Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: I told him I liked him. 'Why do you need so much male attention?' he asked
I was hanging out with my friend Patrick, comparing notes on our dating lives. We were talking about red flags and whether we had any.
“Well,” said Patrick, “I feel like I’m sort of an aerospace cliché. … I’m an engineer, I drive a Subaru and I rock climb.”
“How is that a red flag?” I asked. “That sounds more like a humble brag.”
“Well, then, what exactly is a red flag?” Patrick asked.
“A red flag,” I said, reading from Reddit, “is a warning sign that a person may be dealing with a toxic, manipulative or psychotic person.”
“So what’s your red flag? Do you think you have one?”
We all have unsavory parts of ourselves, those internal demons we try to corral and keep out of public view. But now and then, one of those demons sneaks into the outside world, plants a red flag and screams out maniacally, “Dwaaaagaahaha!”
“Actually,” I said, “I might have a red flag.”
I told my story light and airily, but it was heavy when it happened.
I’d been in a rut with dating, feeling as stagnant as the 405 Freeway on a Friday afternoon. It was time for a new hobby.
“How do you like rock climbing?” I asked Patrick.
“It’s great,” he said. “One downside, though: It’s pretty male-dominated.”
I was sold.
I joined my local climbing gym, prepared to meet my future climber boyfriend.
I noticed him within days. He was an amazing climber but nonchalant about it; hot but unassuming; and mysterious but straightforward, according to my tarot cards.
It took a couple of months for him to realize I existed, but eventually he did. I was belaying my friend when he came over and said the word, “Hi.”
I waved awkwardly, too nervous to speak.
“So,” said the dreamboat climber man, “you really need to have both hands on the rope when you belay. It’s not safe the way you’re doing it. You’ll get in trouble with the gym staff.”
I nodded, mortified. And for the next month, I avoided eye contact with him, waiting for the humiliation to subside.
We later spoke again, and out of nowhere, he asked me to climb. We climbed, went out for drinks and climbed more, and suddenly not only were we dating, but we were going on climbing adventures together. I followed him up a multipitch route in Idyllwild, rappelled down a sheer cliff in Joshua Tree and then had the most daunting adventure of all … a conversation about “us.”
We were driving from Joshua Tree back to L.A. “I really like you,” I said.
He let out a long exhale, his eyes focused on the road. An excruciating pause followed, pregnant enough to suggest triplets. “You have a lot of red flags,” he said.
My chest tightened.
“It’s weird you have so many guy friends,” he continued. “And weird that you’re friends with your ex. Why do you need so much male attention? It’s a huge red flag. I mean, haven’t you seen ‘When Harry Met Sally’? There’s always going to be some level of attraction between you and these guys, whether it’s one way or both ways.”
I argued against this point, and he argued back. We spent the next hour talking in circles, getting nowhere — all while stuck in gridlock on the 10 Freeway headed west. Being stuck in traffic felt metaphorical.
Once we got onto the 91 Freeway, the traffic smoothed out, and so did my flow of thoughts. I wanted us to be on the same page, and so I convinced myself that he was right. By the time we hit surface streets, I’d become a surface-level thinker. My main goal was to save the questionable, fragile relationship, whatever the cost.
I distanced myself from guy friends and told my ex we should end our friendship. He was outraged. “We’ve been friends for 10 years. I’ve known you for 14 years. And you’re cutting me out? Do you know how hurtful that is?”
I did, but I cut him out anyway. I was so desperate to make things work with the dreamboat climber man.
One afternoon, Patrick asked me to climb. I hadn’t seen him for a while because I was trying to limit my time with guy friends. But I wanted to catch up with him and didn’t think it was a big deal.
Then the dreamboat climber man texted me to see what I was up to. When I said I was climbing, he texted back, “Who are you climbing with?”
“My friend Pat,” I replied, choosing the gender-neutral version of Patrick’s name.
“Is Pat a guy?”
I cursed at my phone, and a parent scolded me, gesturing at the youth competition team.
“Yes,” I texted back. “But it’s completely platonic. Or should I say … Patonic.”
The text exchange and horrific pun triggered a huge fight. Things didn’t work out. I had wanted them to, but in the weeks that followed, I got burned out trying to navigate our endless thorny conversations. By the end, I was exhausted and ran into some depression. Not only had we ended our relationship but I had damaged important friendships and lost my grip on who I was. I was ashamed. The question I kept asking was: “What’s wrong with me?”
I stopped climbing for a while and instead went hiking, often by myself.
The sun was low in the sky when I reached the summit of Mt. Baldy. I was the only one there, with the whole peak all to myself. Looking out at the mountains, I had a moment of clarity.
My climb that day was for me, and no one else. I didn’t need the acceptance of a dreamboat climber man, molding into an unnatural shape to fit someone else’s needs. I just needed to be myself. And if that’s a red flag, I’m not afraid to wave it.
Dwaaaagaahaha!
The author is an L.A. native, writer and yoga teacher. She’s on Instagram: @taytay_eff
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
-
Sports10 minutes agoHigh school baseball and softball: Regional scores and schedule
-
World18 minutes ago
Europe Today: Costa speaks exclusively to Euronews as EU-Western Balkans summit underway
-
News43 minutes agoTrump, Netanyahu at odds / Elusive Iran deal : Sources & Methods
-
Los Angeles, Ca2 hours ago'Top Gun: Maverick' actor identified as victim stabbed to death in Tarzana
-
Detroit, MI2 hours agoStorm chances return, which could impact Motor City Pride, graduations this weekend across Metro Detroit
-
San Francisco, CA3 hours agoHilton campaigns in San Francisco as California primary votes still being counted
-
Dallas, TX3 hours agoCrews cover up AT&T branding as stadium becomes
-
Miami, FL3 hours agoMiami leaders gather for FIFA World Cup Host Committee Gala
