Are you a private person?

In My Humble Opinion
1

In other words, how comfortable are you sharing personal information with others? Where are your boundaries? Is there any information that you won’t share with anyone, no matter how close you are to them? If not, is there any one person in your life with whom you share everything?

I’m also interested in how you feel when you share something private with someone. Is it comforting to have it out in the open, or does it make you feel uneasy? Also, what effect do you feel your level of openness (or lack thereof) has had on your ability to form relationships with others?

I’ll post my own answers later; I want to wait for others to respond so that this will stay a poll-type thing instead of turning into an advice thread.

2

I don’t have many people I hang out with and talk to, but I am pretty open with information with the people I do talk to. I wouldn’t want other people to feel like they couldn’t tell me things so I try to break the ice by being forthcoming. I try to be pretty tuned in to others’ feelings though so I act however I think they will be most comfortable.

One of the few things I won’t talk about is salary info – I’ve mentioned it here but in real life I wouldn’t.

However, I wouldn’t have an opinion about people who don’t want to share as much–people should be comfortable doing what they want in relation to others.

3

Naturally or not I share everything with my wife…However, there are certain things that I simply don’t talk to her about. She has no desire to hear a play-by-play of how my weekend fishing with the guys went…all she cares about is if I had fun or not. So if I had fun, that’s all she needs to know, that’s just the way she is.

I’m a very private person, I share andecdotal information with most people, but in all I’m quite a private guy, so is Mrs.P. Give us a big Log Home up in Montana with nothing but our books and a computer with internet and we’re in heaven.

Boundaries are very important. They regulate who you talk to and for how long and the content of what you tell them. There are certain people I have high boundaries for, they are toxic. Most people I don’t need to have boundaries for, I’m a decent judge of charactor, if I feel like sharing something with someone I use discretion but I’m not anal about it.

4

Ask the people in my office about the relationship between me and my cat’s nutsack.

5

None of your business!

6

There is a handful of people I’ll bare all to… I keep things very private. When I do start divulging information, it’s usually after a few cocktails, and I kick myself the next day over and over. I feel very vulnerable sharing personal things about myself.

7

Many many years ago I was going through (yet another) depression and this time, for the first time, I started delving into a childhood and adolescence filled with sexual molestation and rapes (I must have had the words “CHOICE VICTIM” tattooed on my forehead, because I sure was a pervert/asshole magnet). I’d never equated the depressions and problems I’d had with my childhood and teenage years before, but it seemed worth a try. I wrote down all the things that had happened to me in an effort to “get it all out” and was very detailed and specific, both about the events and my emotions (then and now) regarding the things that happened to me. I was constantly reading in various forms that “secret” things have power that “public” things don’t, so one way to stop things from being secret is to share them with other people. I took that to heart and shared my past with family (who knew nothing about the most awful events), friends, the (then very helpful and non-spammy) newsgroup alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, and a private mailing list I was on.

Did I feel better after all that sharing? Hell no. It just made me more depressed and to this day I wish I’d kept my mouth shut tight. It wasn’t that people weren’t sympathetic, but I was expecting this big release, expecting to feel better, like a big weight was lifted off my shoulders. Didn’t happen. In my case, talk therapy didn’t help me, pharmaceuticals (after many many tries with different brands and dosages) did. Desipramine saved my life, and worked almost immediately. It was like I’d been in a dank tunnel for years and then all of a sudden I was out of it and back in normal daylight. If I’d tried that first it would have saved me years of being in a horrible black hole, and lots of embarrassment from sharing things that no one wanted to hear.

8

I’m an insanely private person. I hate sharing things with people; it always makes me feel really vulnerable and icky–even when I have no logical reason to feel that way. I don’t share everything with anyone, not even my SO (the person I trust more than anyone else). With him, it’s partially because I think he wouldn’t understand certain things (or why I care about them), and partially that I just don’t think he’d be interested. Sometimes we’ll have a long conversation about something I’ve been thinking about, and at the end of it I’ll feel like I must have bored him to death, even though I know that’s probably not the case.

I guess what I’m most reluctant to share with people I don’t know well is anything that reveals my lack of life experience. I always think people are going to think I’m naive and/or boring when they find out that I’ve never seen X movie, or that I’ve never been to a concert or smoked pot or whatever. Or what my hobbies are, since I don’t really have any. For some reason that’s really embarrassing for me to admit. I feel like most people aren’t going to “get” my approach to life. That sounds really pretentious, but I’m just trying to explain my thought process (i.e., it’s not necessarily rational).

I tend to push people away with my unwillingness to share, especially since I’m most petrified of sharing really superficial stuff! I don’t know how I feel about that. I used to think I should force myself to share more, but eh. It’s so much effort to play the game, and I do occasionally meet people with whom I can have interesting philosophical conversations right away, bypassing the superficial crap (my SO, for example). Plus I generally prefer to observe than participate in conversations with people I don’t know well. So I don’t thinking branching out of my comfort zone is worth it in this case.

9

There is very little personal information that I will refuse to tell someone not close to me, but there is also very little personal information that I’ll volunteer.

10

Heh - maybe this is a bit of a self-selecting poll. :slight_smile:

Yes, I am a private person. I’ll talk easily and be friendly with just about anyone, anywhere, but I’m the same as Strinka - I’m not hiding anything from people, but I’m not volunteering, either. Now you’ve got me wondering why that is; I think it’s just a self-reliance thing. I don’t depend on other people for my happiness, including telling them every little thing about me.

11

Intensely private. I don’t even like when people ask, “How are you doing?” I have a low tolerance for nosiness, busy-bodiness, and over familiarity. Despite my easy-going mein, it doesn’t take that long for people to realize that I’m aloof and inaccessible. I think I’m a friendly enough person, but it’s superficial friendliness. I’ve bared my soul before to people, but I’ve always regretted it. So I’ve decided to keep my problems to myself.

Yet, despite my very prominent personal boundaries, I have a very hard time defending them without feeling very guilty. So instead of telling a nosy person to butt out, I tend to lie or obsfucate.

12

I think for me, I don’t want to be perceived as a histrionic drama queen. Why should someone care what I did over the weekend or what crazy dream I had last night or what my last dump looked like? My life just isn’t that interesting. And anyone who’s interested in the minor details of my life needs to get one of their own.

When people that I’ve known only for a short time tell me very personal information about themselves, I automatically discount their trustworthiness. Such a person is a gossip who lives to “dish”, and they will trade my secrets just as easily as they do their own.

13

For the most part, I think I’m pretty open. There are some things I don’t discuss with anyone. For instance…I have a friend who had a habit of describing the prior evening’s sexual adventures in minute detail. And she’s not even that close of a friend! That’s not my style. However, I don’t have hang ups about discussing money, death, inheritance-type stuff…things that others often consider to be off-limits.

14

I’m intensely private, introspective, and antisocial, most private people have a “wall” they keep between them and others, I have a granite fortress surrounding my “wall”, and a shield surrounding the granite fortress, nobody gets in unless I let them in, and, aside from my immediate family, I can count on one hand the number of people who I’ve dropped my defenses in front of (my three longtime friends I first met back in college, and my parents)

it’s nobody’s business but my own how I feel, and how I react to people, and my default reaction is avoidance, I would make a quite effective hermit

part of it stems from work, dealing with morons, pissed off morons too stupid to work a toaster, let alone a sophisticated computer system, an incessantly ringing phone (more morons and stupid questions), and obstinate repairs tends to put me in a sour mood myself, it’s no wonder that at the end of the workday, I just want to be left alone, turn off the ringer on the phone and just be alone with my thoughts

15

I used to be a very open person, always sharing my thoughts and feelings. I felt relationships weren’t real unless everything was mutually known between two people.

Then I went through a rough time where boundaries between me and others became very blurred. I had moments where I would tell people I’d just met personal things. I look back on that time with embarrassment – but also with a little resentment, because I for the life of me don’t understand why some issues have to be considered personal. Humanity is full of hurt and weakness, why bother to hide it? It seems disingenuous to me. If anything I’m just willing to comply with a social norm. It doesn’t mean I sanction it.

For some reason even though I’ve now marked out a private life in reality, I still have these boundary issues online. I don’t know why. Maybe the anonymity of the thing. I have a weird cycle when it comes to divulging information about my life, especially painful stuff.

Anxiety —> Divulging -----> Relief -----> Guilt ------> Depression

It really sucks. I don’t know why. Now I even feel guilty when I tell personal things to people close to me. I don’t know what’s appropriate to talk about anymore, so I just play it safe and talk about nothing negative.

So in real life I guess I am the opposite extreme of what I used to be. I’m quite a guarded person. In fact, I don’t even really talk to my friends much when I’m going through hard times. I am embarrassed to admit emotional weakness because I don’t view it as socially acceptable. I try to keep things positive. I want people to think I am happy and okay all the time. I don’t want to worry my loved ones; they were holding their breath for years while I was openly miserable and I don’t want to put them through it again.

My husband, I can tell anything. I have told him things I’ve never told anyone else; I have been incredibly vulnerable before him and it’s okay. There are a few things I never share with him – not things that would hurt him or damage our relationship, just things that would result in no goodness. For example, we have a mutual friend I don’t really care for. I never see the person anymore and I don’t even have a rational reason for my dislike. So I keep it to myself. It wouldn’t do any good to tell him. That’s just one example. So my point is, I feel safe telling him everything, there is no sense of danger, there are just practical implications to consider, like how unnecessarily conflicted he would feel whenever said friend’s name was mentioned.

16

I don’t tell people about my feelings. I’m very private on that point. You can have all my opinions, I’ll tell you about what’s going on in my life, but I hate talking about feelings. My husband is the only one who hears about them, and even so I sometimes have a hard time talking.

17

I consider myself a private person. At work, I tend to either relate (I’m a mom & grandmom, so we all share stories & laugh or sympathize) or reflect (I enjoy hearing why my fellow associates like/hate their jobs &/or life experiences).

It’s the same way with my friends outside of work.

Dopers know another side of me, though. The relatively anonymous advantage to being a doper is that I can share parts of my past, such as my battles with cervical cancer and finding out years after the fact that my daughters were molested by caregivers. I’ll probably never meet any of you, but it’s like a form of therapy to be able to admit these things. Thanks, you all, for listening.

Love, Phil

18

Personally I am a very,very private person .

In personality I am genuinlly an outgoing sociable extrovert and can fend off peoples enquiries without answering a single question if I so choose to .
Without them even being aware that they haven’t had a single answer let alone think that I’ve been rude to them.

This of course does not apply to officials questoning me as a part of their work.

There are some things that I have kept to myself for many years and will most probably take with me to the grave .

If Iever am a little worried that I might have let something slip thenI give out misinformation or undermine my own credibility.

An old saying is that the best way to mislead is to tell the truth unconvincingly.
So can I say that I have been shagging Jennifer ,whats her name ?Allison ,rigid ever since Friends finished.
And what ARE my dark secrets I hear you pondering?

Well put it this way,you will never EVER find out in what year that I last bought a round of drinks.

And as to the mysterious disappearance of next doors yappy little dog with a penchant for ankles…That too will forever remain unexplained my friends…

Being serious I tell things about myself on these boards that I would never do in real life because of the anonymity,if ever I went to a Dopefest I’d have to go as a lurker and its unlikely that I’d ever make a real life friend from the boards,sad though that sounds.

That said a Doper who is/was a very good mate of mine IRL even before I became a Doper knows a lot about my past and present but he knows that if he ever says too much the Gerbil gets it…

And now into the night just like a slightly darker shadow L4L flits into the darkness.
Who knows where?

On what strange esoteric mission is he bound?

Does anyone really give a flying fuck?

When will he just shut the fuck up for fucks sake instead of wittering on and on and on …

I’ll get my coat.

19

I am an exceedingly private person, yes. I have my sister and one or two close friends I’ll share some stuff with, but even then, it’s some only. They are all private people too, so it usually never comes up anyway. We tend not to ask one another stuff. If one of us needs to call on the friendship because of some bad stuff in their life, they’ll volunteer the information. I’ll listen, give advice if I can, then we move on.

20

I have a few categories of people/privacy. A cursory glance at my posting history shows that I own up to being a drugged-out petty criminal and high school dropout during my teen years. I make no secret of it, but in real life I don’t exactly flaunt it, either. I don’t take pains to conceal it now, but probably will to some degree when I go to law school. I’m pretty proud of having accomplished what I have in light of my past, but I don’t feel the need to belt it out unless it’s relevant somehow (ex: trying to make a point, writing a personal statement). ETA: I got pretty mad at an ex-bf that wanted me to lie about my past when faced with his parents’ inquiries. It kind of pissed me off, actually.

Then, there is a small cadre of close friends and family that hear some things. Mostly these things are on a need to know basis: large events in my life that are very personal but give a lot of insight into who I am as a person and what motivates me in life. This is a small and very select group, less than a dozen. Honestly these things are only divulged because I think it is relevant for some reason, or someone asked (and I trust them). I don’t call someone my friend very readily, just because I need a certain level of understanding and trustworthiness before I am comfortable applying that label (for lack of a better term).

Next is my SO, who is slightly more privileged than the last group. Poor man! He has to hear all the terrible crap. I’d say my closest female friend is somewhere between my SO and the general friends group.

Unfortunately, the last and largest category is me, myself, and I. A lot of things inside my skull never escape. So I suppose yes, I am pretty private.