Reticence on the subject of your relationships, or lack thereof

 Why can't we just shut our big, fat mouths about our coupledom?

It's a particularly pertinent question for a journalism student who, taking every job offered her no matter the pay, took a position writing about relationships for HOSTAGE magazine. Five posts a week means you've got a lot of material to create and as has always been my modus operandi, I turned to personal experiences for the bulk of my posts -- even when it's just a little anecdote to open a piece about a post by another writer.

What does this mean for my relationship with Chris? I've never asked specifically if he minded being written about, I guess I figured he should expect it as a fellow writer and, honestly, I was scared he'd say no. Then what the hell would I write about? I've sort of made it a rule not to disclose very personal matters -- and I stray as far from personal sex stories as humanly possible -- and I like to keep stories of whispered sweet nothings and impromptu slow dances to myself.

I'd like to think I succeed at writing Carrie Bradshaw style by relating personal experiences and those of friends to diatribes about overarching themes -- and I seek to answer questions and solve problems most people might encounter in their own relationships. See, I feel relationships are a huge part of who we are -- whether they're familial, friendly or of the romantic nature -- because we spend so much time surrounded by other people. Of course, our relationships with ourselves are majorly important as well -- and that's what I try to focus on in this blog.

So, I turned to CB for her thoughts on the matter. There's an episode in season two of the fabled TV series where my hero just can't shut up about her failed relationship with that unicorn, Mr. Big. "Really, I pity him," she says a little too emphatically before her three girlfriends launch an intervention ("[S]top her before she obsesses again," as Miranda says). It's not about the state of their relationship -- or that it's ended -- the thing is Carrie always talks about Mr. Big -- and Aidan, and Berger, and Petrovsky -- to her girlfriends and to readers in her weekly column.

When they intervene, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte suggest a therapist. Carrie asks why she needs to pay someone when she's got them. "Look, we're as fucked up as you are. It's like the blind leading the blind," Samantha responds.

What really sparked my investigation into this topic was Lesley Dormen's article "Secrets and Lies" in the August issue of ELLE magazine. Dormen, a happily married woman for the past 14 years and obviously a writer, encountered a very similar question. "When is it okay to talk about your marriage, when isn't it, and who decides? Is privacy a trust issue, a loyalty issue, or more about context and intention--invasion of marital privacy versus lunch with your best friend?" Dormen wrote.

Further on, she wrote, "Why is marriage so determined to close the door behind itself? Are we ashamed of ourselves, of our messy married lives? What is it we're hiding? Or protecting?"

I've been guilty of invading married privacy out of curiosity. As a young person who has been in only a handful of relationships, I'm always wanting to know how marriage works. I've read that in order to help your relationships, it helps to talk to your married friends. And when one website listed the ten things every single person must do, on that list was "Talk to someone your age who is married."

It seems human nature to talk to at least our girlfriends about our relationships, writes Dormen. "The freedom to exchange private information about boys is one of the first ways we declare our independence from parents. We learn early on that boy talk is a social lubricant."

Even Drew Barrymore, cover star of ELLE's August issue isn't immune to boy talk with the girls. "I talk shit with my girlfriends, and it can get dirty."

If everyone does it, is it so wrong? Why do we do it? Is it that boy talk is one of the oldest ways of fulfilling our desire to be seen and heard, a desire so prevalent in today's reality TV obsessed culture? Is it that boy talk is the only topic everyone has an interest in and that everyone has something to say about?

Are all guys as reticent about their relationships as Dormen's husband? I know Chris asks guys at work for advice about sex things... the nature of which I won't divulge here. But how much does he tell buddies about me? He's often professed how differently he acts at work. So is he more talkative or more quiet? Who knows.

Because of popular movies and such, most women have a concept of men as vulgar pigs on the subject of sex (Barrymore said in ELLE, "In a lot of ways, I feel like I have a little bit of a dude inside me--except mine happens to be a 13-year-old boy, not a full-fledged man.") but what about the regular stuff?

In the end of "Secrets and Lies," Dormen writes about the benefits of sharing your marriage with others. "The telling," she writes, "lifts the veil from no one's eyes but your own." Producing a narrative surrounding your relationship, she says, whether to friends or in writing, helps the sharer to better understand him or herself and their partner. The pulling away actually brings you closer Dormen states.

For now, I'll continue doing what I've been doing, writing about us without delving too far. Because as Dormen writes, "for me, as for many writers, private life is my material."

(The above image is a closeup, shot by me, of a token card and tickets from Dave & Buster's at the Franklin Mills Mall where Chris and I played skee ball before seeing a movie.)