I have Baggage™, a lot of it. I acknowledge these issues and I've put in the work to deal with them and grow past them, but I realize that they're big red flags to most people. I also knew that people who didn't have their own baggage would never really understand, and I wanted to be understood.

Therefore, my standard is/was (before I got married): He can't have more baggage than I do (which is a very low bar), we need to be at roughly equivalent levels of healing, and he needs to be putting in at least as much effort to his healing as I am to mine.

What that meant in practice:

Men with more severe mental illness than mine, or less well-managed, were a no. No schizophrenics. If they need meds, they better be taking them. And I want to see some effort towards building a healthy, pro-mental-health lifestyle. Because that's how I live.

Recovered addicts and partiers (who were a long time into sobriety) were fine, current addicts/partiers or recently sober ones were a no.

Absolutely no men from fucked up, RBN-style families. I have my own, I'm not adopting a second one as in-laws.

I married a man with baggage. It was comparable enough that we understood each other and could support each other when things were hard. But he had put in the work to heal and manage and grow past it, just like I had.