When we are asked what we love most about someone close to us, we often mention emotional support, loyalty, shared goal, or how that person makes us feel seen and valued.
Truth-telling, especially of the uncomfortable kind, rarely makes the top of the list if it makes the list at all. And that is because truth, stripped of the identities of who speaks or hears it, is, by nature, uncomfortable. It reveals. It exposes.
And when it is spoken, it can feel like hypocrisy to the self-aware teller and, like a personal attack to the wisest of hearers — even in the most loving of relationships.