Have you ever had to hesitate to answer when someone asked you who your best friend is? Do you have multiple people in your life that are important to you? What about friends from high school or college, and friends you've made at work?
Often times these different spheres of your life don't intersect, and it can be easy to keep them separate in your mind. There are things you say and do in front of your college buddies that your high school friends don't get, or you can act one way with these friends and another way with other friends. Sometimes when you want to get introspective and think about how your behavior differs depending on the people you are with, it can seem like this phenomenon shows how shallow or fake your relationships with others are -- like they lack any real substance because you are putting on a face.
While that is one way to look at it, having these different "faces" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Every relationship is unique, with different inside jokes and histories, and the way you relate to one person is not the same as the way you relate to another. Maybe you feel more comfortable sharing the nerdy, excited-about-math side of you with your roommate, and not with your sports-fan, athletic friends. Maybe you are more outgoing with your high school buds and a bit withdrawn with your coworkers.
It all depends on the types of relationships you've developed and the conventions of your surroundings! If you are behaving genuinely according to who you are around currently, then these people bring out a certain part of you that is more subdued otherwise. These "faces" are not different selves, but instead "facets" of yourself that make up a larger part of the whole that is you.
Putting on a "face" and showing other facets of yourself are entirely different things. To be "fake," you have to deliberately mask or misconstrue yourself to others. The reasons that you might feel that you need to put on a "face" are numerous, but most of them boil down to wanting to be accepted. Maybe in the separate spheres of your life, it is easier to get along with people and make friends by becoming someone else. While this may suit you fine for now, in the long run, it can have consequences. Either your spheres will collide and your "secret" will get out, or you will become tired of keeping up the "face" you put on.
Ultimately, it is better to just be yourself. Accept the multi-faceted you and embrace the different types of relationships you can have with people while at the same time always remaining truly and genuinely yourself.
