Green flags

Green flags are the observable behaviours and patterns that indicate someone is a genuinely healthy prospect — not just an appealing one. They include consistency between words and actions, emotional availability and honesty, respect for your boundaries without being asked twice, genuine curiosity about who you are rather than the version of you they would like you to be, and a capacity to handle disagreement without contempt or avoidance. They are the opposite of warning signs, and they are evidence-based: these are the behaviours that relationship science links to the foundations of lasting, satisfying partnerships.

The difficulty with green flags on swipe-first apps is that the early environment is curated for impression management. Almost everyone leads with their best self in the first few weeks; the behaviours that constitute genuine green flags — consistency over time, real emotional availability, honest communication under pressure — are largely invisible until the initial performance fades. Photo-first apps, which reduce matching to snap judgements, give you almost no signal on any of it. You collect the appearance of compatibility, not its substance.

Lamp's matching shifts the starting conditions. When two people meet on the basis of demonstrated personality, shared values and aligned goals — not just a face and a handful of sentences — the green flag behaviours have a real foundation to emerge from. A person who values honesty and was matched because of it is more likely to display it from the first conversation. Compatibility-first matching does not manufacture green flags, but it raises the likelihood that the person you are meeting has them — because those values were part of why they were introduced to you.