Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

by Cheryl Strayed

We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright—to elucidate the nature of our affection when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying.

Honesty is the most generous form of love. Transparency is an act of radical kindness. A lot of what’s written and said about romantic love casts it as a game that requires one to be strategic and withholding, but that’s wrong. People don’t like to be played. They like to know where they stand with their intimate partners—and I daresay, they have a right to know.