My Year With Proust - Day 199

   "The friendship and admiration that Saint-Loup had shown me seemed to me undeserved and had hitherto left me unmoved.  All at once I set great store by them; I would have liked to him to disclose them to Mme de Guermantes, was quite prepared even  to ask him to do so.  For when we are in love, we long to be able to divulge to the woman we love all the little privileges we enjoy, as the deprived and the boring do in everyday life.  We are distressed by her ignorance of them and we seek to console ourselves with the thought that precisely because they are never visible she has perhaps added to the opinion which she already has of us this possibility of further undisclosed virtues."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 67

In his determined quest to get closer to Mme de Guermantes, Proust is making use of the his connection to his friend Robert, her nephew, to find ways to get closer to her.  One of the great misconceptions in relationships is that you should share everything with the beloved.  I've come to believe that this is a terrible approach.  It's not simply that some truths are hurtful or incriminating, but rather that they're just boring.  We turn ourselves into versions of Gavin, the annoying kid from the classic series Kids in the Hall.  As my students always discuss in Concepts of the Self, if left to its own devices the brain will automatically construct it's own narrative, and a much more interesting narrative, than reality.  So, maybe we just need to share enough to provide a useful structure for the relationship, but keep enough hidden so provide a sense of mystery.  None of us are ever as interesting as the illusion we project, especially if that illusion is pretty sketchy.  Alfred Hitchcock used to say that the key is producing a good thriller is not what the director shows you, but what he doesn't show you.