Why I Choose Green Flags Instead of Avoiding Red Flags

During my time on Fet, I’ve met three men I trusted implicitly before we’d met in person. I would let all three of them into my home without a stitch of fear. That means something because I don’t feel the need to look for red flags when a man has flown enough green flags to cover the surface of the moon. I knew I could trust my last top and the play partner who preceded him long before I’d ever spoken to their references.

I couldn’t always trust my own views on people. It took decades to set my intuition to a volume I could actually hear. I learned to trust my gut through violence. My mistakes cost me my body and, very nearly, my life.

My 20-something self was utterly certain about the men she trusted. She was clueless about predators, so she got it wrong many times. Those lessons gave birth to many horrors.

My 30-something self learned how to identify untrustworthy men. She just hadn’t learned to trust the cigarette burn slowly opening a hole in her heart. In that era, I realised I’d distrusted every man who had ever harmed me. I just didn’t know how to listen to my intuition.

First, I had to learn discernment.

Then I had to learn to trust that discernment.

Those two skills could only take me so far, though.

My forty-something self learned to stop accepting men on an opt-out basis. I had to stop looking for red flags and start looking for green ones instead. It’s a lot easier to identify good men than it is to identify evil ones, so now I’m in my third iteration, where I say “fuck no” to everyone who isn’t a “fuck, yes.”

This is how I connected with three good men: By listening to them when they showed me an absurd amount of integrity and compassion, even when there was nothing to gain from it.

Accepting men on an opt-out basis was hard work. Red flags were flying everywhere, and there weren’t enough hours in the day to see who was waving them. Reference checks took forever, and I often questioned my own judgement.

While I was wading through all of that wreckage, I noticed that good men proved their mettle all on their own. They didn’t require profound assessments. Their ethics leaked into everything they did. If I just paid attention to the good ones, I didn’t have to wade through a horde of potentials, so these days, I don’t look for fuck noes. I look for fuck yesses.

I haven’t experienced any horrors in eight years, and that’s why.