Honesty is hot.

People say this, but also the "I'm just being honest" thing is also known as a faux pas / red flag. Like, I always see the "No, you're just an asshole" response. It came up a lot on AITA and similar subs back in the reddit days. I've seen it here too.

So honesty is really one of those things that's only hot until someone does it in real life and it doesn't go as perfectly smooth as it does in stories.

Like, she prepares him meals presumably every day and has been doing so for fifty years, and he wants to complain that he doesn't like what she cooks?!? That would be a completely different story. I could see him as an old entitled curmudgeon saying "you know I hate chicken, woman!"

We can try to imagine a better scenario. Say it's the 1970s and these are newlywed sweethearts, still in the honeymoon phase. This strapping young buck gets home from his new job at the factory and his beautiful wife, still wearing her apron, cheerfully puts a steaming hot plate of chicken in front of him. He looks her in the eyes with that winning smile and says "Honey, I must be honest with you. I hate chicken. Always have."

Her smile runs away from her face, but before the tears can come out of her eyes she tells him firmly "Then you can cook your own dinners, Maurice!" Untying her apron on her way to the door, she hangs it on the peg and storms out, slamming the door behind her. Oblivious to her sobs in the other room, Maurice says "I wonder what's gotten into her," as he scarfs down her lovingly crafted meal because, well, he's hungry after all, and chicken apparently isn't so intolerable to him anyway.

A week later, things have blown over. Maurice and Peggy are back to their usual routines. Peggy still cooks dinner, only now she only does chicken twice a week instead of five times a week. But the spark is gone, and it never returns. The honeymoon phase has passed. For the rest of their days they coexist tolerably, but the romance they once felt is now a faint memory, fading more with each passing day.

Fast forward to today, they've been married for fifty years and have grandchildren, one of whom is posting on bluesky about how her grandfather is such a bitter old curmudgeon that when grandma was taking a nap, all he could say was "That woman should know by now that I hate chicken! She's trying to kill me, she is!"

Like, at what point between "honeymoon phase" and "curmudgeon phase" is it okay to say "Actually, dear, I've always hated chicken. I've only been pretending to like it to preserve your feelings and show you how much I appreciate you."