A successful relationship always needs to be accompanied by a lot of explaining. This isn’t because we are especially strange, but simply because everyone emerges as puzzling and warped at close quarters. We have tendencies, desires, inclinations, enthusiasms, habits of mind and psychological zones that are very obscure. They stem from the strange

all of us are both deeply mysterious (to ourselves and to others) and also in many ways so eccentric and so intriguingly disturbed that it would be quite appropriate to use the word ‘mad’ to sum up our nature.

We should learn from the art of diplomacy, the discipline of not necessarily always spelling out what one thinks and not doing what one wants, in the service of greater, more strategic ends. We should keep in mind the contradictory, sentimental and hormonal forces which constantly pull us in a hundred crazed and inconclusive directions.

The person who cannot tolerate secrets, who in the name of ‘being honest’, shares information so wounding it cannot be forgotten, is no friend of love. Just as no parent tells a child the whole truth, so we should accept the ongoing need to edit our full reality.

It is ultimately no great sign of kindness to insist on showing someone one’s entire self at all times.

We are perhaps too conscious of the bad reasons for hiding something; we haven’t paid enough attention to the noble reasons why, from time to time, true loyalty may lead one to say very much less than the whole truth.

The idea of honesty is sublime. It presents a deeply moving vision of how two people can be together and it is a constant presence in the early months. But there is a problem: we keep wanting to make this same demand as the relationship goes on. And yet, in order to be kind, and in order to sustain the relationship, it ultimately becomes necessary

Keeping secrets can seem like a betrayal of the relationship. At the same time, the complete truth eventually appears to place the union in mortal danger.

But, on this occasion, there was no conspiratorial smile and no shy but decisive agreement. There was no eager leaning forward, no whispered corroboration. Just a slightly pained, quizzical look from the partner, the trusted recipient of every secret to date.