In Compensation for the Deceived there's a lot of comparisons between characters to directly question what other people say they lack or exacerbate
Angel is told he should be more like someone such as Kai (serious civilized man), but Kai gets told to be more like Angel's cis-heterosona (wildcard "fun" man)
Samay gets told he should be more like Ethan ("squeaky clean nice"), but Ethan was abandoned because he's not what people perceive Samay as (complex shades of gray)
But Samay also gets told off for not matching people's worse expectations of him ("dark" past "dark" personality), just like Suzanne gets punished for succeeding as a career woman like she was groomed for her whole life (bad wife, lover and mother material)
Yet Jeanne and Magda and Emília all get shit at times for not having more "safe, proper and successful" jobs like Suzanne (incompetent, lesser women who will have to rely on a man), and so on
You just cannot live trying to service other people's standards, you'll sooner get yourself killed than ever manage to become more than enough