags

"The idea of someone cheating on their spouse to pursue you. How is that romantic? Please be serious."

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One person's romantic is another person's cringe.

We all love a good love story. The grand gestures, the unbridled spontaneity, and those "against all odds” moments that give relationships a dose of movie magic are everything. But, sometimes, the things we’ve been taught to swoon over—whether that be due to pop culture or more overarching societal trends—are actually pretty toxic when you stop to think about them.

Recently, someone asked folks to share their own examples of behaviors that are “weirdly romanticized” but are actually major red flags once you look past the glossy surface, and honestly, it’s eye-opening.

Here are some of the most surprising (and perhaps unsettling) examples they shared. One major category belonged to those tropes we see in many, many television shows, movies, and even songs…

1. "Having someone who is completely obsessed with you."

dating, modern dating, dating apps, romance, romance tips, relationships, relationship red flags, relationship green flagsmedia1.giphy.com

2. "Enemies to lovers. It's cute in theory, but how can you be with someone when you know all the disgusting things they've said about you before your relationship?"

3. "I used to love the 'asshole-to-everyone-except-you' trope until he started being an asshole to my friends. Some tropes are meant to stay fictional."

4. "The 'I'm just a girl' trend and other TikTok trends that are used to deflect any accountability or responsibility as an adult human being."

dating, modern dating, dating apps, romance, romance tips, relationships, relationship red flags, relationship green flagsmedia4.giphy.com

5. "The idea of someone cheating on their spouse to pursue you. How is that romantic? Please be serious."

6. "Pressuring someone to hurry up and put a ring on it."

Two people brought differing, yet equally important views on work/love life balance.

7. "Sacrificing your professional or personal life to pursue someone."

8. "Honestly, I think we conflate hard work with unhealthy boundaries between the self and career, and we romanticize working overtime, long shifts, and doing excessive tasks as a display of personal growth. We've manipulated ourselves into feeling that giving our time to pursue our work is noble. I'm saying this as a student in medicine, where hours are absolutely wild. I know I'll work my hardest, but I won't sacrifice my sense of self and my time to eke out my own passions and life just to get ahead in my career track. At least, I hope I don't lose sight of myself in the pursuit of following my dreams. It can be really hard not to notice that that's where you're headed until you've already sacrificed so much."

How folks handle—or don’t handle—conflict also was a major red flag.

9. "Not being confrontational. Needless confrontation is bad, but sometimes, you do need to confront someone."

10. "Fighting all the time. No, it doesn't mean that your relationship is 'passionate.' It means that you're probably incompatible and shouldn't be together."

dating, modern dating, dating apps, romance, romance tips, relationships, relationship red flags, relationship green flagsmedia.giphy.com

Finally, this category belongs to things that many people think often carry a hidden warning, even if they seem workable, even harmless, at first.

11. "I knew a girl whose boyfriend went everywhere with her. He wouldn't let her go anywhere if he weren't there, and she thought it was cute how 'possessive' he was over her. It thoroughly icked me out when she told me. Like, that is not healthy at all."

12. "Being a 'free spirit.' Like, there's a gray area, but there's a time and place to be inhibited and misbehave. Not following rules in public settings because you're 'free' gets old really fast."

13. "Being the charismatic 'heavy drinker' in friend groups. Goes for men and women."

14. "When people say things like, 'He's just broken,' as if it's something romantic. Having pain doesn't justify cruelty, and loving someone shouldn't mean bleeding just to make them feel whole."

15. "People who brag about not being interested in reading or learning. Here in the US, there is a huge anti-curiosity or anti-intellect movement, and people will literally brag about being ignorant."

16. "Being over controlling. My coworker thinks it's adorable when they say stuff like, 'My husband would kill me if I got a tattoo there!' Gross. Sorry that your husband is so fragile."

17. "People who constantly post about their partner. It's not romantic, it's performative. Real love doesn't need a PR campaign."

18. "'Traditional values.'"

dating, modern dating, dating apps, romance, romance tips, relationships, relationship red flags, relationship green flagsmedia3.giphy.com

Lastly, perhaps the oldest red flag in the book…

19. "The idea that playing games or being 'hard to get' in a cruel way will make their crush or interest want them more."

Note the one gesture that no one mentioned as un-romantic: flowers. Just sayin'.

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Culture

Philosophy expert shares the 'simple but profound rule' to tell if someone is a good or bad person

It comes down to a specific type of kindness.

via Canva/Photos and G.Meiners/Wikimedia Commons

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and a scene at a restaurant.

Have you ever met somebody new and wondered if they were a good person with a mischievous streak or a bad person who can turn on the charm and behave occasionally? Determining someone’s true moral character is important, especially if you start dating them or have a business relationship. It is crucial to get to the core of who they are and know whether they can be trusted.

Popular TikTok philosopher and Substack writer Juan de Medeiros recently shared a great way to determine whether someone is good or bad. His rubric for judging someone’s moral character comes from a quote commonly attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German poet, playwright, novelist, and intellectual known for works like Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther.

How can you tell if someone is a good or a bad person?

“Here's a pretty good indicator that somebody is a bad person and vice versa, how you can spot a good one. And this goes back to a simple rule, a moral aphorism by Goethe in which he writes, ‘Never trust someone who is unkind to those who can do nothing for him,’” de Medeiros shared in a TikTok video with over 45,000 views.

“Never trust someone who is unkind to those who can do nothing for him,” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

@julianphilosophy

Good vs. bad #good #bad #wisdom

De Medeiros then provided real-world ways to determine whether the person you have questions about is good or bad. “A bad person is unfriendly to strangers, to the elderly, to children, to service staff, to anybody they're not trying to impress,” he said. At the same time, the good person treats people equally, no matter what they can do for him. They’re good for goodness sake, not to get anything out of it.

“A good person carries grace within them and shares it freely with abundance. A good person treats other people as they would like to be treated as well. And it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what your status is, they will treat you and see you as their equal,” de Medeiros said.


What is 'The Waiter Rule'?

Goethe’s quote echoes the common red/green flag test that many people have on dates. Sure, it's important if your date is courteous and treats you well on the date, but you really want to watch how they interact with the server. The rule is often called “The Waiter Rule,” outlined by William Swanson. Swanson, the former chairman and CEO of Raytheon Company, wrote in his book, 33 Unwritten Rules of Management, "A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter—or to others—is not a nice person." Boxer Muhammad Ali is also known for saying something similar: "I don't trust anyone who's nice to me but rude to the waiter. Because they would treat me the same way if I were in that position."


Rudeness toward the waitstaff also indicates that the person isn’t very smart. It’s not wise to be rude to someone who is in charge of your meal for the night.

Conversely, a good person is kind to others without looking for anything in return because they want to spread joy and believe that others deserve respect. You are what you do, not what you think or believe, and when someone treats others with goodness, it's a clear indicator of the type of person they are.

In the end, we are all a mixed bag of behaviors and attitudes, and even the most perfect of us has a devil on their shoulder telling them that it’s okay to occasionally get into a bit of mischief. However, when it comes down to determining someone's core character, how they treat those who can do nothing for them says everything.

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Love Stories

Woman who was chastised for being excited about first date shares inspiring update

"Every day this man reminds me that I made the right decision putting on my dress to impress him."

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Woman chastised for excitement about date has inspiring update.

Everyone has their own dating preferences, which is a good thing because everybody looking for the same type of person would get pretty boring (and competitive). But with all the dating gurus and armchair experts on the subject, it can feel like there's no winning at this dating game. One dating influencer says women should never make the first move but another says that women who make the first move are the gold standard.

Chances are if one person has an opinion on something there's another so-called expert with the exact opposite opinion. One woman found herself staring down a slew of negative comments after she innocently shared a video about preparing for her first date with a man. Yaya, who runs the social media account, Past Perfect with Yaya recently updated her followers about that unexpectedly controversial date.

In order to understand why the update was so significant, we first have to revisit why the first date garnered such negative reactions. Yaya shares a brief recap in her update saying, "I made a video saying I met a man on a dating app and he told me he made me reservations at an Italian restaurant and I said I don't eat Italian food, or I don't prefer it rather, but please keep the reservations because nobody has made reservations like that for me in a while. Just made the plans."

couple, dating, relationships, couples, first date, datesCouple lounging on the hood of a car. Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

This is the bit that seemed to send the Internet armchair experts into a tizzy. She explains that so many people made fun of her and told her that she was the reason the bar was so low for men among other unkind comments. The entire situation Yaya described appears to be people who found time to be unnecessarily rude to someone who was simply excited to go out on a date with a man who thought enough to make reservations at a nice restaurant.

The woman who was surely confused by people's reactions could've listened to the naysayers. Yaya could've cancelled the date or decided not to go back out with the man when the date was over due to other people's opinions on what constituted a proper date. Instead, she went with her gut and got all gussied up to meet the guy who was considerate enough to make reservations for her even before he knew her favorite food.

dates, dating, nice restaurant, first date, relationships, Woman wearing black sweater holding hand with man wearing gray suit jacket. Photo by René Ranisch on Unsplash

"Well, I'm still with that man," she reveals. "Here we are three years later. We have traveled to many countries, many cities, many roadtrips. We've lived in different houses and done different things."

Had she listened to the people putting her down for the excitement she was feeling at the time, she would've missed out on what appears to be a great relationship.

"Everyday this man reminds me that I made the right decision by putting on my dress to impress him. And that had I listened to them I would not be living in Santa Barbara, California right now with the man I'm about to go to Turkey with, that just went to the store and bought me lipstick," Yaya says.

She explains that she's obsessed with a particular lipstick and noticed stores were no longer stocking them, so when her partner went to the drug store to pick up some sleeping medicine, he saw they had the lipstick she likes and grabbed it for her. That's it. It was a simple gesture of consideration, the same consideration he showed by making the reservation for their first date.

Yaya ends the video by saying, "Don't let these people convince you that your love should be according to their definition. You love and be loved according to your soul and your spirit and your heart. We are still together almost three years later all because I got excited that he made reservations for dinner and he has made me excited about life ever since."

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Mental Health

Guy's brutally honest breakup text goes viral and reminds everyone that 'ghosting' isn't cool

This is the ideal example of how to let someone down easy.

via Shuttershock

Ghosting just isn't okay.

All too often, people leave a date with no idea how the other person feels about them. And if you're not into the other person, it can be stressful trying to gauge how they feel about the situation and ultimately what you should do moving forward.

Should you go ahead and have another date to see if something blossoms? Will it come across as presumptuous to let them down? If they're not into you either, will they make you feel stupid for laying out the reasons you don't want to go out again? Or is it leading someone on to stay mum about the lack of connection?

While there's no easy way to navigate letting a date down, avoiding these awkward conversations oftentimes results in the awful trend of ghosting, which leaves one person completely in the emotional lurch.

Ghosting may sound harmless at first, but it's actually a harmful (and totally lame) way to treat another person. It's especially gross when you consider that this other person is someone you invested time in and who invested time in you. Even if there was no spark or connection on one end, ghosting is essentially like throwing the other person away and acting as if they don't matter. There are many reasons why someone might ghost, but when you poke at them enough, they really don't hold any water. In an article for Psychology Today, Janneke M. Schokkenbroek, Ph.D., gives several reasons for why people ghost. Number one? Convenience.

ghosting, ghosted, dating, relationships, communication I Love You Lol GIF by LifetimeGiphy

Sure, it may be convenient to walk away from a situation and pretend it no longer exists, but this bit of convenience can be extremely damaging for the person on the receiving end. In fact, a lot of research has come out in the last several years outlining the harmful affects of ghosting on the mental health of both parties. Unfortunately, since ghosting is so common, it's rare to see healthy emotional rejection modeled online. In 2019, though, Reddit user karmabandido's shared a breakup text he sent to his date that quickly went viral for its honesty and clarity.


text, honesty, ghosting, dating, relationshipsA masterclass is classy dating.Via Reddit

This is an ideal example of how to let someone down easy. He was polite, respectful, and transparent about how feelings, wants, and needs. He didn't ghost her—but he also didn't mince words about the lack of connection.

In return, she was able to reveal that she felt the same way and they were able to avoid further awkward interactions without negging or having to resort to ghosting.

Bottom line: ghosting isn't nice and it isn't cool. Instead, be honest, open, and respectful because it treats other people with dignity. It may be hard, but kindly and clearly saying how you feel is the right thing to do, people appreciate it, and it goes a long way.

modern dating, dating, ghost, ghosting, ghosted, communication A little respect goes a long way.Image via Canva

This article was originally published six years ago. It has been updated.

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