Was thinking about this last night. I have friends who I really don’t know anything about on an emotional level because I’ve drilled into my head it’s a conversation meant to be shared in therapy. But there’s also a part of me that sees the value in getting to know people as humans and not just their 9-5 selves. I have fem-presenting friends who seem to be more open to these types of conversations, but I genuinely want to find the line between sharing and over sharing. As a man, It’s pretty depressing to think about tbh, knowing other men for decades but not really knowing anything about them besides their favorite teams or beer.
Is this a thing that’s exclusive to males? Also, if you have any good literature recommendations for this topic please drop below 😅
Emotional labor as a term arose from workers being expected to also fake their emotions at work - smiling/caring/ etc.
But anyway, this new term for emotional labour is important to discuss as well.
So on the one hand,
dumping problems on people unprompted can be really shitty for them. especially femme presenting people are expected to be emotional caretakers.
On the other hand,
"only share that in therapy" sounds like an capitalist nightmare which is yet again destroying solidarity and free socialization. As the meme goes "they paywalled the human connection" Humans are meant to be social, we're meant to share things with one another. That's normal. It's totally okay to say "hey can i open up about something that's bothering me?" Or "i'm in a rough spot and want to talk about, but i don't want don't want to burden you with it" if people ask. It's good, actually
some people consider it oversharing to talk about certain topics, and other people don't. It's really a relationship to relationship thing. Best thing to do is just ask close friends if you can talk about something deep.