White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s relationship with Nicholas Riccio is rife with red flags that can’t be ignored. One of the biggest is their huge age gap, as she’s a whopping 32 years younger than her husband.

While plenty of celebrities have forced us to confront our fixation with age-gap relationships and proved they can thrive, science isn’t on Leavitt and Riccio’s side. When discussing Sydney Sweeney and Jonathan Davino’s red flags, Janet Bayramyan, LCSW from Road to Wellness, exclusively explained to Women that being such vastly different ages could cause power issues at home. “While age differences can be healthy and functional, they may sometimes lead to power imbalances, particularly if one partner was quite young when the relationship began,” she said. Leavitt revealed on “The Megyn Kelly Show” that they met amid her congressional campaign in 2022, recalling, “A mutual friend of ours hosted an event at a restaurant that he owns up in New Hampshire and invited my husband.” That would have made Leavitt around 24 and Riccio around 56.

But even Leavitt knows their romance is unconventional. “I mean, it’s a very atypical love story,” she said. And she wasn’t kidding, because the red flags just keep on coming.

Karoline Leavitt has revealed she and Nicholas Riccio have very different personalities. “He’s an introvert (complete opposite of me),” she once wrote on Instagram (via Daily Mail). Of course, it’s natural for opposites to attract, and extroverts often end up with introverts who compliment their personality. But such differing personality traits can be a major red flag if Leavitt and Riccio are on opposite ends of the introvert/extrovert scale.

“I think if you’re really far extroverted and you meet someone really far introverted, that won’t work. I think it kind of has to be a little bit closer,” Beck Thompson, a dating and relationship coach, told Body + Soul Australia. “So I think look for things that you have in common,” she added. The only way Leavitt and Riccio can make their opposite personality relationship work is by talking through their differences and communicating consistently to make sure they’re on the same page.

Karoline Leavitt and Nicholas Riccio have differing opinions on social media

karolineleavitt/Instagram
Unsurprisingly, with an age difference of more than three decades, Karoline Leavitt has admitted she and Nicholas Riccio have differing opinions regarding social media. In a since-deleted Instagram post, Leavitt told fans (via Daily Mail), “He doesn’t have social media … I respect his privacy on here — but he’s my number one fan, the best dad, and just the best man I’ve ever met.” There’s nothing wrong with not wanting an online presence (and Leavitt respecting his privacy is actually a green flag), but their different perspectives highlight that they’re from totally different generations.

Differing approaches to social media use can also lead to trouble. While Leavitt sometimes gushes about her man online (“I get to marry the man of my dreams. I feel SO overwhelmingly BLESSED,” she wrote on Instagram in 2023), the political figure won’t get the same kind of public validation from Riccio. And that could lead to resentment. It’s also imperative they continue to respect one another’s wishes. If Riccio ever encouraged Leavitt to leave social media to appease him, that could be a problem. Equally, if Leavitt ever went against her husband’s wishes and shared posts he wasn’t comfortable with, that could cause issues too.

Though Karoline Leavitt (who’s had a few outfits that totally missed the mark) is the more notable name in her relationship, Nicholas Riccio has a thriving career of his own. Riccio is a property mogul with big ambitions, as he told the Sunday Herald in 2005, “My work in real estate has helped facilitate my dream of owning a professional sports team. And that will happen one day in the near future.”

But it could be a red flag if Riccio’s thriving career has unintentionally taken a back seat to Leavitt’s. She told The Conservateur, Riccio often follows her around the country with their son, and suggested he’s able to spend more time with their child than she is because of the flexibility of his job. “Leaving the baby every day to go to work, it does break your heart. It’s incredibly challenging emotionally, physically, spiritually,” she said.

While it’s not a red flag if Leavitt and Riccio have fully communicated their expectations of one another in terms of a healthy work/childcare balance, her increasingly busy schedule could lead to a power imbalance. Both should feel like they’re giving and taking equally. It’s also imperative the couple fairly share their domestic responsibilities as much as possible, because if Riccio feels he’s always the one bending to accommodate their relationship, that could lead to him feeling resentful or unfulfilled.