On: A neural link between affective understanding and ...

[YCode]

But from the other person's perspective it sounds something like:

"Having just met you I can already tell nothing about you interests or excites me. I have trust issues and I fully expect you to leave me so in preparation for that I'm going to put up emotional walls and not invest myself too much in this relationship in case it fails."

There's a wide and opaque area between not being someone's clone and having nothing in common.

[derefr → YCode]

"Having nothing in common" is not the same as "having nothing even potentially in common."

The parent meant, I assume, that they expressed the first one: that they don't currently know much about the other person's interests, and vice-versa.

That doesn't mean they won't learn about them. And, in fact, if the two people are compatible on a personality level, they'll likely turn out to enjoy similar interests—finding out about "things I liked but didn't know it."

But it does communicate something important: that if you're someone who isn't willing to learn about new things, and stretch your definition of "who you are" to encompass new things—i.e. to "invest yourself in the relationship"—then this won't work.

And that is an important thing to communicate, at some point (maybe not the first conversation, but at some point.) Some people really do just want a partner who likes "what they like", instead of a partner that will help them grow in directions they will enjoy only in retrospect.

[novia → YCode]

No. I assure you the conversation goes further than this. If I am pursuing them then everything about them interests me and excites me. I'm very interested in a particular type of person, one which happens to not have much in common with me.

[cbsmith → YCode]

See to me, it came across as more like, "I'm confusing position with trajectory", which signals some really terrible understanding of relationship dynamics.