Relational Curiosity

You just had a pleasant first date. Conversation flowed, playlists were swapped, and nobody tried to sell you crypto. Yet forty‑eight hours later you’re staring at your phone, wondering how the same person who laughed at your dad jokes vanished into the void of delivered‑but‑unread messages.

If that scenario feels familiar, you’re bumping into something most of us never question: hidden assumptions. These assumptions are the silent expectations we project onto people we want to like. In Desire, Love, Trust, I explored how each these emotions need their own runway to allow a relationship to unfold. Here, I want to explore what it looks like when that unfolding gets frustrated by the messy reality of neurodiversity, varying attachment styles, love languages and emotional histories.

Dating advice often boils down to one-liners like “if he wanted to, he would”, “women know in the first five minutes”, and “never date anyone who owns a pet turantula.” While the last one is just solid risk management, the first two ignore a messy truth: people don’t behave according to script when their nervous systems are under stress, healing or simply wired differently to the ideal expectations.

When these expectations diverge from reality, it can feel unsettling to many of us. We come away scratching our heads at what happened and trying to figure out where we went wrong. Alternately, some people update their assumptions in a more pessimistic direction to the point where they give up on meeting people all together.

Often times, we’re not even aware we are making these assumptions. That’s why I found it helpful to organize them. The result was twelve hidden beliefs centered on the other person’s capacity to either feel, express, recognize or receive a sense of desire, love or trust.

Hidden Assumptions about Desire

Because the feeling of desire is so embodied, recognizing and expressing it assumes a particular sort of relationship to one’s senses, ability to read cues and also emote through the body. Neurotypical people assume that others might process cues and behave the same way they do with such beliefs as “They’ll signal attraction in ways I instantly read.” and “They’ll pick up on my flirting without me spelling it out.”

Nevertheless, I’ve read about people who laugh at themselves for not realizing someone was flirting with them until two years later as a random shower thought. I’ve also read about neurodivergent people who think they are just being friendly but other people read them as flirting. All around, confusion ensues. So these two situations can be called the Neurotypical Assumption.

Another thing people tend to assume is that the people they are interested in are available and single (call it the Single and Ready to Mingle Assumption) and therefore are ready to receive their flirting. Not only that but we tend to assume if someone isn’t interested that somehow they would let us know gently. Instead what really happens varies. They could just be cold, avoid us, be friendly then disappear or a number of other baffling behavior.

The availability assumption is one that contributes to a feeling of discouragement when people don’t factor in that 70% of adults are in partnered relationships. So in many settings if you just shot your shot randomly through cold approaches and so on, the chances are more than even that the person wasn’t available anyway. Apparently, even on dating apps, a significant percentage of people are not even available. Many are literally still in relationships and many others still are in so-called “situationships” and entanglements. The idea of a perfectly single person refers to a vanishingly small group.

Next, we have the assumption that other people feel sexual attraction and emotional connection together. It sounds something like “if they respect me, they’ll also feel a sexual pull” or “If they feel a sexual pull, they’ll also respect and care for me.” This is the dreaded situation where two people don’t want the same thing from the relationship. One wants to keep it casual, the other wants a committed future together and so on. We can call this the Emotional Connection Is Obviously Sexy To Them Assumption.

This assumption can bring up feelings of resentment when the dynamic plays out for a long time. The reality is that many people compartmentalize these feelings and in many cases have an inability at certain points to feel them simultaneously. They might not feel excited about someone who is kind or might not be able to respect someone who is physically appealing and outgoing. It’s not necessarily that they can’t feel both things but just that it might not feel safe to them to engage with someone who can embody both as it might be too vulnerable. The splitting helps them to keep distance while still meeting needs they can’t ignore.

Hidden Assumptions about Love

Many of the assumptions we make about love center on the theme of self-esteem. Here I’m talking about love in a specific sense. I distinguish this feeling from desire and trust because many people love each other in the sense of feeling moved to care for the person even when there isn’t necessarily sexual desire or even trust.

One assumption we make about others is that “they can value my strengths and hold my flaws with grace.” I call this They’ll Think I’m A-Okay Assumption. It’s the assumption that other people are always skilled at assessing your character or positive traits and can also feel compassionate about your shortcomings. It often correlates with having healthy self-esteem that is then extended to others. This assumption relates to our beliefs about others’ capacity to feel love. In effect, it is their ability to see you as worthy.

However, many people actually don’t have this skill! They may be only be able to appreciate a narrow set of positive traits (especially if they’re socially emphasized) or might not even stop to take the time to do it unless something else that is more external and impressive catches their eye first. The capacity to like people in general is something that has to be cultivated. There are even meditation programs aimed as developing this kind of “loving attention.”

A second assumption we make about others in the context of love is what I’m calling the Inside Matches Outside Assumption. This belief suggests that “because they look polished/impressive, they’ll know how to show care.” It’s the idea that if someone has prestigious job titles or degrees or is beautiful and stylish, then it must mean that they will be caring. It’s analogous to the halo effect in psychology.

The reality is that beauty and status markers are only tangentially related to a person’s capcity for care and purpose. They may be satiated personally but it might not necessarily translate to their treatment of others. What matters ultimately is how someone actually treats you.

The third assumption is the capacity to recognize love under the belief that “they’ll understand the way I show affection” or simply the They Love Like I Love Assumption. This is related to the concept of love languages. Gary Chapman argued that couples who were in conflict sometimes didn’t feel cared for because there was a mismatch in the way that each person was expressing and recognizing love. My own understanding of this is that it’s not necessarily that the person doesn’t appreciate the gesture, but rather that it doesn’t fully register in their emotional world with the same significance possibly because if their family expressed affection through gifts, but all you ever do is take them for walk to spend quality time then they might feel as if something is missing.

Lastly, we tend to make the They Like Themselves Assumption. It’s the belief that “they feel worthy enough to let me love them.” This one is quite baffling because it might seem counterintuitive to some people how someone might not feel comfortable accepting basic gestures of care. It’s especially confusing if the person seems to be conventionally beautiful or successful.

Suprisingly, a lot of people struggle with self-worth and it’s not something many have the language to describe much less feel okay to share with someone else. So, we would rarely hear someone say “I don’t feel worthy enough to let you take care of me.” Instead what we encounter is a refusal that could land as a rejection. But we can’t ever fully affirm someone else’s worth. We can only appreciate them and allow them the freedom to step into that way of being on their own. Sometimes it takes revising scripts that redefine the grounds upon which someone defines their self-worth. I think people should base it on their capacity to thrive and contribute to the world within the context of being cared for.

Hidden Assumptions about Trust

One of the first assumptions we make about others is that their emotional history has been stable enough or at least that “they’re healed enough to trust again.” It’s the idea that maybe if it’s been enough time since their last relationship or they appear to be interested in a relationship, it must mean that they have a capcacity to trust. This is the They’re Totally Fine and Emotionally Whole Assumption.

The emotional reality for many people is a lot of what therapists and psychologists call unfinished business. These are all the wounds and tender places where a person can still be touched and become unsettled in relationships. For example, a person who has been cheated on might feel pangs of anxiety when their partner is texting with their phone tilted away. Many people find it difficult to distinguish between individuals and separate the past from the present. It takes a balanced perspective to distinguish between ambiguous cues that could be interpreted as a threat to the connection and concrete evidence of infidelity.

The next assumption is “if they trust me, they’ll show it through commitment” and “they believe I’ll be there and won’t sabotage it.” These two assumptions together, I am calling it the They’re Secure Assumption. It’s the belief that the other person ultimately sees the connection as safe and reliable. However, the majority of the single population are usually insecurely attached in some way and many people in relationships still encounter anxious-avoidant dynamics which is a relationship where one person acts as a pursuer and another as a distancer. They loop through momentary highs when the distancer permits closeness for a short period.

A last assumption is that “they can sense that I’m safe” or the Their Radar Is Totally Reliable Assumption. This is the belief that the person is a good judge of who is safe to connect with or not. It is also layered in that they could personally see you as safe but still feel threatened if they don’t think other people such as peers or parents would see you as safe. Safety itself is such a layer concept but at it’s base it assumes physical and emotional safety. This assumption relates how someone recognizes gestures of trust.

The reality here is that a lot of people equate familiarity with safety. This means that if someone looks like them (in a broad sense), or reminds them of someone else they know, they may register that person as “safe” even if objectively the person is not emotionally safe. They may not have learned to evaluate safety in terms of stable presence and emotional validation.

Implications

With this updated and more realistic concept of what other people might actually be like, one might ask: what are the implications for how I show up and connect with others? For single people, that might look like developing discernment in the dating process. You can learn a lot from body language to tell about where someone is at emotionally. For example, clear eyes, genuine smile and relaxed posture suggests openness in comparison to say sunglasses, blank expressions or crossed arms. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t engage with everyone but it empowers you to choose what you can realistically take on. These considerations function as like prior considerations such as when browsing dating profiles or deciding who to approach in real life. In the next section, though, I offer some ideas for what to ask when you are connecting with someone.

Towards Relational Curiousity

Now that we have explored the assumptions, it will be helpful to introduce the concept of relational curiousity that helps to let go of assumptions. It’s not enough to suspend judgment, we can also use the Intentional Communication framework I developed here to seek clarity on these things. The idea is to choose one or two questions that may be relevant based on certain cues. These questions can be worked into conversations where it feels organic and used sparingly to save the interaction from feeling too interrogative and keep it relational.

Context	Capacity	Clarifying Question
Desire	Feel	When you’re into someone, do you feel the spark right away or can it grow for you?
	Express	How do you usually show attraction when you’re feeling it?
	Recognize	Out of curiosity, can you usually tell when someone’s flirting with you?
	Receive	Is dating fitting smoothly into life right now, or is it a bit of a juggle?
Love	Feel	What makes you feel genuinely cared for in new connections?
	Express	How do you like to show you care once you start to?
	Recognize	What kinds of gestures land as ‘love’ for you?
	Receive	Is it easy or hard for you to let people do things for you?
Trust	Feel	What helps you decide someone is safe to open up to?
	Express	When you trust someone, what does that look like in your actions?
	Recognize	What signals make you feel someone is reliable?
	Receive	How do you respond when someone shows steady commitment early on?

These questions aren’t filters or tests. They are designed to bring to light something important that could affect the dynamics of the relationship. If their answer suggests they may not be as available or relationally ready as you hoped at least you would know enough to navigate that with them.

Some Encouragement

You don’t need to be a psychic to relate well. You might just need curiousity about your own projections and a willingness to find out the truth. If you ever find yourself thinking about past interactions, knowing about these assumptions can also help to let go of what didn’t work out. They point to the perspective that if you left an interaction unsettled, there may be still something unsettled or unacknowledged in that person that has nothing to do with you. Love isn’t obvious. But with the right lens, it can be a lot less confusing and a lot more fun. Unless the tarantula shows up. Then, you’re on your own.

Credits

This post was brainstormed and refined with ChatGPT o3 using extensive context from my previous work especially to introduce the topic and come up with some of the clarifying questions for each assumption. However, the overall idea is my own and the rest was written by me. The cover image is by Natalia Blauth on Unsplash.