You Want to Share Your Deepest Fears and Secrets

We want our deepest secrets to remain hidden forever. Yet, have you ever seen yourself disclosing them to a person you hardly know, while still keeping them secret to your family and friends?

As per social penetration theory, our purpose of communication is always self-disclosure. We actually want to share our deepest fears and secrets with another person.

The Process of Disclosure

The process of disclosure begins with sharing of small details like your name, occupation, and family count. This information is just like an orientation you give on yourself to others. There is no element of surprise nor is there any intimacy in the information. But, as you keep talking, you reach the next stage of exploration, where you start to share your interests with the other person. Stay talking long enough and you will start to disclose your private information and feelings. As per the theory, it is at this stage when romantic relationships can develop. Does that mean that you can fall in love with anyone if you talk for long? Of course not, this is only a possibility not surety.

The duration of each stage can be different for different people. For one person, the jump from orientation to exploration can happen within a few minutes while for others, this can take hours or even days. If the third stage, which is called affective stage results into a romantic or platonic relationship between two people, it will grow and at some point, in time, will reach a stage of stability where you start to understand the person can even predict his or her behavioural responses. There also comes the stage of degeneration when you tend to lose interest in communication and in the person and gradually withdraw from any disclosures resulting into the end of your relationship.

Have you ever heard yourself saying that life has become boring? We must do something to revive our relationship? It is the condition, just before the degenerative stage, where you need to do something to revive and go back to the stage of exploration so that you can make the process cyclic instead of ending it in a degenerative stage. Could this be a reason why some couples look for someone outside of marriage? Because they cannot have any disclosures remained to be shared with the existing partner? Could be a possibility!

Save your Relationship from Degenerating

How to overcome this challenge of boredom and stay stable in a relationship? It is still a question bothering most of us. Some major events in life bring change and that bring out new elements inside humans, new emotions, new secrets to disclose. Ever heard your parents suggesting to have a baby if your relationship is not really going well? That baby brings the newness in life. It makes the parents feel new things and then, you will have new disclosures. Women may have hormonal changes that will change their behaviour - Something new, of course. Men may have difficulties taking care of kid or may find themselves always fond of kids and are able to make wonderful fathers. In either case, there are new things to explore and instead of going through the degenerative stage, you revive your relationship to the exploration stage.

You have a kid, a few years after, another kid, and now you are back to the same challenge. Do you still need to think of revival? Perhaps you do. What exactly should you do to recycle your relationship? You may have already tried things such as buying a new house, changing your career, changing city, and going on vacation. You have to keep doing it to keep your relationship moving. It is when you stop doing these things with your partner that your relationship starts to degenerate. An extra marital affair is a result of performing these revival activities not with your partner, but with some other person. It is like, your wife is ill and to help her, you are taking a medicine yourself. Your relationship with your spouse needs the reviving medicine but you are giving that to an outsider. The medicine will not work on your spouse but it will work on the person receiving it. So, the result is obvious.

Why should you disclose?

Coming back to the point of disclosure, no matter what kind of a person you are, you still have the tendency to disclose things about you which means if not your family, your friends will know your secrets. If not friends, your secret partner will know your fears. If not, people close to you, some stranger, you meet rarely, will have the information about you. You will always disclose to someone. However, there can be barriers that are preventing you from disclosing such as differences in religion, personality, gender, and social status between you and the other person. More the barriers, less are the chances that you will disclose yourself. You disclose nothing, your urge will still not end!

 If you are not disclosing, you are going against the law of nature. Going against your very nature will not keep you healthy and you will have complaints with life. You may blame other things like bad job, bad boss, bad spouse, not enough money, no time for self, and grow the list but you will never be able to discover that these are only the symptoms and the cause is your tendency to keep things to yourself. Have you ever heard people say that they feel relaxed after telling a secret to someone? Of course, they do because we communicate with the intention of disclosure and if that does not happen, we will keep feeling heavy.

Having disclosures can be a wonderful thing and can keep you sane but at the same time, disclosure to wrong people can also be dangerous. Does that mean you should not disclose anything about you to people other than those very close to you? Well, how about having the judgement on who is trustworthy and disclosing only to them? How about disclosing it to someone who cannot fully understand or speak? Your 3-year-old kid or your pet? Safe, will it not be? It may not give you a complete satisfaction but enough to not feel the dying urge of telling someone. 

So, do not keep yourself hidden but open up, to someone, to anyone, and keep living a healthy life with a healthy relationship!