You know the questions. They are practically scripted into the first ten minutes of every first date, every app conversation, every hopeful introduction from a well meaning friend. What do you do for work? Have you ever been married? What are you looking for? These questions are the small talk of romance. They are polite, surface level, and almost entirely useless.

The problem is not that these questions are wrong. The problem is that the answers rarely tell the whole story. A man can tell you he is a project manager, that he has never been married, and that he is ultimately looking for something serious. Every word of that answer can be technically true. And yet none of it tells you whether he will disappear the moment you express a need, whether he will gaslight you when you catch him in a contradiction, whether he is still sharing a bed with a wife he swore he was leaving, or whether his definition of a serious relationship is one where you do all the emotional labor while he receives all the comfort.