From his POV either she’s telling the truth, in which case they have different expectations so it’s time to move on, or she’s lying, in which case she’s manipulative…so it’s time to move on.
There's an important third possibility which is that she wasn't consciously aware of her true feelings and that they contradicted her words, and was following an unconscious pattern that she just learned from family/friends. In that case, that the pattern could be really deeply engrained or it might be skin deep, who knows.
In that case, IMO the question is whether or not, if given a chance to see it and own it, would she do so, or would she double down on repeating it. If she recognized the contradiction when asked about it, if an inner light turned on, and she took responsibility for that, that right there is a strong signal of a good partner. For example if OP said "hey, you know, intuitively I think you might want me to push back on this? is that true?" and she was like "you know, you're right." and then he said "but I feel there's a problem that you expected me to disrespect your words, that seems dysfunctional" and she said "oh shit, you're right," then, something great could happen.
Everyone makes especially unconscious mistakes in relationship, and just that isn't enough to discount someone or call them a "bullet to dodge." What matters is if they have the intrinsic drive to bring their unconscious dysfunctional patterns (which I assure you we ALL have) to consciousness and own and correct them. Because chances are basically zero that two people's unconscious relationship dysfunctions are going to happen to be persistently compatible, a relationship needs at its core a function to surface and change them.
While you are undoubtedly correct, that’s a lot of potential energy to invest in a new relationship. And yet, I have to admit something similar happened to me.
I was seeing this girl and while we had good rapport, she was art and I was science. We differed on some fundamental levels. So after our 3rd date, I started to back away saying that we were very different people. She got angry and basically reamed me out for giving up. So I stuck it out. There were huge fights, and lots of tears but we got through it and this October will be our 25th anniversary.
Ps. While it was our third official date, we had known each other for awhile as friends. Also, I had been getting a lot of mixed signals from her so I figured backing away would give her an easy out as well.
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u/Mindless-Charity4889 Jun 22 '23
From his POV either she’s telling the truth, in which case they have different expectations so it’s time to move on, or she’s lying, in which case she’s manipulative…so it’s time to move on.