This probably is the smarter move to be honest. It'd be nice if you could admit your flaws and everyone else would say "it's okay we're flawed too we understand

This probably is the smarter move to be honest. It'd be nice if you could admit your flaws and everyone else would say "it's okay we're flawed too we understand" and we can all move on. But in reality if you admit you made a mistake, some people would use that as a weapon against you, and everyone else would decide not to get involved in defending your flaws because it's too much trouble. Or instead you can double down and some people will get annoyed, but you haven't created a vulnerability and you get to keep soldiering on. I really wish we lived in the first scenario, but honestly most people aren't actually willing to behave in that way. So by default we end up with the second scenario.