Fear of Self-Disclosure

I am much like society in feeling that we should not express our emotions and that revealing them can seem very risky. This may sound stupid, but often times I feel that if I talk to a man, that he will always constrew it as being "hit on" rather than just wanting a friend to talk to or having something in common with them. I think part of this is societies fault. I went out with my boyfriend and one of his friends after one of my softball games. We went to a restuarant. We played bingo there and were all having a good time. My boyfriend went to the bathroom, while he was gone his friend and I were talking. When he got back we were still talking. At first I wasnt saying much to his friend, because I didnt want to express my feelings towards anything beause I didnt want to hurt any feelings he may have about the subject we were talking about. I took the risk of talking to his friend. My boyfriend did not like that I was talking to his friend so much and took it as me liking his friend. I got up the courage to tell my boyfriend how much I liked him, disclosing information I didnt tell anyone else. Here I think there was both a fear of being rejected from my boyfriend after telling him that and a fear that my boyfriend would think I was only disclosing this information because I felt bad. I think for him it took a lot of self disclosure to tell me he was a little jealous of how much I was talking to his friend and how much he cared about me.