It is a constant battle, deciding how much faith you should invest in a person’s authenticity.
You take someone at face value, and sometimes you get burned. Later, you tell yourself, I don’t know why I just assumed they were telling the truth about themselves.
You react suspiciously, like “nobody could be that insert adjective here,” and then you find out later they were 100% authentic and you, you fucking colossal distrusting jaded toolbag, you blew that relationship. You missed the boat. It could have been fucking amazing, and you blew it.