It was like this: "You pick what we're doing tonight. I don't care." "Cool, let's go to this Chinese place/this club downtown/this movie you haven't seen."

It was like this: "You pick what we're doing tonight. I don't care." "Cool, let's go to this Chinese place/this club downtown/this movie you haven't seen." "Ehhh, well, not that, not tonight, okay?" "Okay. How about Indian food/this coffeeshop/this movie you've seen a million times?" "Yeah, sounds great!" Multiply that by enough repetitions that I felt it would be obnoxious of me to keep suggesting the given activity. Sometimes I'd push because I really felt like doing something, but it still wouldn't happen. So eventually I'd give up and stop suggesting the things that she was never willing to do, because I'm not perverse or passive-aggressive. I didn't want to be a dick and keep suggesting something again and again after she'd turned it down twenty times in a row. That's how I knew she didn't really like something. But she was convinced it was just a huge coincidence that every time I'd suggested, say, Chinese food in the last twelve months she wasn't in the mood for it.