Should I have married my husband? Red flag culture would say no

Anyone who has walked down an aisle or stood under a 50-year-old gum to affirm a legally binding, lifelong pact has probably asked themselves at some point in the intervening years: “Should I have done that?″⁣

It’s normal to question the big stuff. Hell, these days it’s pretty standard to spend up to an hour researching which bar to meet at. Interestingly, last week I found myself doing both. Shortly after clinking glasses with a long-time single girlfriend, our power catch-up turned to her dating life. She had doubts about her 12-month-on-and-off-again relationship, but rather than the usual suspects – “How do you really know?” or “Am I settling?” – she ended nearly every anecdote with: “Isn’t that a red flag though?”

She had me stumped. Her list read more like a series of innocuous gripes, and most of it could have been pulled directly from my first year of dating my husband. Is bad grammar a red flag? The fact that he’s living at home? His total lack of social media presence? If they are, my wedding day might have been a big whoopsie.

The pandemic years offered up spikes in both the labelling of friends as “toxic” if they so much as forgot our Zoom birthday drinks, and in diagnosing ex-partners as “narcissists” when they were really just egotistical, and selfish in bed.

Now, we’ve got “relationship experts” on TikTok collectively racking up more than 200 million views cautioning those on the dating scene to pack up and run if their Tinder date shows up late or happens to glance down at their phone. Each week we have a new listicle like this recent guide providing no fewer than 60 different red flags to watch for in men. It’s good to have high standards for human behaviour, but crikey, are we leaving any room for being human?

I’m not saying I have a perfect marriage, but it’s pretty bloody good, and I definitely wouldn’t have one to speak of if I’d followed the advice of modern dating influencers. Actually, I probably would have ditched my now husband and partner of 13 years after our second date.

So, if you’re finding the online dating landscape more of a hellscape, you would not be in the minority and you’re likely not the problem. I think our cultural fixation on spotting “red flags” might be ruining your chance at love.

It’s not just the rigorous performance evaluation you’re expected to perform after each encounter with a potential romantic partner that’s, forgive me, raising “red flags” here. It’s that some of the things on those lists peddled as “obvious” warning signs have become the things I love most about my husband now.

On our first date, he tragically underplayed his ambition – he told me he lived at home and was plodding along through a carpentry apprenticeship. A bit of a red flag? Actually, no. He had saved up almost enough to buy an apartment and already had plans in the works to start a now thriving building company of his own. His allergy to arrogance and reluctance to brag is still one of the things I admire most about him.

Here’s the thing: red flag culture is arguably born out of an important and age-old practice of whisper networks used by vulnerable populations. We rely on the evolution of shorthand for communicating important things, and honestly, at a time when Australian women are being killed at a rate higher than one per week, we desperately need some kind of warning system. But we need one that’s fit for purpose, not one that will encourage us to ghost a Hinge date after they refuse to share their Instagram password.

It’s important to be able to spot signs that a dude’s a bit dodgy, and yes, there are toxic people and narcissists out there. But when we go about applying these terms as liberally as Gen-Zers use the word “slay” (on the train yesterday, I counted six distinct slays in one run-on sentence), they lose all true meaning.

The truth is, when people show you who they are, you should pay attention. But you can’t do that if you’re too distracted by deciding whether his decision not to foot the dinner bill is feminist or just cheap.

As for my marriage, well, it’s probably the only thing I’m positive I’ve done right in my silly little life to date. Not least because it resulted in the birth of an incredible kid and an even more incredible Dad.

Mr and Mrs Green Flag.

I don’t want to over-sell the guy; he still has an utterly appalling grasp on grammar, and he sometimes says “contempt” when he means “content”. But I kind of love that he asks to run important email drafts past me before sending them to his clients. I don’t want my single girlfriends to be told it’s not okay to be with a whole person, replete with flaws and flags coloured red, green and beige.

When I told my husband I was writing an article about why I probably shouldn’t have married him, he simply said, “Hah, cool.” Grammar aside, the man’s a walking green flag.

Hannah Vanderheide is a freelance health writer and actor based in Victoria.

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