Welcome to a mini-episode of Dear Nina
Our friendly chat today is about understanding why friends ask personal or even intrusive questions. This came up in episode 8 with my mom, “How to handle friends’ questions you don’t want to answer.” In that episode, my mom and I talked about strategies for avoiding giving away information, but we didn’t try to understand where intrusive/personal/intimate questions come from in the first place.
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Here’s a more positive spin to consider about questions that might rub us the wrong way. Perhaps a friend is asking the question because:
— your friend making conversation and isn’t sure what to say
— your friend has a different definition of what’s personal
— your friends have a different understanding of how intimate you’re willing to be because they’ve misunderstood the friendship, or because you have shared personal things in the past, or because they have shared their own personal information
— your friend is more of an open book in general and assumes the same of you
— your friend is trying to connect on a deeper level
More notes from the episode
Also be aware, and this is important, showing openness and vulnerability is one major way we establish intimacy with friends and make and keep close friends. That’s just reality. Of course you don’t have to share everything. But if you share nothing, then the friendship might always stay on the surface.
I also want to point out, that if you’re someone who prefers more privacy in general, then it’s only fair to not ask questions that are too prying either. Maybe that’s a way to model the kind of sharing you’re willing to do. To use the example from episode 8, if you don’t want to say where your kid is applying to college, don’t ask other parents that same question.
And finally, it can be confusing when a friend shares most of the time, but other times gives vague answers. A good friend takes the cue that certain times or certain subjects are different for whatever reason and doesn’t push too hard. As my mom said in episode 8, we are all entitled to our privacy. My hope is that this mini-episode simply puts a more positive spin on why our friends might ask personal questions in the first place.
Thank you to producer, Dave Dluger.
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One Response
People who probe when you’ve sort of given them more what you’d like to. Like asking who else knows!
Yup! Almost funny.