June 19, 2014

          Although it hasn’t happened often, I can recall a time when someone told me too much too soon. In high school I was taking a course with a student that had been in my class for a few years, but I never talked to him before. One day we were assigned to work on a small project in groups. The aforementioned student was placed in my group and after a little bit of time he began to talk to me. I got the impression that he was a nice guy after that initial conversation, but my opinion of him drastically changed the very next class. This is because he started to talk to me about all of the women he had been with, or planned on being with, in an “explore each other’s body” kind of way.

I didn’t know how to respond to his comments about the intimate experiences he had with women because I hardly knew the guy. It became obvious that he and I had very different opinions regarding the definition of private information, as well as when and if you should tell somebody such information. He had no problem self-disclosing, “verbally sharing personal, private information, and feelings,” that information with a person he only knew for one day (Verderber & Verderber 168). It baffled me that he was so comfortable telling me the things that he did because I wasn’t comfortable telling him any personal information about myself. In order for me to share any private information I would need to know a person for years on end. It was so weird to me that he just rambled on about his experiences because something like that had never happened before. I honestly don’t know if the guy was joking with me or had a serious problem, but I never looked at him the same way after that conversation. I attributed negative things to a guy that I felt was using young women; I saw him as irresponsible, ignorant, disrespectful, and immoral. He wasn’t a person that I wanted to be involved with, so I stayed away from him in any way that I could. That conversation taught me to be careful about how and when I share personal feelings and private information with other people. If I share private or sensitive information too quickly, it may damage any chance I have of building a meaningful relationship with another person. 

Works Cited

Verderber, Kathleen S. & Rudolph F. Verderber. Inter-Act: Interpersonal Communication             Concepts, Skills, and Contexts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.