Authenticity (psychology): Underrated, Overrated?

[Rishabh R]

@Natasha Tori Maru Yup feeling of fulfillment is a side effect of acting with healthy values. 

Giving a recent example : I acted in alignment with my values of resilience and guess what conquering that obstacle generated a feeling of fulfillment in me from inside which no self-help technique can manufacture.

[aurum]

2 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I can see why you put so much emphasis on that topic.

I see "authenticity", just be "authentic" etc thrown around commonly in dating and romance advice.

But I feel like very little care has gone into explaining what is meant.

And from my dialogues with others on this topic, overlap in definitions presents as a rarity. I didn't even really think about how the concept could be filtered through gender roles - which people would commonly load up the term with.

Yup.

It isn't defined well in these conversations because it actually can't be well-defined.  The definitions are necessarily functional and not philosophically rigorous.

Gender roles are perfect for showcasing this ambiguity. Can gender roles be authentic? That's a whole can of worms.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

1 hour ago, aurum said:

Gender roles are perfect for showcasing this ambiguity. Can gender roles be authentic? That's a whole can of worms.

Absolutely. The term can be Frankenstein'd into whatever we may want to serve a frame. And it often is! 

Authenticity is framework-neutral at the abstract level (or I want my definition to be closest to it), but any ideology can sort of... Pollute or (maybe colonize it) in a way that serves its own assumptions. But authenticity has a legitimate distinct concept within each framework. 

I think it starts to reveal a philosophical issue; the disagreement is about what counts as the deeper self. 

I was thinking through how ideologies grab onto the concept. Red Pill could be "stop suppressing your biological/sexual nature to satisfy social expectations". Feminism could be "Stop suppressing yourself to satisfy patriarchal gender expectations". Individualism "Live according to your own chosen values rather than collective expectations". And even Spirituality "Stop identifying with constructed ego/personality and discover what you fundamentally are". I could go on... 

I could go into gender roles with it.

I think in any case I will never be able to hear the word "authenticity" being used without asking "Authentic to what? And according to who's epistemology? "

Edited Thursday at 09:05 AM by Natasha Tori Maru

[Natasha Tori Maru]

If the typical laypersons definition/conception of authenticity is interpreted through some epistemic framework, is there actually a framework-independent authenticity (am I always smuggling in assumptions)?

Is authenticity always a subjective concept between a person and whatever idea they have of themselves, or take themselves to be? 

Edited Thursday at 09:48 AM by Natasha Tori Maru

[Ulax]

Most authenticity is so performative these days.

[AION]

Having different kind of persona is as important as being authentic. I compare authenticity to being naked. Especially if you just know each other being too authentic is not savvy. Authenticity is only sweet if it is a slow tease.

Edited Thursday at 12:00 PM by AION

[integration journey]

2 hours ago, Ulax said:

Most authenticity is so performative these days.

Unless you live in authenti-city 😁

[Ulax]

16 minutes ago, integration journey said:

Unless you live in authenti-city 😁

[Zenterus]

Theres authenticity and then social skills.

You can say "no" to something you dont want to do by either being blunt or even outright rude like "fuck no" or packaging it in a way that is more well received like "No, thank you" or "Hey, I'm not comfortable with that. Thanks for understanding!"

Both are authentic, but each fall differently on the social skills spectrum.

[aurum]

7 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I think it starts to reveal a philosophical issue; the disagreement is about what counts as the deeper self. 

That’s the core of it.

You so smart 

[Eskilon]

On 03/09/2026 at 0:00 AM, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Authenticity IS NOT just expressing the contents of your mind. "I say what I feel", "I refuse to change for anyone", "I do what feels natural", "I am brutally honest" or "I don't care what anyone thinks, this is who I am" - all of these are not it in my definition.

@Natasha Tori Maru Hi natasha, I think in the deepest sense authenticity is those things though. From a spiritual and metaphysical perspective, it is not giving a fuck about what would happen or other people's presence or opinions -- a state of no others and bliss. Of course, this is radical and it is suicide when we are talking about dating and relationships which are inherently strategic and conditional ways of being. Do you agree with this? I'm curious to what you have to say even if it is a bit offtopic haha😅

Edited 15 hours ago by Eskilon

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@Eskilon I think your definition can be coherent because:

On 03/09/2026 at 7:04 PM, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I think it starts to reveal a philosophical issue; the disagreement is about what counts as the deeper self. 

So, if this is how you frame authenticity - it is sound to me. Metaphysical authenticity. My approach was more broad but definitely more psychological.

If you use another definition of self - ie the small self - that arises chiefly within the social domain, one's definition may differ. Suddenly you operate from a set of values and incentive structures that you use to define yourself - these pieces act to shape authenticity, which can loop directly back into integrity (I might call this relational authenticity if I want to get really nuanced). I am hedging toward authenticity being domain specific. This feels like a stronger model than authenticity being a single global trait.

The dyad @aurum and I engaged in elaborated on this.

I think it is a larger and more complex idea than initial inspection might reveal.

Edited 11 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Joseph Maynor]

If you don't have authenticity, what do you have?  

[Olaf]

@Natasha Tori Maru I would say authenticity is a bit complex, today I am actually gonna try to be a bit more unflitered when I go out and approaching and I will let you know how it goes. What I have noticed is that being authentic here and there about things that aren´t really attractive per say, does make a woman more interested, because your not wearing a fake performative mask. At the same time trauma dumping isn´t really good either.

It is kinda scary to be vunerable with literally a stranger, it is like when you perform, you don´t get rejected, the personality gets rejected, when you put yourself out there vunerable, then you get rejected like the very deep core side of you, which of course is allot more painful then someone rejecting a more performative side of you. 

I think there is something to authenticity for sure, yet it being the only solution to everything seems a bit like a sales tactic to get people buying your course about authenticity, also how authentic should you get? Because at some point you can get more and more and more authentic to the point that it becomes completly unrelatable, a good example would be some homeless dude who is saying whatever is on his mind and is rejected by everyone. 

[Valach]

15 minutes ago, Olaf said:

@Natasha Tori Maru I would say authenticity is a bit complex, today I am actually gonna try to be a bit more unflitered when I go out and approaching and I will let you know how it goes. What I have noticed is that being authentic here and there about things that aren´t really attractive per say, does make a woman more interested, because your not wearing a fake performative mask. At the same time trauma dumping isn´t really good either.

It is kinda scary to be vunerable with literally a stranger, it is like when you perform, you don´t get rejected, the personality gets rejected, when you put yourself out there vunerable, then you get rejected like the very deep core side of you, which of course is allot more painful then someone rejecting a more performative side of you. 

I think there is something to authenticity for sure, yet it being the only solution to everything seems a bit like a sales tactic to get people buying your course about authenticity, also how authentic should you get? Because at some point you can get more and more and more authentic to the point that it becomes completly unrelatable, a good example would be some homeless dude who is saying whatever is on his mind and is rejected by everyone. 

But the point of authenticity is not to get people to like you.

[Rishabh R]

26 minutes ago, Valach said:

But the point of authenticity is not to get people to like you.

Yup absolutely . I have experienced in my life that authenticity/vulnerability is like a filter . It does both - attracts and repels.@Olaf puts it more nicely .

[Rafael Thundercat]

@Natasha Tori Maru the theme of my last relationship was Authenticity. We both are Leos, she actually have birthday one day before mine. So we somehow were mirrors to each other. Both able to detect fakery, very subtle fakery, but the thing is that we both fail to be out of integrity with ourselfs so I could notice when she was not being herself and she noticed me too. Even without words being spoken we knew when we were not being real. And was hard to deal with it. So autethicity plays a big role in relationship because is easy to play small, hide, people please and other ways to avoid being in integrity with who we deep know to be ourselfs.

[Rafael Thundercat]

@Natasha Tori Maru This connects directly to the self-deception work I am working with for a mentorship — same shape, different word. "Shrinking the gap between what I experience and what I understand myself to value" is functionally identical to reducing bias toward unbiased self-knowledge. Authenticity may just be what that process looks like when it's aimed at a partner rather than at truth in the abstract.

A few pushes on your definition:

The paradox dissolves if you separate congruence from disclosure. Your definition already has the seed of this in "as the situation deems appropriate" — but I'd make it explicit as its own axis. Congruence is internal: do I know what I feel and own it. Disclosure is relational: how much of that do I reveal, to whom, when. Most "authenticity is overrated" complaints are actually disclosure complaints wearing a congruence costume — people conflating "I withheld something" with "I was fake." You can be fully congruent and still strategically silent. That's not inauthenticity, that's discernment about timing, which your definition already gestures at but doesn't name.

Overrated/underrated — both, at different layers. Overrated as a permission slip: "I'm just being authentic" has become the socially sanctioned excuse for low emotional intelligence, exactly the four bad definitions you listed. Underrated as an actual practice: almost nobody does the harder version — the "background practice" you describe, which requires tolerating the discomfort of not yet knowing what you feel, rather than defaulting to the nearest available impulse and calling it truth.

Phases of connection matter, but not the way people usually mean it. Early courtship rewards curated congruence — showing real but selected slices of yourself, calibrated to a trust level that hasn't been built yet. That's not deception, it's pacing. The mistake is thinking authenticity means maximal disclosure at minimal trust. It's the opposite: authenticity early on often looks like restraint plus honesty about the restraint ("there's more here, I'm not ready to show all of it yet") rather than either full unloading or performance.

On attraction specifically — here's the actual paradox worth sitting with: what reads as magnetic is often decisiveness, not congruence. Someone who's genuinely wrestling with ambivalence (real internal state) reads as less attractive than someone who's confidently wrong about themselves. The market selects for the appearance of your definition, not the practice of it. That's a genuinely uncomfortable fact if you're actually doing the work.

Ps: I am using AI to help me write since it helps me to organize my thoughts better because english is not my mother language. 

[Inliytened1]

On 9/2/2026 at 10:00 PM, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Authenticity. I find it ill-defined. The word is tossed about flippantly. EVERYWHERE. It is spoken about on these forums frequently.

What is Authenticity (in the romantic sense, and interpersonally)? Do you think it is overrated/underrated? Only appropriate at certain times or phases of connection?

I find it paradoxical. Authenticity requires enough self-awareness to distinguish your genuine values from the forces acting on you (incentive structures). I think it is about congruence. Congruence between what is actually going on inside you, how you live, make choices and relate to the world. So for me it's being able to accurately know what I experience, owning it completely and acting in accordance with it as the situation deeps appropriate. I feel like it needs these clauses because it gets muddled up with just "expressing" without censure.

Authenticity IS NOT just expressing the contents of your mind. "I say what I feel", "I refuse to change for anyone", "I do what feels natural", "I am brutally honest" or "I don't care what anyone thinks, this is who I am" - all of these are not it in my definition.

Philosophy wise I don't think to be authentic we require a true fixed self. Values change. We change. What is authentic will change. Existentially I see it creeping toward "am I taking ownership of the fact I am choosing?"

My closest definition:

Authenticity is the constant, background practice of shrinking the space between what I experience and what I understand myself to currently value. What I claim to be, and how I actually behave... while remaining willing to amend my understanding of me.

Would love everyone's thoughts around this loaded topic as it applies to dating, courtship, romance, relationships, attraction etc.

I think it is about holding true to your values even when in situations where it would be easier to abandon your values in order to fit in.  And it is definitely about being truthful- but most importantly being true to yourself.