Green Flags: A Theory

What makes a man ostensibly unproblematic?

Yesterday my husband and I bought a new car. The experience could not have been more unlike the experience we had the first time we tried to do this. The Toyota salesperson, named Steve, shook both of our hands and smiled at us both equally. He inquired about our recent trip and talked about his previous life in New York City. He assumed I would have my name on the paperwork right along with Daniel’s. He didn’t blanch when Daniel gave me carte blanche during the discussion of an extended warranty, turning to tell Steve: “After all, it’s Kate’s money.”

Reader, we bought the car. And the real green flag about Steve that sold us on it—and him—was interestingly revealing. During a week when we celebrate the arrest of Andrew Tate, a misogynist who around one third of adolescent boys currently approve of, I think we could all use a simple and unified, if slightly counter-intuitive, theory of the green flags that tell you whether a young man is prima facie trustworthy.