It is not wrong to have a heart-to-heart conversation. Be it romantic or intellectual. What matters is the person you are conversing with, more than time and place of the conversation. Over sharing makes partner in conversation uncomfortable because you may trust this person, but that level of intimacy may not be reached by the partner. One of the reasons a person over shares is due too much trust on others (or naivety). In my case an illusion of friendship with every stranger I met was created in my mind and rush to begin or progress a relationship always have led me to spill the beans.

I used to believe the world is filled with nice people. Now I know they are a variety of not-so-nice people mixed in. This revelation to me was the first trigger to persuade me to stop unveiling to much about myself and keep dangers at bay. Next trigger was when I understood that with some people sharing less is more, this is due to various reasons (which is a conversation for some other time). There are some people who do not care about your divulging, they are one of the nice people. But some make sure to use this information to manipulate or against you. There is a quote which goes ‘Handful of people care; rest are curious’ which is a mantra I tend not to forget.

Have these tactics at your disposal to prevail over over-sharing:

• Some of the traits I observed in not many people during over-sharing are getting excited and interrupting others, hence pause to listen and take a deep breath and count seconds in your head before responding, it will make you look thoughtful.

• Check if you are being helpful or hurtful or the point you are making is needed in this conversation.

• Observe If they are eager about the conversation. if yes, they ask questions. Which tells you what they want to know and respond accordingly (use tactic 1 here). This way you are not handing over unnecessary information.

To drive the point home, I want to give you this quote from 48 laws of power by Robert Greene (It is an intriguing book, Amazon link is here). which goes: ‘Always say less than necessary’. I say it is factual because the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. I learnt the lesson not to overshare the hard way. Now I am very particular about whom I talk to or spend time with. Hope this helps you.

Until next time.