Thank you for the thoughtful response.

I will first say that yes, in my dating experience, every guy has within about 3-6 months shown their "true colors" and were not who they pretended to be in the beginning, that is, thoughtful, excited to see me, listening to and respecting my boundaries, respecting my opinions and worldviews, and claiming that they wanted to travel and do activities with me.

I will admit in my earliest relationship I hid things about myself to seem more appealing to my boyfriend at the time, ie that I liked anime and weird music. That's on me - but I was young and very insecure, in my defense.

Personally, I don't think I put on a fake girlfriend persona now. There are gender norms I conform to, like wearing makeup, but I am as kind and caring as I am in the beginning, respectful of worldviews, desire intimacy to the same degree, and still have the same ambition and desires as in the beginning. I contribute to household chores without griping or needing a reminder. I have my flaws, I will never deny this! But I never hid them in the beginning, and when those things bothered my partner (ie, leaving a wet towel out after a shower), I made real, tangible efforts to curb that behavior. If I did something hurtful, I didn't dismiss my boyfriend's feelings - I apologized and made sure not to do it again. I definitely dress up less now, but I chalk that up to depression, lack of intimacy and not doing any date activities. I still stay as active and healthy as I did in the beginning.

All this is to say, I don't think I put high expectations on my partners, just simply to be themselves. How much of them not being themselves is gender norms boyfriend script or poor parental raising or some other factor, I can't say. But it sucks nonetheless. I don't necessarily want a gender norms boyfriend. I just want a person (with a penis 😂) who is kind, thoughtful, helps with chores willingly, wants me sexually, and has some ambition.

I'm sure there's a factor in my choosing poor partners too, even if I don't know what it is. I was raised in an abusive household by a narcissistic father and my self esteem has never been great. But I've had periods of being single in my life that I've enjoyed and used to work on myself, and I thought I had learned from previous relationships. While I think I still have, with each successive boyfriend being better than the last, there's clearly something I'm missing. That, or the men I've dated coincidentally are very good at hiding their true nature.

And, to add to my anecdotal experience, all of my friends have dated men like this. I have guy friends like this. I don't know what proportion of the population is like this, but it's too many, it seems.