I enjoy sharing the real me in relationships.

The real you comes out in instalments, and that is sequencing rather than dishonesty. Nobody hands over the entire file in week one.

But instalments stall. There is often a fact sitting a few years past its natural moment: the estrangement, the debt, the diagnosis, the ambition that sounds ridiculous said out loud.

It doesn't need a scene. It usually goes best delivered flatly, mid-task, while chopping something. People worth telling tend to receive it far more calmly than the rehearsals in your head suggested they would.