12 DATING RED FLAGS

Here's an interesting piece!

Ladies and gentlemen, please read Michael Shnayerson’s 12-step program for avoiding romantic tragedy: the relationship red flags. The heart you save may be your own.

Not long ago, I met a very attractive single mother of two at a dinner party in Sag Harbor, New York. We were seated next to each other-a "soft" setup-and by dessert, we were punctuating our stories with little touches: her hand on my forearm, mine on hers. Good signs.
Then the first of her two children, a boy of about ten, descended from an upstairs TV room. In each hand he clutched an action figure. This in itself was not disconcerting. It was the way he slammed the action figures into each other, his upper lip curled in a sneer, that gave me pause-that, and the adoring look his mother chose to bestow on him as he did.
Still, D-, the boy's mother, was definitely worth a follow-up. A few days later, I drove over to the waterfront inn where she had encamped with her children for a brief summer vacation. The plan was a swim in the inn's pool, then lunch at a nearby restaurant: a little ersatz family outing. D- ushered me into her room and announced the obvious fact of my arrival to her children.
Neither the boy nor his sister, two years older, looked over from the droning television. Not a word emanated from either one's lips. D- told them to turn off the television and change into their swimsuits. They ignored her. So D- pretended she hadn't asked them, and went into the bedroom to change. Only when the grownups started to leave did the children drag themselves, sluglike, behind us.
Lunch was worse
The swim was bad enough, with both children glowering at the grownups from their pool chairs. But lunch was worse. No sooner had the waiter taken our order than the girl seized one of the action figures from her brother's fist and threw it across the restaurant. The boy screamed in outrage, hit his sister with the other action figure, then ran over to get the first one so he could hit her with that, too. As the sister returned fire with her fists, I turned to see what D- would do. "Now, come on, children," she said gently, lovingly, pleadingly. "Now, come on ...."
I did ask her out on one more date, hoping her demon children would be more agreeable.
Ten years (and one marriage) ago, I would have excused all this somehow, put it aside, and pressed on with a next date, because the mother, after all, was hot. No more. Well, all right, to be perfectly honest, I did ask her out on one more date, hoping her demon children would be more agreeable in their city home. They weren't. So that was that. After decades of ignoring red flags, only to sail into disaster each time, I've finally realized that no matter how gorgeous and alluring the new stranger is, you have to quit when a red flag goes up. As soon as it goes up.

Full article here Meow.