More general red flags about women who cannot pair bond. Women are unable to pair bond for various reasons. A history of rampant promiscuity is the most obvious and common explanation. Another explanation may be psychopathic tendencies, personality disorders, mental illness, etc.
Her level of engagement should match her [verbally] articulated level of interest. If she claims to be interested, but her level of engagement doesn’t match this, then she is not interested, or she is interested cognitively but is not capable of emotionally backing it up because she cannot meaningfully attach or pair bond.
Her relationship history, whether with men prior to you, or with her family. If she has two brothers, two sisters, a living father, a living mother, and three living grandparents, and she is disowned by all of them and doesn’t speak to any except one brother, and this doesn’t seem to bother her, or she shrugs it off, something is SERIOUSLY wrong. We ALL have that ONE family member that we simply cannot get along with, that is to be expected, and it should cause a certain level of dissatisfaction or a bit of bother. If that ONE family member winds up being MOST or ALL family members, and there is no bother over it, this is a HUGE RED FLAG, it suggests she does not attach the way others attach and perhaps she doesn’t have a full normal range of emotions and simply doesn’t care that the majority of her immediate family doesn’t interact with her. A normal person, especially a woman, is usually going to be devastated or have serious trauma from being cut-off or cold-shouldered by the majority of the people closest to her. If she has a “meh, whatever” attitude and actually means it, then something is seriously wrong.
Somebody who moved away from their home city at age 18, never looked back, never hesitated, never went back, and isn’t bothered to be away from all of their childhood friends, their immediate family, etc., it is probably because they likely had few [or no] childhood friends, and they don’t really care about their family because never attached to them in any real capacity.
Somebody who never tells you “oh my God I just heard the most amazing joke from my best friend, Sally told me…” because she doesn’t have best friends because she has no friends. If you are engaging with a woman and there is back and forth banter, a series of dates, or correspondence, if it goes on for a few weeks and she never mentions a friend [by name], never mentions an immediate family member, never mentions somebody sharing a joke with her, she is NOT normal.
You send her a picture of yourself with two cats or a dog in the background or while you’re holding a cat, and she does not ask the names of the animals. I consider this an indicator that she is either socially very awkward or has at least a few psychopathic personality traits. She doesn’t have the sort of emotional empathy that would lead a normal person to realizing, “oh, this person has animals and cares about them, I should ask him their names and share some information about my pet.”
You tell her that your dog or cat is sick and you are taking them to the animal clinic, she doesn’t ask what the pet’s name is, what they are sick with, and there is never any follow up to ask if they got better. Normal people who are capable of forming attachments to other human beings will also form attachments to animals and basic empathy and even social etiquette would result in asking about somebody’s sick or injured pet.
Somebody who does not have a pet and has never had a pet, I consider this an “inability to attach” red flag. They don’t attach to animals and probably won’t ever be able to meaningfully attach to people.
Somebody who doesn’t know what love is, and is asking strangers, “is he really in love with me?” or “what is love?” or “how do I know if somebody loves me?” or “how do I know what love is?” they are asking because they have no frame of reference, they lack the capacity for emotional empathy and at best they have cognitive empathy, they cannot describe love or understand love because they are not capable of feeling love.
People on Quora asking, “does he really love me?” or “how do I know if I love him?” or “what does love feel like?” are throwing up HUGE RED FLAGS.
It takes me about 10–20 hours of close personal interaction or in-depth correspondence to get a read on somebody sufficient to tell you, “this person is incapable of meaningfully attaching to another human being.” I can predict that with reasonable accuracy.
I have on occasion encountered women who were clearly high-functioning and had elements of psychopathic personality or who had obvious issues with attachment and bonding. They were cognitively interested but clearly had no emotional ability to back up their interest and it was clear [to me] that they lacked what I would label the “full range of normal human emotions.” I got the idea that the empathy was non-existent and the sympathy was something that they put on as a matter of what they knew was expected of them socially, but it was insincere and disingenuous, at least I spotted it as such [I tend to be an expert at spotting these things- because I grew up with a histrionic narcissistic mother and learned to spot a lack of empathy and an actress when I see one].
You just get the idea that even if the person is a decent person or looks good on paper, there is really something off with her, her life story just doesn’t make sense and doesn’t match up with what seems to be going on. I don’t mean she is pretending to be a doctor at 22 and you cannot figure out how a 22 year old finished medical school and a residency, I mean she is 24–25, could moonlight as a model, has a bachelor of arts in philosophy and a bachelor of science in economics from Yale, she interned with the FTC or the CIA for a summer, she works in the corporate headquarters of a Fortune 500 and she claims to want to be married and have a family but she is still single and may very well have been single the majority of her adult life, and she just never seems able to make anything click with any man, the connection just never happens anywhere with anybody. She is surrounded by successful men and constantly interacts with them, but nothing ever happens and no lasting relationship forms anywhere with anyone. That is a red flag.
Any woman aged 28-32 years old who is surrounded by highly successful men and claims to really want marriage and children, but has never made anything happen with some virtuous man she among the ranks she finds herself surrounded by, either is a total mess or simply doesn't truly want marriage and children.
