On Testing Relationships (Not Ok!!!)

Most of the relationships of my life are flawed. And yeah, a lot of it is me. The way I am, the way I’ve been, the way I’m still becoming. None of this has been easy to admit. Some months ago, a prima who literally doesn’t know me at all put her hands on my face talking about my “attitude.” Bruh… you don’t know me because I’ve never opened up to you. Ever. I tried, and this is the energy I got? You are not ready for me.

That day, I was actually testing material for this blog (Good Sheep) — but only I knew that. And that moment sent me down a weird tunnel: the “tests.”

I’ve spent years testing people without calling it that. Playing dumb. Playing weird. Going distant. Poking, nudging, provoking, full radio silence — all fed by the same instinct: I want to know where I stand with you. I want to understand your power. Are you worth it?

And honestly, I don’t even know where these tests started. Maybe they leaked out of childhood, growing up feeling unwanted. Unchosen. Unloved. Maybe it came from all the performing and impressing and proving. Competence over connection. Respect over closeness. Survival over trust. Maybe it’s just immaturity I haven’t shed off.

Whatever the origin, the pattern spread everywhere — especially at work. And the stuff I did there… man. It’s wild how automatic it all was:

• submitting diagrams with missing or incorrect nodes to see who actually reads

• pushing back with “Let me see if I got this right…” to test clarity and confidence

• asking questions I already knew the answer to just to map competence

• pretending confusion to observe how someone behaves under pressure

• presenting the wrong assumption to see if they’d correct me or just agree

• lowering my intensity, then raising it two notches to test elasticity

• delegating ambiguous tasks to measure initiative

• giving someone credit they didn’t earn to see what they do with it

• dropping a bad idea on purpose to test intellectual honesty

• staying quiet in meetings to see who steps in and who crumbles

• poking people when they’re clearly upset to surface the real signal, not the curated one

This wasn’t strategy. This wasn’t manipulation. This was instinct (unhealed instinct?). A language built from old fractures and trust issues and a lifetime of believing connection must be earned, proven, verified, analyzed. I now imagine how many unconscious tests I must have run. Dear Universe forgive me…

One season, I shared my recent IQ results with a tiny circle: people who, in my mind, had “earned” that access. Half accused me of arrogance, ego, bragging, attention-seeking. A very close friend ignored the news itself and told me I was “manic.” The other half shrugged like, obviously, bro. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

Same information, opposite reactions. It didn’t give me insight. It gave me clarity about who would never meet me where I actually live. Maybe that’s why I’ve been testing people my whole life — trying to see the realness.

I’ve tested my sister too. A lot. One time in public I asked her, “I’m intense, right?” She said yes. So I nudged the dial five percent and gave a half-performative, half-real speech in a restaurant about bloodlines, loyalty, being her brother, how I’d tear the place down if she asked. Not because I believed the hierarchy. Because I wanted her to feel the bond.

But she didn’t. She felt embarrassed. Avoided me for months. Never returned to that restaurant. Told me I needed psychiatric help. Not wrong — I do go to therapy, lol. At the time, I thought the shame was that she couldn’t vibe with her own brother’s intensity. Turns out the shame was me — the way I showed up, the way I demanded resonance, the way I made connection into a test.

Then there’s one friend, a real one. An introvert, surprisingly. I told him I could pull energy from the environment, from crowds, from the sun, from the moon. That I’d changed ninety-nine percent of my habits. New body. New mind. New everything. And yeah, some of that sounds insane, but he didn’t blink or mock. Didn’t push away. Just listened. Maybe he laughed later, maybe not. But he stayed present and passed the test. One of the only ones who ever has.

So yes: these moments, these experiments, these theatrics… they’re my scaffolding. My curiosity warped by insecurity. My trust issues dressed up as “assessment.” My way of measuring connection without ever asking for it cleanly. And I’m finally seeing the debris, the cost, and the way out.

The way out is pretty simple. All of this reeks of external validation and I’m mostly immune to that now. So the questions shift:

1. Where does this go next?

2. What happens when I stop running diagnostics on everyone I love?

3. What does intimacy look like without engineering proof?

4. Do I care enough to fix this? Or do I walk away from the entire pattern?

And right now… after writing all this… the latter feels stronger. I don’t know what that says about me yet. But I’m listening.