Germany’s Willkomenskultur moment meant that refugees who arrived in Berlin around or after 2015 were met, initially, with the eager excitement of locals. Many of my refugee interlocutors subsequently engaged enthusiastically with cultural integration programs because it seemed to promise a solidification of these early moments of cultural contact, exchange and intimacy. Yet, as the initial excitement seems to increasingly give way to a resurgence of xenophobic sentiments across the country, this corresponding enthusiasm has been inflected by a deep ambivalence with regards to mimetic projects of self-transformation, particularly as they inform the internal experiences of selfhood in the lives of my refugee interlocutors. This paper explores how falsehood and authenticity become mediated through the endurance, or falling through, of newly forged relationships.