Does this friend actually dislike me?

I met a person recently that seems mutually interested in being friends. The only thing is, I cannot tell whether they like me. Just to clarify, this is a 100% platonic friendship.

They have been the one to initiate conversations and hangs a lot of times, but they’re also standoffish a good bit of the time. It feels like they disagree or are combative towards things I say more often than they agree or enjoy what I say. Sometimes it feels like they think I’m stupid. It all might feel more heightened for me than it actually is in reality because this has been happening for a few months, but I’m not sure.

Sometimes when we hang out it feels like they do not want to be there, but they’ve never indicated that really. They’ll just be distant and don’t want to talk to me that much. But there have been lots of times we’ve hung out and they seem to like me a lot. The good and bad hangs haven’t followed any kind of pattern, its not like they are just gradually getting worse. Its more like sometimes its good and sometimes it isn’t.

My general conclusion is that the more this person gets to know me the less they like me, which I can understand. Sometimes people just don’t like you. What I don’t understand is why they’re still pursuing a friendship if they actually don’t like me. Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this or can anyone shed some light on this in any way? Maybe my conclusion is wrong and I’m just missing something.