It’s normal to want to get your friends’ or family members’ advice on your relationship from time to time. However, I took this to the extreme out of fear of messing up my “perfect” relationship and my oversharing eventually led to our breakup.
- Our arguments never really ended. Every time we argued, we talked things through. However, instead of handling it myself, I’d involve my friends by asking advice on the argument and to make sure they think I did the right thing. Each time, they would come up with a different perspective that I hadn’t considered. As a result, I would bring up the argument again with my boyfriend and this would always prolong it when it really should’ve been dropped.
- My friends gave me unsolicited advice. My relationship was always part of the conversation with my friends because I was the only one dating at the time. Consequently, they would end up picking apart every detail I shared. They weighed on different things my boyfriend did and sometimes they made me feel as if the relationship wasn’t progressing as quickly as it should’ve been, which in turn filled me with doubt.
- My friends took longer to forgive than I did. When my boyfriend did something wrong, I would vent to my friends. The downside of this is that even after I got over what he had done, my friends still punished him in a passive-aggressive way because they still weren’t over it. This created so much unnecessary stress and tension.
- He became uncomfortable around my friends. Because of my constant sharing, my friends knew a lot about our relationship, so every time we hung out, there was always an undertone of suspicion. It was like they were saying, “You’re not fooling us, we know how you really are!” He felt it and he hated it. Frankly, I don’t blame him.
- He began to resent me for my big mouth. There were times when my friends referred to something I shared with them during group conversations and he noticed. He begged me to stop being so open about our relationship with our friends. I tried to assure him that they didn’t mean any harm, but when he noticed I was still sharing details with them about our relationship after I promised not to, he started resenting me.
- My boyfriend stopped trusting me. In time, my boyfriend stopped being as open with me as he was in the beginning. I started to feel as if there was a wall between us. We’d have conversations but they weren’t as deep. When I asked him about it, he said he didn’t want his words to get misconstrued if they were ever repeated.
- I became obsessed about what he was sharing. Because my boyfriend stopped being so open with me, I wondered if he was open about me to his friends and what exactly he was saying. Were his friends secretly tearing down my character as my friends did his? Was he having doubts about our relationship because of what his friends were telling him? Was he planning on ending the relationship? I began spinning out and overthinking things.
- Comparisons with other couples were never-ending. Every time we were out with other couples, I compared notes with the girlfriends. If I found out my boyfriend wasn’t doing something theirs was, I’d question if he was a good boyfriend to me. I always wanted to be the best couple amongst our friends, but aiming for perfection strained our relationship more because I always found something to be unhappy about.
- There were no sacred moments to keep only between us. When my boyfriend did something nice for me or tried something new in bed, I’d tell my friends about it because I felt romanced. Then when my friends discussed it, something that I felt was so sweet would turn into something that made me question his intentions. Was he trying new things in bed because he was bored with the relationship? Was he buying me gifts because he was making up for something terrible he had done, like cheating with another girl?
- We lost the magic between us. We were no longer able to have pillow talk where we could be open and honest with each other and have an intimate emotional connection. I felt like him finding out how much I shared about our relationship lessened the trust between us and as a result watered down our relationship. The relationship became about sex and doing couple things, but never really connecting emotionally. It’s no surprise that it ended soon after.