Imagine you go shopping with your best friend and she comes out in an unflattering green-and-yellow sweater. “How do I look?” she asks you. “Like a caterpillar,” you say. You’re not worried about insulting her because she’s your best friend and she’ll know you said it out of affection rather than spite. You’d think twice about directing that same line toward a stranger because you don’t have any shared history and you might offend them. It takes repeated good experiences to build up to a level of trust where you can be vulnerable and compassionately critical with each other.
