42 Women Share Extremely Specific Red Flags They Learned Because Of Their Exes

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' (tm) 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.

I only went on one date with this guy but he had tattoos of luxury brand logos. Like the Mercedes car logo. And stacks of cash.

Abort!!!!!

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 wouldn’t watch movies/tv shows or read books with a female protagonist because he said women aren’t engaging or interesting
2. He said women shouldn’t be comedians because we’re inherently unfunny
3. If we were watching tv and there was a kissing or love scene, he’d aggressively kiss me to make sure that I wasn’t watching ‘another man.’

Ew! So misogynistic.

Fortunately, I got out pretty soon after these things came to light… 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.

He believed in dragons. Swore they were real and walked the earth. Not dinosaurs, but dragons. Also anti-vax. (Not uber religious either, so not sure where these ideas came from).

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.

“I don’t need friends.” Meanwhile complaining that he’s lonely because I’m not filling my niches in his life correctly.

He sent pics of women he considered hot to his mother for her thoughts.

About 2 years into the relationship, I noticed that I started getting hives and rashes whenever I slept at his place. I am a very allergic person so just chocked it up to seasonal/dust etc. but he was pretty clean overall so it had me wondering…

Then, it somehow came up organically that he had never washed or changed his duvet cover since he’d lived in that apartment. He didn’t wash his duvet cover for 2 YEARS. I was so disgusted, already pretty unhappy in the relationship and that was a nail in the coffin for me.

AND THEN… a memory from early on in our relationship came up and haunted me. Our first ever fight happened when after [sleeping] in my bed, instead of getting up to get a towel or something to clean himself, he wiped his junk on MY freshly washed duvet cover. I was horrified, had to strip and wash it again obviously and got super pissed at him. He played it off like it was spontaneous and he wasn’t thinking straight, but was super defensive about it.

I’m now horrified thinking I was sleeping in a crusty duvet at his place. I want to throw up just thinking about it 🤢

No wonder I was getting hives and rashes from his bed. He suffered from frequent skin infections too.

This man was 27 years old….

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 wasn’t 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 they’re star bits that crashed on earth from outer space. We’d been talking about how his brother bought his fiance a lab-grown diamond and how he would never do that, doesn’t understand why they’re such ethical hippies and what’s 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 didn’t 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 weren’t as much of a red flag as the fact that he took his mom’s 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 couldn’t help but assume committing to the guy would mean deferring to his mom’s opinions about everything. Obviously no way to have confirmed those anxieties, but I wasn’t 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 couldn’t get a grocery bag

I was already pretty close to breaking up with him but wanted one last convo Hail Mary if you will. We were grocery shopping. He is paying for it since we are cooking at his. Lady asks “would you like a bag?” He looks at me and I just look back at him like “dude idk what you want?” He confused says “yeah sure”

As we get out to the parking lot I get scolded “ you know I have a hard time talking to people why couldn’t you just answer?” “ answer what?” I had no clue what he was talking about. “The bag. I don’t want to talk to strangers or just random people.” “It’s the most common question every time you shop. You don’t need me for that”

it was right there I realized he became codependent on me doing even the most minuet little things. Mind you I wasn’t medicated prior for a sleeping issue or ADHD. I swear that lifted the fog and let me see SO many red flags I didn’t earlier.

Also the man was in his late 30’s just to add to it.

He liked to break social norms to make everyone around him uncomfortable. He liked to watch them squirm trying to play off what he’d 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 we’re out at a fancy restaurant for my birthday and he’s 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.