Never Date Any Man Without These Green Flags!!

He Has Staying Power

Picture guy number one. He's had one job, and over the course of his life he worked his way up the ladder. He started entry level, then after a couple of years he became a manager, then a director. That is staying power: the ability to stick with something through the ebbs and flows. Because a job is not always going to be amazing. Sometimes your boss frustrates you, sometimes your coworkers frustrate you, sometimes you get more work than you signed up for, sometimes people stab you in the back. The ability to stay with something despite it getting difficult directly relates to your relationship.

Now picture guy number two. He's had 10 jobs. Sometimes he gets fired, sometimes he just gets frustrated and quits. Every situation seems to be the wrong situation. Every circumstance seems to be the wrong circumstance. The moment anything gets hard, he goes, ah, I give up. That tells you something about the guy you're dating.

I want you to identify staying power in his job, his career, his passions, his hobbies, his friendships. Because your relationship is not going to be the most fun every day either, and you want a man who already has the skill of pushing through built in before he ever meets you.

Why Curiosity Is a Green Flag in a Man

You're probably wondering, why would I be purposely looking for a curious man? Because curiosity tells you his character. Let's say you're on a date and he tells you he always used to see millionaires driving down Rodeo Drive in Lamborghinis and Rolls-Royces, and he was curious how they got the money. So he started reading books about wealth, watching interviews, and then he realized where to put his energy: real estate, the stock market. His curiosity drove him to look for answers, and when he looked, he found some.

If a man doesn't have curiosity, he doesn't have a desire to learn. If he doesn't have a desire to learn, he doesn't have a desire to grow. And if he's not curious about life or about understanding himself, he's definitely not curious about understanding you. He'll never ask, how can I get better as a partner? How can things change and not stay the same?

People without curiosity never change because they don't even think a change needs to be made. And the first step to solving any problem in your relationship is being curious about why the problem is happening and how to fix it. Curiosity is a driving, motivating factor to take action. And what do you need in a man? A man who takes action.

He Has Empathy, and You Can Test It on a Date

Without empathy, you will struggle to feel seen and feel heard in your relationship. When your man has empathy, he can imagine what it's like to be in your shoes, and because of that, you get to feel seen. You can't think about your relationship only in its perfect state, where things are great with you and great with him. You have to think about your relationship as it will exist when things are not so great. A man with empathy can resolve conflict with you because he can say, even though I'm not the one feeling disrespected right now, even though I'm the one who hurt her, I can still feel her pain and take care of my woman.

Here's how you spot it early. You're at a dinner date and the restaurant is slammed, clearly understaffed, chaos in the kitchen. His meal comes out and the waiter forgot his hot sauce. Watch what he does. The empathetic man says, it's okay, the waiter is clearly stressed and running around, I'll just mention it when he comes back. He knows what it's like to be in that waiter's shoes, so he can be forgiving of the situation.

That is exactly the empathy you want, because it directly correlates to his ability to resolve conflict with you. If a man can't put himself in anyone's shoes but his own, resolving conflict with him will feel like pulling teeth.

He Has Real Friends Who Can Vouch for Him

I'm not talking about casual acquaintances who know his name. I'm talking about people he's actually close to who will vouch for his character. Ideally, they all describe him the same way, even his flaws. Because what you're really checking is consistency: is the man he is around you the same man he is away from you? When everyone in his life tells the same story about him, it becomes a lot more obvious when a man is putting up a front, whether that's to sleep with you quickly or to disguise who he really is.

Now, I know what some of you will say. Come on, be for real, not everyone has friends. What if he's a homebody? Listen to me: when a grown man has no real friendships, that is a bad sign, even if he's not doing it on purpose. It means no one can vouch for him, so you're taking him entirely at his word about who he is.

It also usually means he finds it very difficult to connect with people. As adults grow, join communities, and work jobs, the natural occurrence is to build bonds. If a man who has been alive 25, 30, 40 years has built no connections of any depth, he does not have staying power in his relationships, even the platonic ones. So what do you think that says about his ability to maintain a romantic relationship with you?

He Shows Growth Over Time

There's nothing wrong with a man going through tough times. We all go down bad sometimes. But when you listen to him talk about his life, you want to hear a graph that trends upward over time. Growth in his career, growth in his friendships, growth in his relationships. Growth sounds like this: at that time in my life, I didn't understand how the way I acted was affecting my relationships. Now that I've experienced it, I know how to correct it. Or, I kept getting denied that promotion until I came up with an idea they couldn't ignore.

A man with no growth just goes up and down, up and down, without ever making changes, because he doesn't feel he needs to. If someone talks about their problems as if they have no plan and no desire to solve them, you're dealing with someone who has no desire to grow. And if a man is not growing anywhere in his own life, what makes you think he's going to grow with you in a relationship? He won't.

He Actually Desires a Wife, Not a Distraction

You can meet the same man at two different points in his life and have completely different outcomes, because men have to come to a point where they say, I've done what I needed to do, I'm in the position I want to be in, and the next step for me is to find the woman I'll marry, the mother of my children. That internal desire is what progresses a relationship forward. Not you pushing, not you begging. Him wanting it for his own life.

And no, not every man on a date with you has that desire. A lot of men come on dates with a lot of different motives: a distraction, a time waster. You have to sit back and allow those men to tell on themselves.

Here's the trick. You've probably asked, what are you looking for? And every guy says something serious, because he's anticipating that's what you want to hear. Ask the direct question, you get the fake answer. Ask the indirect question, you get the real one. Ask him what his plan is for the next 5 to 10 years, how he wants to be living, what he wants his life to look like. If settling down with one woman is not part of his own picture of his own future, there's your answer.

He Has Purpose, Because Purpose Gives Him Direction

If a man is void of purpose, he'll be void of direction. Picture a car going down a road toward a destination. The car is action, the man is the driver, the road is the journey. When a man understands why he's here, what he's meant to be doing, and how he's meant to serve the world with his skill sets, he becomes predictable in the best way. He'll be in the places that serve his purpose, working on the things that serve his purpose, taking action because it serves his purpose.

Why does that matter for you? Because a man without purpose is unpredictable. He's the guy who wakes up one day after 2, 3, 4 years and says, you know what, I've decided none of this is what I want anymore, I'm going to be single and move to Australia. And you're left going, wait, what just happened? How did we go from so good to you wanting something completely different? It happens because nothing was keeping him aligned to any journey. He had no real destination.

A sense of purpose keeps a man focused on one destination, and that lets you decide for yourself: I like where you're trying to go, I want to join you on this journey. You can trust who he'll be next year, because he's still heading the same way.