Maybe a repeat topic: do you have someone you can trust with everything in your head?

[SKL]

I'm about halfway done with the "40 day forgiving challenge."  They say you should really have a partner to whom you can confess every kind of sin.  Me:  hah!  I really wonder if there are as many as 1% of the population who have such a person.  So I thought I'd ask.

Exclude weird fleeting thoughts and dreams.  I assume we all have those and don't report them to anyone.  😛

[elegantlion]

My SO and I share everything, even stuff we've done in the past. However, we've only been together for a few years. I do think age has something to do with it. He has regrets about things as do I, but it's not like we were together when those things happened. We both wish that we had met earlier,  yet we both acknowledge that we might not have gotten along as well in our early years. Age & experience has allowed us to not worry about little things so much. We also work to respect the big decisions we each had to make in the past. 

I used to tell my mom a lot of things, not quite everything but close. Lately, I can't do that because she barely acknowledges my feelings. Like the other day, I shared about a decision that I made which was a really difficult, long-thought-out decision. She made one off-hand comment in a joking way and then changed the subject. She's 87 and her thinking has shifted in the last few years, so I giving her some grace due to age. 

[HomeAgain]

I'm sure I *could* tell dh everything, but I reserve the right not to burden him with that. 😆

[JustEm]

I have a few people like that.  Dh is one of them.  I could tell him absolutely everything that goes through my brain or that i've done and he'd be loving, understanding, and support me through whatever.

Another person is my closest friend. She's been my confidant for nearly 20 years and I can't see that ever changing.

I have another friend who I've known just as long as my closest friend and I could also tell her anything if I needed but I don't share quite as much with her, mainly because the first two people fill my need for venting and sharing.

Then there are my 2 sisters.  I could tell them anything and they have been my confidants at different periods of my life.  But not so much lately because of the business and hectic times in their lives.  For them, I listen now more than share

[Toocrazy!!]

Yes, my DH and two close friends. Between the three of them I could tell one of them everything going on depending on the situation. But I’m extremely private and would rather wrestle it in my head. Probably not the best solution. I tell my DH all my work and family woes and it always makes me feel better. I know I could tell him anything and he’d support me 100%. 

[Dmmetler]

I think confessing everything can easily turn into trauma dumping. I have one friend who tells me literally everything, and honestly, it's exhausting enough that I'm unlikely to do it to any one person, including DH. I feel I CAN tell DH stuff, and I have other friends who I feel I could tell anything to-but I'm not going to put THEM through the trauma of hearing everything!! 

 

[SKL]

57 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

I think confessing everything can easily turn into trauma dumping. I have one friend who tells me literally everything, and honestly, it's exhausting enough that I'm unlikely to do it to any one person, including DH. I feel I CAN tell DH stuff, and I have other friends who I feel I could tell anything to-but I'm not going to put THEM through the trauma of hearing everything!!

Yeah I stopped telling my parents a lot of things, not because they aren't safe to tell, but because I feel like it makes them tired or worried as they get older.  It's not necessary or helpful for me to burden them with much at this stage.

[Jaybee]

I voted the third option, but it isn't entirely true. Because I can share "almost" everything with a composite of dh, my kids, and a couple of friends. There are a few things I don't share with anybody, because they aren't really things anybody else needs to know--more like private worries/concerns, etc.

[Ditto]

No.  Not at all.  

[Carol in Cal.]

Oh heck to the no.

I have too many facets to talk to any one person about all of them.  I haven’t had a friend like that since maybe high school.  I do have dear, good friends, but I am always somewhat discreet with them.  I talk about some things with some people and other things with other people.  I think that that is partly a function of being a fairly conservative person in an extremely liberal setting, but also of being a woman in a mostly male field.

[Forget-Me-Not]

I have people I trust with information. But in the issues I am dealing with currently, it’s hard to discuss without violating the privacy of a third party. So I withhold a lot. So goes parenting teens and young adults. 

[Momto6inIN]

DH for sure. He says he likes hearing all the interesting stuff going on in my head and is disappointed when I keep quiet.

I have several other friends/family members who - divided among all of them - probably know everything worth knowing about me (the good, the bad, and the ugly)

[freesia]

1 hour ago, Dmmetler said:

I think confessing everything can easily turn into trauma dumping. I have one friend who tells me literally everything, and honestly, it's exhausting enough that I'm unlikely to do it to any one person, including DH. I feel I CAN tell DH stuff, and I have other friends who I feel I could tell anything to-but I'm not going to put THEM through the trauma of hearing everything!! 

 

Yes, this. I answered mostly bc I do have a couple of people, including dh, who I could trust/share everything, I just don’t bc I don’t see the point. They don’t need to feel burdened by it and it won’t help me. It’s enough to know I could. 

[Lecka]

Yes, but….

 

I have definitely felt constrained by needing to respect privacy of my family members.  
 

I have gotten used to it now and it’s fine now, but honestly that was hard for me.  
 

I have joined a support group instead of sharing with people in my circle besides my husband.  This seems like a good solution.  
 

My oldest child told me very clearly to stop sharing things he didn’t want me to share, when he was about 14, he didn’t want to be a topic of conversation among my parents and my sisters.  

[Alice]

I checked the first one but I think there is a difference between "tell everything that is in your head" and "bare your soul" and even "confess every sin". I think I can tell dh everything and he would forgive me.  But I don't tell him everything that is in my head and I don't think he would want me to. Sometimes he annoys me or I'm bugged by him, I don't tell him that. And I wouldn't want him to tell me everything I do that annoys him. It's not that I couldn't tell him and he wouldn't love me...it's just that I don't think a relationship has to share every single detail to be healthy. Maybe there is a difference between hiding things because you are afraid of what the other person will think and just not sharing because you don't want to. 

When we were getting married the common advice was to "not let the sun go down on your anger." My pastor's wife at the time gave me great advice. She was a very outspoken and strong woman but she said her advice was "not everything in your head needs to be said aloud". She added "Sometimes, just go to bed and let the light of a new day shine on whatever it is." Those were great pieces of advice. 

[Clarita]

I feel like I can tell a few people everything. Not that I actually have told them everything just because no one needs/wants to hear it ALL. Nothing specific that I keep from any of them though.

[Clarita]

I tell my people about my random fleeting thoughts and dreams. Again not all but I have told them.

[Terabith]

I think it is important to realize that any particular person doesn't have to serve as everything to you.  My husband is 100% the best ever.  I can tell him anything.  But we realized a long time ago that there are certain things that his desire to fix actually makes things worse for me.  So I have a pastor friend that I can go to with those issues.  Also, even people who love you a lot don't always share every hyperfixation, and it's awesome to seek out other people who love to hear, for instance, crow facts, than maybe your family who has hypothetically gotten super sick of hearing about crows.  Substitute education, or cats with talking buttons, or dragons, or politics, or whatever.  

I actually have several people that I could tell anything to.  I don't usually tell everyone everything though.  

[Heartstrings]

I tell my husband probably 99%, and I have 1 close friend who gets like 97% and a few close friends who get like 95%.  That 1%….nah.  
 

I should say, I *could* tell  my husband and my close friends 100% of everything and they would be amazing and still love me.   My own self would not allow it though.  

Edited February 15 by Heartstrings

[Sneezyone]

My bestie and my husband know 100%. My really good girlfriends know about 95%. We’ve all seen and done some things.

[kathyl]

No.  Not even close.

I have a few people I can discuss serious type things with.  But not too often, and not tooo serious.

And the only 'person' I "confess every kind of sin" to is God himself.  

[Pam in CT]

I answered "mostly, but."

Mostly in that I "can" tell pretty much anything to my husband, my therapist, one of my SILs, and one friend without any reservation about judgment or weird feedback or their retelling tales out of school...

Quote

Mostly, but there are some secrets I can never tell anyone.

but

there are, as several pp said already, some stuff that is so trivial that I can't imagine cluttering up anyone ELSE's life with,

and also I'd never share anything "tricky" about my husband with his sister, even though she's among my very closest friends, not because of how she might react but because that would put her in an awkward place,

but mostly because

4 hours ago, Forget-Me-Not said:

I have people I trust with information. But in the issues I am dealing with currently, it’s hard to discuss without violating the privacy of a third party. So I withhold a lot. So goes parenting teens and young adults. 

there's stuff that **isn't mine to tell.**  Other people's stories that have been shared with me in confidence, and in my worldview I am obliged to keep that confidence even from my husband. So for me, the balance is more like

Quote

Mostly, but there are some secrets I WOULD never tell anyone

cuz they're not my secrets to tell.

[Ausmumof3]

3 hours ago, Alice said:

I checked the first one but I think there is a difference between "tell everything that is in your head" and "bare your soul" and even "confess every sin". I think I can tell dh everything and he would forgive me.  But I don't tell him everything that is in my head and I don't think he would want me to. Sometimes he annoys me or I'm bugged by him, I don't tell him that. And I wouldn't want him to tell me everything I do that annoys him. It's not that I couldn't tell him and he wouldn't love me...it's just that I don't think a relationship has to share every single detail to be healthy. Maybe there is a difference between hiding things because you are afraid of what the other person will think and just not sharing because you don't want to. 

When we were getting married the common advice was to "not let the sun go down on your anger." My pastor's wife at the time gave me great advice. She was a very outspoken and strong woman but she said her advice was "not everything in your head needs to be said aloud". She added "Sometimes, just go to bed and let the light of a new day shine on whatever it is." Those were great pieces of advice. 

So true! Having to hash everything out when you’re exhausted at the end of a long day is not always the best way forward 

[Ausmumof3]

I have different people I talk to about different stuff, and some stuff I probably just wouldn’t talk about to anyone. It’s not even super dark or anything just… I don’t know I need a bit of private space in my head for exploring new thoughts and ideas and figuring out what to do with them.

[Pam in CT]

Thinking more about the specific context in the OP of "confessing every sin"

7 hours ago, SKL said:

I'm about halfway done with the "40 day forgiving challenge."  They say you should really have a partner to whom you can confess every kind of sin.  Me:  hah!  I really wonder if there are as many as 1% of the population who have such a person.  So I thought I'd ask.

Exclude weird fleeting thoughts and dreams.  I assume we all have those and don't report them to anyone.  😛

-- that specific word originates in a particular worldview that maybe obviates some of the "mostly yes, but" that some of us including me are grappling with here.

[I live within a faith tradition that doesn't really lean into that particular language, and definitely has a quite different framework for repentance and reconciliation than do some strands of Christianity, but even without getting into any of those kind of worldview differences...]

Other people's confidences to me, that I would not share with anyone, are not "sins"

and

my own random goofy flotsam that is too trivial to clutter up anyone else's life are similarly not "sins"

 

For me, sin-language gets pretty wound with shame / self-loathing / feelings of being stuck, stuff much better suited to a therapist than a spouse or friend. At least in the early stages.

[Eos]

4 hours ago, Momto6inIN said:

DH for sure. He says he likes hearing all the interesting stuff going on in my head and is disappointed when I keep quiet.

I wouldn't say DH likes to hear my weird thought dumps interesting stuff going on in my head but by this stage of our lives, at least he's able to keep a poker face.

Edited February 15 by Eos

[Elizabeth86]

6 hours ago, SKL said:

Yeah I stopped telling my parents a lot of things, not because they aren't safe to tell, but because I feel like it makes them tired or worried as they get older.  It's not necessary or helpful for me to burden them with much at this stage.

Same here. My mom used to hear about everything, but the past few years I feel I tell her less and less.

[PronghornD]

We who are of a more secretive bent may be less inclined to do surveys than those who share more freely!

Edited February 16 by PronghornD

[SKL]

1 hour ago, PronghornD said:

We who are of a more secretive bent may be less inclined to do surveys than those who share more freely!

True, but there's no way for anyone to know who answered what on this poll (unless they tell us in the comments).

[PronghornD]

47 minutes ago, SKL said:

True, but there's no way for anyone to know who answered what on this poll (unless they tell us in the comments).

I know there is no identifying info on who answered the poll, but I think the natural sharers will just be more likely to hop onto a poll, even if it is anonymous.

[sweet2ndchance]

It took me a long time to reach that level of trust but I really can tell my current dh anything. We really do share everything with each other, even weird fleeting thoughts and dreams. We've shared details about our pasts, the good, the bad and the ugly. He knows more about me than anyone ever in my whole life has ever known about me and I know the same about him. He truly is my best friend ever.

[DawnM]

Yes, DH and 3 friends I trust with anything I tell them.    One friend I wish I could say yes, but she tends to share things when it fits the conversation and she doesn't think, "Oh, I wasn't supposed to say anything."    So, I do love her, but I don't share everything with her.

[Harriet Vane]

2 hours ago, DawnM said:

Yes, DH and 3 friends I trust with anything I tell them.    One friend I wish I could say yes, but she tends to share things when it fits the conversation and she doesn't think, "Oh, I wasn't supposed to say anything."    So, I do love her, but I don't share everything with her.

Same. A very dear friend of mine doesn’t consider information private. She’s genuinely puzzled about what I consider to be private and not to be shared with others. So there are many things I don’t tell her. 

I do have a dear friend of almost forty years who I could tell anything. However I don’t tell her every single little thing because that’s exhausting in a friendship. The key is that I know I can share anything I want or need to if I so choose.

And giving credit where it’s due—my dh is an extremely trustworthy holder of confidences. He won’t tell others and he doesn’t use it against you in an argument. 

[DawnM]

13 hours ago, sweet2ndchance said:

It took me a long time to reach that level of trust but I really can tell my current dh anything. We really do share everything with each other, even weird fleeting thoughts and dreams. We've shared details about our pasts, the good, the bad and the ugly. He knows more about me than anyone ever in my whole life has ever known about me and I know the same about him. He truly is my best friend ever.

I got terribly burned by a group that I thought were friends but who have really turned out to be gossiping bee-atches.   I wish I hadn't told them as much as I did and I wish I hadn't wasted so many years with them.  They were the "Christian" homeschool moms too.....I like to not even think about it if I can avoid it.

[KungFuPanda]

I don’t see how it’s logistically possible to share EVERYTHING in your head even if you wanted to. 

[Ginevra]

I pick the second one. In reality, I expect my best friend and a couple other close-circle friends could literally hear anything at all in my head and wouldn’t recoil in horror or abandon me, but I spent so much of my life without such people that I don’t care to test the theory. I don’t have a deep need to tell others what’s in my head anyway and am a fan of the cathartic exercise of writing out a bunch of crap and then shredding/burning/destroying the record. I think it’s perfectly fine to not express everything you think. 
 

[Ginevra]

20 hours ago, DawnM said:

I got terribly burned by a group that I thought were friends but who have really turned out to be gossiping bee-atches.   I wish I hadn't told them as much as I did and I wish I hadn't wasted so many years with them.  They were the "Christian" homeschool moms too.....I like to not even think about it if I can avoid it.

Sorry to give you the “Thanks” trophy, but I just mean - same here. Same, same, same. I learned to be careful who hears the ugly bits. 

[SKL]

3 minutes ago, Ginevra said:

Sorry to give you the “Thanks” trophy, but I just mean - same here. Same, same, same. I learned to be careful who hears the ugly bits. 

Yeah I've been back and forth between "just need to tell someone" and "dammit, why didn't I just keep my mouth shut?"  Maybe I'll actually learn someday.  😛

[Murphy101]

On 2/15/2024 at 9:17 AM, SKL said:

I'm about halfway done with the "40 day forgiving challenge."  They say you should really have a partner to whom you can confess every kind of sin.  Me:  hah!  I really wonder if there are as many as 1% of the population who have such a person.  So I thought I'd ask.

Exclude weird fleeting thoughts and dreams.  I assume we all have those and don't report them to anyone.  😛

Well I have priests to confess sins to. 😁

What do they mean by partner? Like spouse? No. Like kids? No. Like blood relative? No. Like a close friend that’s closer than those other categories? Yes. Thank God.

And it has nothing to do with how much the other categories are loved or love me.  There’s some things that you just can’t share to maintain those relationships.  Most people don’t want to hear how they’ve hurt you. Because it hurts!  Most people would rather leave a relationship (avoid more pain or isolate in shame) than have a hard conversation(s) about how to heal relationship. People lie and break trust in various ways. People don’t always love the people they love. We all need someone we can tell that trauma to who won’t try to fix what can’t be fixed or try to convince we just shouldn’t love them anymore, but instead bear silent witness as they help us carry our cross. Everyone needs at least one Simeon.  It’d be awesome sauce if everyone tried a bit harder to be a Simeon to others too. 

[Murphy101]

And yes. I get that it takes years. My Simeons are 3 people I’ve literally known for decades. Now I figure their spouses are exempt from the “don’t tell anyone” but I’m lucky in that they chose spouses who can respect the bond.

[forty-two]

I take "tell everything" and "confess my sins" as different, though overlapping things.  WRT "tell everything", that's spouse/close-friend territory, while "confess sins" is pastor territory.  For "tell everything", there's nothing I couldn't tell my dh.  While there are things I don't tell him, I certainly *could* without causing problems; I'm just a private person.  For "confess sins", I both do and don't have someone - it's complicated by the fact that my pastor is my dh, and while I absolutely could do private confession/absolution with him (I think he'd have no problem putting on his pastor hat), I myself am unable to think of him as pastor-not-dh (instead of pastor-AND-dh); anything I told him-as-pastor would have to be something I was ready to discuss with him-as-dh, because I personally wouldn't be able to compartmentalize like that.  I could go to one of the other pastors in the area, but realistically that's not something I'd do without it being really important; so while the opportunity exists, it's not one I'm likely to take advantage of (though that's something I do want to change - I feel the lack - but it's still an aspirational sort of thing atm).

[Ausmumof3]

19 hours ago, KungFuPanda said:

I don’t see how it’s logistically possible to share EVERYTHING in your head even if you wanted to. 

Lol

i would need to be able to talk ridiculously fast after a couple of cups of coffee 😂

[Spryte]

I want to change my vote. 

My initial vote was yes. In addition to DH, I was thinking of at least one local friend to whom I can tell anything I want (anything I want because I don’t necessarily want to share every detail in my head and bore someone to tears). There’s also a college bestie out there, and we pick up where we left off whenever we are together, even if it’s in the phone. I can tell her anything, and vice versa. DH goes without saying.
 
But other than DH and my college bestie — who is awesome and a forever person, but not local — I want to switch to Nah. I don’t have any local friends with whom I can share anything at all. A few years ago — yes. But not anymore. Our area has really shifted in the last few years (not just in my head, we often make national news for the divisiveness here), and there is a level of distrust here now, even among former close friends. Upon reflection, I really do need to keep the filter on locally IRL these days, except with DH.

[J-rap]

There are several people in my life, first and foremost my dh, with whom I could discuss anything.  But, I choose to not go over every little thing ...  I just don't think I need to do that.  What would be the reason?