Green flags in a guy that still hold up at month six

There's a specific complaint that comes up constantly: he was great for three months and then something switched off.

Usually nothing switched off. The early behavior was effort, effort is expensive, and nobody spends at that rate forever. The question that matters isn't whether he's putting in effort now. It's whether what you're seeing is the kind of thing that survives comfort.

So here's the sorting. Not "good signs" versus "bad signs" — things that decay versus things that don't.

What decays

All of this is real. None of it predicts anything.

• Texting a lot. Volume in week two is availability, not interest. It drops for everyone.
• Big gestures. The nice restaurant, the thoughtful gift, the four-hour drive. These are effort, and effort is precisely the thing that normalizes.
• Constant compliments. Pleasant. Not information.
• Saying the right things about relationships. He can describe secure behavior fluently and not do any of it. Vocabulary is cheap now.
• Intensity. The most common misread. Someone who is extremely present in month one feels like proof, and it's the least predictive thing on the list, because you've only observed one month.

If your evidence is mostly on this list, you don't have green flags. You have a good start, which is a different thing.

What doesn't decay

These cost nothing to maintain, which is exactly why they last. They're also almost impossible to fake for long.

He's the same person in rooms you're not in. How he talks about his friends when they're not there. How he talks about his last relationship. How he treats a waiter on a bad day. None of this is aimed at you, which is what makes it worth reading.

He can be wrong out loud. "I was wrong" as a complete sentence, with no clause after it. Watch for the clause — "I was wrong, but you were also" is a different sentence with a different meaning.

A small no doesn't cost you anything. You decline something minor. He says okay and the temperature doesn't change. Test this early; it's one of the few real things visible in week one.

He has his own week. Friends he sees, things he does, a life that existed before you and still runs. The alternative feels flattering for about six weeks and then becomes your job.

Boring reliability. He does the same reasonable thing the eleventh time he did the first time. This is unglamorous, unpostable, and the entire point.

Repair works. Not "we don't fight." Fights end, and afterward things are actually fine, not quietly not-fine. This is the most informative thing you will ever observe, and you cannot observe it until it happens.

The one that's easy to miss

He changes something because of a thing you said.

Not a grand promise. Something small. You mentioned once that you hate being called at 11pm, and he stopped, and he never made it a conversation about how accommodating he was being.

That's the whole signal: he took in information about you and acted on it without charging you for the transaction. It's small, it's easy to miss, and it predicts more than anything else on this page.

Where this goes wrong

Two failure modes, both common.

Calling the absence of problems a green flag. "Doesn't yell." "Isn't jealous." Those are red flags that aren't there, and the floor not being broken says nothing about the building.

Judging too early. Most of what looks like a red flag at week three is a pace mismatch, and most of what looks like a green flag at week three is effort. Both readings are made on data you don't have yet. Three months is roughly when the picture stops being a guess — which is inconvenient, and also just how it works.

If you want the full version of both lists sorted by when each one becomes visible, that's here.