At the beginning, the men I date seem delighted by my life. They love hiking. They’ve always wanted to stop eating meat. The talks at a local venue sound fascinating. The food I like is exactly the food they want to eat. Whatever I suggest, they’re in.
For a while, it feels easy to make plans. There’s enthusiasm, effort, and a sense that they see me as a catch. Often, they seem more certain about me than I feel about the relationship. I’m still getting to know them while they’re already making a strong case for how much we have in common.
Then, around two or three months in, their energy drops. After that, they break up with me. It has happened enough that I’ve started wondering about all that early agreement.
I suspect some of them are presenting my interests back to me instead of showing me their own. I can’t know that for sure. But it’s hard to understand the shift when everything I wanted to do sounded so appealing just weeks earlier.
I do ask questions. I want to hear what they enjoy, what they choose for themselves, what makes a good day in their lives. I’m interested in getting to know an actual person. Still, I keep reaching the point where I wonder how much of that person I’ve met.
Maybe they’re attracted to me and respect my choices without feeling much deeper connection. Maybe there are several things happening at once. I don’t want to turn every enthusiastic response into something suspicious, but the pattern is getting difficult to overlook.
Hiking is the example I keep coming back to. Sharing that interest matters to me because it affects how I like to spend my time. It isn’t just a convenient topic for an early date. I would like to know whether someone actually enjoys it before I start imagining us doing it together regularly.
Is this common? How do other people figure out whether early enthusiasm reflects a real shared interest? When someone tells me he loves hiking, I’d like to be able to believe we’re talking about the same thing.
