One is only fully oneself to a lover, not to the judging world.

Evidence

“We hear the voices of others with our ears, our own voices with our throats.” Yes. “One hears his own life, too, with his throat, and those of others?… To others, I am what I have done.” To May alone, he was not what he had done; to him alone, she was something altogether different from her biography. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 400

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evokes Sartre’s distinction between being-for-oneself (le pour-soi) and being-for-others (le pour-autrui). Malraux’s Kyo passage is a concrete case of the existentialist split between inner life and social judgment. — connects to: The lover’s self-presentation demands the Other’s free recognition to succeed; Acquaintance reveals only the other’s outward-facing self, not their essence — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 7794; Willing to be loved alienates the lover’s freedom into the body-for-others. (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Useful supporting material for the ‘on the self one knows from inside vs. the self judged by the world’ theme — the throat-ears contrast is a striking image of the insider/outsider epistemological split.

Broader Connections

• The lover’s self-presentation demands the Other’s free recognition to succeed #expands (0.82)
• The other’s love reveals the self by exposing its own otherness #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1884
• Willing to be loved alienates the lover’s freedom into the body-for-others. #complicates (0.78)
• Acquaintance reveals only the other’s outward-facing self, not their essence #contradicts (0.75) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 7794