On our first date, I loved that he was such a happy guy—but it’s possible to have too much of a good thing, and his eternally sunny disposition was enough to put me off him for good.
- His laugh was contagious… From the second he met me, he was full of jokes and humor. He was awesome to be around and had the most contagious laugh. I thought he’d be able to make all my bad moods and bad days evaporate just by laughing at a YouTube video of cats in my presence.
- But he laughed all the damn time. He could never be serious about anything. Whenever I tried to talk about something deep or even sad, he’d turn it into an opportunity to make a joke out of it or he’d simply interrupt me and try to yuk it up about something random. It was starting to make me feel like I wasn’t being heard by him at all unless I was laughing along.
- He kept me at a distance. Instead of feeling like we were bonding because we were always laughing together, I started to feel like he was actually keeping me at arm’s length. I wanted to dig deeper into what his deal was because it felt like all those deeper parts of his personality were locked and bolted so I couldn’t get in.
- I told him how I felt but didn’t get much of an answer. One day after a date, I asked him what he was like on a bad day because he was always happy. All he said was, “You don’t want to know.” He laughed while he said it, though, so I assumed he was joking… but was he?
- His friends shed some light. It’s funny how sometimes a person’s friends can give you pretty good insight into the guy you’re dating, especially if they’ve known him for a long time. In my case, hanging out with my boyfriend’s friends revealed some inconsistencies in my boyfriend’s happy-go-lucky personality that was always on display.
- I found out about his terrible temper and I soon got to see it first-hand. His friends made comments about my boyfriend’s temper and they weren’t joking. I could see that my my guy was getting a tad annoyed, but he tried to fight it by being the life of the party. What the heck was going on? Later that night, I asked him about what his friends had been saying and he denied that they were being serious. He didn’t want to talk about those topics and it infuriated me. I told him he couldn’t be happy all the time, which he turned back onto me by saying I had a problem because I was so skeptical and negative. Ouch.
- I started losing interest. Being happy all the time isn’t realistic. I just can’t deal with someone who’s always singing through life. I want to see them on their bad days when they’re dealing with something real that gets under their skin. I don’t want to feel like I’m in a relationship with a clown. I know you can never know someone 100%, but I like to have a good understanding of what someone’s really like before I get into a serious relationship with him. That means seeing him in different situations and moods. It’s only fair, otherwise how the heck do I know who I’m dating?
- I can’t trust someone who won’t be honest about who he is. That means we’re no longer in a relationship, at least not according to my terms. I felt like my happy boyfriend was lying to me on some level by not being real and raw. It felt like he was faking a good mood all the time or trying to be seen as this fun-loving, happy, and positive person. He was just trying way too hard to be liked and it put me off him.
- I got called “too picky.” When I told my friends I was dumping him for being too happy all the time, some of them thought I was being way too fussy about who I date. They said there were worse things than a guy who was too happy all the time, and one even said, “So what if he’s hiding his dark self? It shows he’s making an effort to be a better man around you.” Oh, hell no!
- I want more than good times. I hate that we associate being better with being happy. It’s like we have no tolerance for our real, raw emotions and I’m sick of that. Just give me someone real. That’s all I ask, and I’d rather love someone for who they really are than for how many times they can make me laugh on a date. After all, just because two people are laughing together, it doesn’t mean they’re really bonding at all.