Who wants to admit their problem with someone is that they see something in that person that they don't like in themselves and it's making them uncomfortable? Heck, if they could clear that up internally, there wouldn't be an external problem to resolve.
I am extremely forthright and literal. I am the one you can count on to come out and just mention the elephant in the room and ask why people are acting weird around it. And I can assure you this does not work. There is an entire game of communication through social nicety that completely falls apart if you ask the question out loud. You either figure out how to play it and read between (all) the lines, or you end up the awkward weirdo because you won't just let people keep their useful fictions about their discomfort with themselves.
And for all of you bristling at this, telling me it can't possibly be like that, that I'm judgmental for calling it exactly as I see it, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
We all do this. We lie to ourselves because living with our self-contradictions is unpleasant. It's much easier to ostracize the person who brings that out into the open than it is to live with our internal inconsistencies.