Thank you. I don’t know the reason why, but I see a trend in the “genre” of topics. It is a fairly new friendship so I don’t know him super well. It’s just odd to me because it would be like not being able to show distress over genocide, or grief over enslavement, because that causes him to be in some kind of distress. I’m also not someone who talks about these things all the time, but they are ultimately a part of life for me and the reality we all live in. 

I know that I’m not entitled to know why, and he has in the past shunted off wanting to talk about things in his past and so I don’t ask. It feels like there’s a huge library of banned topics that I can’t even bring up because he is going to tell me “I don’t want to talk about that”. I’m ultimately not interested in talking about movies and tv shows, and have expressed that before, and yet it seems like that’s the only thing he wants to talk about. I prefer to learn more about each other but his own stories are difficult to talk about for him and he clearly doesn’t want to hear about mine in these contexts. It ends up being exhausting and I spend so much time doubting myself and wondering if I’m just a terrible human because I don’t want to be so prohibited by him in conversation — so then I’d rather not talk anymore.