Reasons not to tell someone something

For various reasons lately, I’ve been thinking about reasons not to tell people things. I like to share; I keep a blog for heaven’s sake. Sometimes, I say too much. Rarely do I say too little. Don’t get me wrong, I can keep a secret if instructed to do so. I sometimes even keep things to myself that might be secrets.

The other side of this issue is intimacy. Obviously, I’m not talking about keeping secrets from your partner. I don’t do that. I don’t believe in it. Maybe that’s why I’m single. I don’t do things that I can’t tell my partner (when I have one), and I expect that when my friends tell me something they understand that I’m likely to discuss it with my partner. Of course, my partner is then expected to keep my friends’ secrets, but I guess that’s a criterion. I expect the same of my partner.

There are people I see every week, or talk to on the phone with every day, who I don’t tell some things. While there are others I see four times a year who I do tell those things. Here’s my first pass at reasons not to tell people things:
• It might hurt their feelings.
• It’s someone else’s secret.
• Political: they might object to it philosophically.
• They might judge me for it or say something hurtful regarding it.
• It might change their perception or expectations of me in a way I don’t want.
• They might use it against me in the future.
• They might become unhealthily emotionally attached to it.
• They might tell someone else who might have one of the above reactions to it.