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Was having a convo with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dda that touched on a recent OKCupid-IM encounter. (The reason he came up is that I well recall him asking for permission to use my LJ-name in his own posts.) One of the folks I met was rather nice; had interesting hobbies, similar tastes in reading, well-spoken, all that.
Really, there was only one thing he (the new acquaintance) did that totally skeeved me. When I thought about it, I came up with a few reasons why, and it gave me some insight into why some other people have made me feel strange, too.
It's always given me a mild case of the heebie-jeebies when I meet someone and one of the first few things they tell me is about their previous suicide attempts, personal medical history, previous abusive relationships, and so on. I never knew why until just recently, though.
I've figured out that it's oversharing. In other words, if I become friends with Bob, and Bob tells me something about himself LONG before the time when I would have felt comfortable telling him something similar about myself, he's oversharing. It makes me uncomfortable because I feel that he doesn't value the information he gave me as being private-- and thus that once I give him information about myself, he will undervalue its privacy as well.
Of course, it's easy to decide it's no big deal when it's someone who has a mild case of oversharing about themselves-- maybe they just don't care whether someone 1000 miles away knows about their recent rectal surgery or not. Maybe it's no issue, or it's a big enough part of themselves that they need to get it off their chest and get on with things.
But the point where I drew the line is where this brand-new acquaintance got so caught up in sharing intimate confidences with me that he started sharing OTHER people's confidences. While I don't think that there is anything wrong or shameful with being a victim of... well, I won't even say. I just think that talking about some things should be up to the person they happened to, not something that their friends or their family's friends get to tell just anyone that happens along-- no matter HOW nice I seem to be.
Oversharing is a drama magnet. And it's a shame, this guy was SO nice otherwise-- but he just didn't get a hint that I didn't want to hear about what happened to his friend's now-teenaged child, years ago. It's not my business, and it's a bad sign that he wouldn't respect my business later, either.
Bah, I say.
dda that touched on a recent OKCupid-IM encounter. (The reason he came up is that I well recall him asking for permission to use my LJ-name in his own posts.) One of the folks I met was rather nice; had interesting hobbies, similar tastes in reading, well-spoken, all that.Really, there was only one thing he (the new acquaintance) did that totally skeeved me. When I thought about it, I came up with a few reasons why, and it gave me some insight into why some other people have made me feel strange, too.
It's always given me a mild case of the heebie-jeebies when I meet someone and one of the first few things they tell me is about their previous suicide attempts, personal medical history, previous abusive relationships, and so on. I never knew why until just recently, though.
I've figured out that it's oversharing. In other words, if I become friends with Bob, and Bob tells me something about himself LONG before the time when I would have felt comfortable telling him something similar about myself, he's oversharing. It makes me uncomfortable because I feel that he doesn't value the information he gave me as being private-- and thus that once I give him information about myself, he will undervalue its privacy as well.
Of course, it's easy to decide it's no big deal when it's someone who has a mild case of oversharing about themselves-- maybe they just don't care whether someone 1000 miles away knows about their recent rectal surgery or not. Maybe it's no issue, or it's a big enough part of themselves that they need to get it off their chest and get on with things.
But the point where I drew the line is where this brand-new acquaintance got so caught up in sharing intimate confidences with me that he started sharing OTHER people's confidences. While I don't think that there is anything wrong or shameful with being a victim of... well, I won't even say. I just think that talking about some things should be up to the person they happened to, not something that their friends or their family's friends get to tell just anyone that happens along-- no matter HOW nice I seem to be.
Oversharing is a drama magnet. And it's a shame, this guy was SO nice otherwise-- but he just didn't get a hint that I didn't want to hear about what happened to his friend's now-teenaged child, years ago. It's not my business, and it's a bad sign that he wouldn't respect my business later, either.
Bah, I say.
