I just realized that a lot of my personal improvement in understanding the formation of romantic relationships can be described as discerning the boundary between what’s common and what social norms require. When there were too many things that are in the common category but were not known by me to be in it, I could not always be myself, and I had a narrow view of the acceptable paths I could take (which was especially bad in my situation with girl 4, in which none of the truly socially acceptable paths (including abandoning the situation) were part of what I thought I could do).