I'm sure that was painful, even if you didn't disagree. For me, I knew it to be true when he said it to me, but no one had ever been that candid with me before so it still hurt to hear it aloud.

Even my blunt Asian aunties would say things like, "You would be even prettier if you had eyelid surgery." They never said, "You could be pretty if you had eyelid surgery" as that is clearly a negative assessment of my current looks.