This story aired in the February 12, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
Before we venture into celebrating Valentine’s Day, we wanted to get a little advice…
Marriage and family therapist Sinead Smyth discusses the characteristics that research shows are often present in healthier romantic relationships. And Bay Area residents around Oakland’s Lake Merritt share their thoughts on romance.
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Story Transcript:
REPORTER: On a beautiful evening near sunset, I went to Lake Merritt and asked folks who were walking or picnicking about their ideas on romantic love. I started with the easy question.
REPORTER: Have you ever heard of relationship red flags?
DWIGHT TUCKER: … As you grow older, you know what you don’t want – so that’s a “red flag.”
PRISCILLA: I think a red flag is when they don’t respect your time — and if they don’t keep their promises, and keep doing the same thing over and over again.
JENNIFER: …A yellow / red flag for me is they’re not kind to strangers, or like service workers…
ROBI GHOSHAL-DATTA: I would say...over...over-controlling or, like, manipulative type of things...If you're not communicative...
ELIJAH SHAW: ...If you can't take accountability, then it's like... Why are we in this, you know?
GABBY: … Just a general lack of consideration for another person. Like, you can notice that pretty early on…
REPORTER: And after all the posts about red flags I’ve seen on social media, I was kind of surprised that a lot of people here at the lake had “green flags” of their own to share, too.
JIM GONZALEZ: …I think a "green flag" is when you get super excited and stoked to still hang out with the same person and just do nothing — or just be bored together.
JENNIFER: …If I'm around someone where I'm comfortable enough to just say anything at the top of my head, like even if it's, like, something crazy or silly, um, or doesn't make sense...
DANE: Humor....My parents are still together now after, I think, 38 years. And yeah, they just love laughing all the time....
LUCILLE SERWA: I think being willing to adapt to ever-changing situations…
JOHN SERWA: Yeah, take one thing at a time...And we'll see what happens.
JAMES: …Take a second to think about what you're saying and who you're saying it to...
ELIJAH: …having shared values. Because, like, you could be good with a person, but...if your values are not aligned, then it's not going to work.
REPORTER: To me, these all sounded like great things to look for in relationships. But I wanted to take these responses to a professional — someone who’s actually been working with couples and researching relationships. Local marriage and family therapist Sinead Smyth has been doing this for decades
REPORTER: Do you have any thoughts on these?
SINEAD: I think that is the wisdom of Lake Merritt! I mean... I'm like, yeah, ticking them off as you're going through them. Yeah, they're all really... positive.
REPORTER: Sinead’s first career was as a lawyer working on divorce and child custody mediation. But she decided she wanted to focus on helping families through counseling. Now, she’s with the Gottman Institute, a research and counseling organization that focuses on relationships.
I came here to ask Sinead about the responses from people at Lake Merritt — but also about what I was noticing on social media. Is our society just more knowledgeable about red flags?
REPORTER: …Do more people know what to avoid rather than what to look for, or what to gravitate toward?
SINEAD: I mean, there's probably a lot of pieces to that. One is that negativity holds more force than positivity. So, you know, it's easier to say that's a "red flag" than that's a "green flag."
REPORTER: It's easy to say, "I don't date liars..."
SINEAD: ...That's a clearer "red flag" than somebody who is nice to waiters is a "green flag." For most of us, that's the way our brains sort of process, you know, negativity and positivity.
REPORTER: For example, Sinead tells me about studies done with real-life couples, where researchers went into their homes:
SINEAD: ...And what they saw was even in the relationships that were struggling, there was a lot of positive things happening, but the partners don't recognize it...And I think sometimes I see that with couples, too. If you ask them, you know, what went well this week, they might start talking about one thing that went well – but then straight away they're into a number of different things that didn't work.
REPORTER: But when it comes to looking for what does work in relationships? Sinead says, having good role models helps.
SINEAD: Partners who are each coming from kind of a emotionally healthy family are probably going to have a better shot at a healthier partnership.
REPORTER: But, she says, for her, those models don't have to come from your family. And that's exactly what I heard from some people at Lake Merritt, too — like this musician named Gabby.
GABBY: My music mentors were people that really took a deep interest in me. That’s kind of how I learned to reflect that love back on people in my own life… Like, how are you? How are you struggling with life? And doing well in life? And how can I help you progress in your goals?
REPORTER: Dwight Tucker is a retiree who sells plants and pictures around the lake on weekends. He says it was a neighbor who showed him what it meant to be cared about.
DWIGHT: We were San Francisco kids, and living in Bayview Hunters Point. But they’d take us up to Isleton... We learned how to swim, and things like that. Or she'd take us to Golden Gate Park — my parents did that also... But these were in my formative years, and I was able to apply that later on... You know, you kind of remember a person that really helped you grow and... learning more about yourself.
REPORTER: Lucille Serwa has lived in the Bay Area with her husband for the past 60 years. She says it was her religious community that showed her how to build a strong and healthy relationship.
LUCILLE: I think, because we were married in the Catholic Church, there was a large contingent and support. And there was a lot of examples of people who stayed married — didn't get divorced...
REPORTER: Listening to these interviews from Lake Merritt, therapist Sinead Smyth says these people are touching on the three most important qualities that couples in healthier relationships tend to share.
The first: they practice good conflict.
James, one of the Lake Merritt folks I talked to, laid it out really well.
JAMES: My parents were great, honestly... They argued, but they argued together.
REPORTER: Like, they weren't trying to win, they were trying to hear each other ,kind of thing?
JAMES: Yeah, exactly...Like, I do think about when they argued and when they, you know, fought and it never was, like, a fight. It was always something where, you know, they were trying to get on the same page, you know, and reach an understanding. And again, I think that's just smart. You know, if you have to have butt heads with someone that you love, that's how you do it.
REPORTER: Sinead says that's an example of a couple having a gentle approach to conflict.
SINEAD: So, rather than sort of coming out really hot into a topic, they're careful about how they bring up an issue. If things seem to be getting heated, they can apply the brakes in various different ways. You know, they can sort of keep things calmer and they can also manage their own physiology.
REPORTER: The second aspect Sinead points to is friendship.
SINEAD: Couples that do well over time tend to really work on the friendship piece of their relationship. So, they maintain a kind of interest and curiosity in their partner over time. They're also kind of looking to catch the partner doing something right. And they're expressing, you know, appreciation and gratitude and things like that — as opposed to looking for what the partner is doing wrong. So they have a positive habit of mind about each other.
REPORTER: Finally, Sinead says successful couples create shared meaning. Listen to Lucille describe her long-term marriage.
LUCILLE: As a relationship, we've done a lot together for the community, as a relationship. So it's not just us two...We managed a very large hiking club within the area for 10 years. We've cycled all over the Bay Area. We were both fully employed: I was a social worker, he worked in the bank. We had two kids that grew up successfully. I mean, it's been good.
SINEAD: Couples who are intentional about how their lives go together tend to do better than couples that just kind of drift through life together, you know. So couples, say, that are intentional about... will say, you know, Thanksgiving is coming up, what the holidays mean for them, "how do we want this to go for us?" You know, "What are the values that we want to give to our kids?" You know, they're really kind of being intentional about creating what they call a sense of shared meaning. That's really the other part.
REPORTER: And here's a much younger couple, Zoe and Dane, who are creating that sense of shared meaning even when they're doing boring or stressful tasks.
ZOE: Something that I look for in relationships in general is little happy moments. And some of them are just sitting here, looking at the water, just, you know, hearing the trees...In the car, just laughing at a joke. We've been touring apartments and so, you know, afterwards we kind of debrief like, "Oof, like, that was not, that was not it, that was not it...!" Or, "Ooh, this is a good one! I like this, but, you know, it doesn't have a backyard." And I think those are small little things that we did today that are just errands. But the errands were fun. And like, we made a day of it...I think the little moments — if you have a lot of little happy moments — yeah, you don't need all the.. I don't know, fancy...Yeah, fancy stuff.
Special thanks to Sheehan D. Fisher, Rosa Giselle Cabrera, and Brian Nguyen.
