Michael Leviton has written quite a thought-provoking article. He was raised to be too honest and when he encounter the real world as an adult, he found that it kept him from getting hired and made romance impossible. He discovered that he needed to be less honest, but how? Here’s an excerpt from “What I Learned About Love When I Stopped Being Honest.”

There were no support groups for people who wanted to be less honest. Therapists advised people to speak their truth, not to shut up for once. Whatever advice everybody else needed, I needed the opposite. So I came up with my own system, made myself lists of subjects that I’d no longer discuss and various rules for myself, such as:

Hide your feelings and observations.
Instead of searching for people who will appreciate who you really are, try to be what the person in front of you wants.
Learn to make small talk.
Do NOT be yourself.
This felt both stupid and impossible. My brain had been built to be honest. I couldn’t even answer “How are you?” with “Fine” without feeling ill.