Without honesty, he says, a friendship will wither and die. William Barry provided a concise description of how this happens. “It’s difficult to be honest,” he told me recently, “but when something painful happens—for example, the other person is sick or dying, of if you’re angry for some reason—if you can’t talk about it you become more and more distant. And if there’s something that you’re holding onto, then eventually you can’t talk about anything. And pretty soon, you haven’t got a friend.”
