If they tell you everything about their ex, picture the version of you they’ll tell someone else.

Someone running down an ex in the first week is showing you a habit, not just a history. The details might even be true. What you are watching is their willingness to hand private things to a new person, and that willingness does not switch off when the new person becomes the old one.

Listen to how someone talks about the people they were close to before you. Notice whether they can tell a story about an ex without flattening them into a villain. Give more of yourself, slowly, to the ones who can.