(no subject)

[ljgeoff]

I remember kightp once saying that she'd 'talk about almost anything'. I wrote a letter to Keith yesterday - I saw him last Saturday and he said that writing would be ok - and the letter was pretty open. I was chatting with Mike about it, and asked him to read it. "It just sounds like you," was his comment. "What makes you question whether you should send it?"

"It makes me feel kinda naked," I typed back. This is very unusual for me - so much so that I'm still noodling it.

It's the boundaries thing again. The thing is, I don't understand why people *don't* want to 'talk about almost anything'. When I was a kid, I was almost impervious to teasing. I really just didn't buy it, if that makes any sense. I'd shrug my shoulders or just laugh in their face. What they thought about me just wasn't important.

So, I will say anything that I'm thinking. I don't mean that I can't be tactful. Tact is one of those social oils that I'm very good at. It's just that I don't seem to have a "too personal" file in my noggin.

But when I look at information about boundaries, it all has to do with low self esteem. I had a counselor once tell me that I had very 'permeable' boundaries; 'like a sieve' is the phrase she used. But I do not suffer from low self esteem.

This is more than just navel-gazing. I'd really like to understand it, because if I do, I might be able to understand why most people *do* like to keep things personal. Yesterday, Len said that Tami was irked at me for mentioning to Laura (Len's ex) that he and Tami were dating.(1) I make this kind of mistake less often than I used to, but I am quite clueless on too-regular of a basis for my own comfort level. I don't like it when I irk people.


(1) I still don't really get it, but it goes something like, Tami doesn't like Laura because Laura is Len's evil ex. So Tami doesn't want Laura knowing things. But I really don't understand it, and have it filed in my head as one of those weird things that I have to remember when I'm interacting with people.

Comments

[limnrix.livejournal.com]

Whatever you've got, I've got it too. I've developed rather a bad reputation of being "tactless" and compulsively honest that derives from a sort of sticks and stones, it's-a-social-game perspective.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I do have privacy boundaries. Most of my examples are things that I won't write in a non-friendslocked post, and this one I probably won't leave visible for very long. I had these boundaries before I spent many years in a somewhat-closeted relationship, but that r'ship certainly enhanced my habits of compartmentalization. On the other hand, I was one of the people who kept a household running by always chatting to people about each other ("Hey, kid1, did you know parent2 is going to be away on the weekend?" "Hey, parent1, kid2 was telling me her good news from school, isn't that great?" ) which was fine in good times, except that it tended to protect the poor communicators from the consequences of their behaviour and that sometimes it disappointed the person who wanted to tell his/her own happy news. But this kind of thing really isn't appropriate in non-family situations.

I don't always get it right about what other people's privacy boundaries are, either.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, I can add this to the mix. Sometimes, people want to keep information private for no particular reason, e.g., because they think no one is supposed to talk about this kind of thing.

We can build up those expectations from strange things in our past. A person whose parents refused to deal with illness might have a harder than normal time discussing an illness, for example... and might not even realize this until trying to.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and "don't kiss and tell" is one of those things that some people feel strongly about. If one single person gets lucky with another single person who is not a co-worker, do they tell their friends? Some people think no, you don't tell about sex unless it's the start of some primary-track relationship. Some people think sure, why not, it's not something they're ashamed of. Some people who have sex with each other don't discover their different assumptions until one person has told all their friends.