How much do you tell your friends what you are doing/have planned etc ?

[poncholady]

I have a friend I see all the time .. but I don't share everything with her. We chat everyday about our day to day things .. eg work has been busy today, I had to go into the city for a client meeting, I'm watching EE on TV tonight, type-of-thing, but I leave things out. I don't mention:

That I have a PT come to my house twice a week
That I go for very long walks every weekend, alone
If me and my partner are out for dinner/drinks

I wouldn’t intentionally leave those things out… but I also don’t think they’re essential to share. They generally would come up in conversation naturally though if someone asked what I’d been up to, yes I’d mention PT and dinner out etc. Why do you choose not to share? Is it specifically with this one friend?

My conversations with friends seem to flow naturally really, with nothing being out of bounds.

I'm interested as to why you deliberately choose not to share certain things with your friend?

It depends on how the conversation goes. I wouldn’t deliberately keep anything like that from them, but equally if the conversation hasn’t gone in that direction I wouldn’t go out of my way to shoehorn it into the conversation either.
It sounds like you’re deliberately withholding the information, why is that?

I just let conversation flow and talk about what happens to come up. If I talk to someone every day, then we are likely to touch on more aspects of our lives than with someone who I talk to once a month.

I can't think of anything that is particularly out of bounds. It all depends on the topic of conversation, where and when it is happening, who I am talking to, etc.

I had a friend who behaved like a close friend, but then when I texted would be in Thailand, or Portugal. The fact that she didn’t mention these trips in advance definitely made me think she wasn’t really a friend, and was hiding things. Uncomfortable.

Close friends I talk to about anything. Some things may not come up but there’s no topics I’d specifically avoid.

If someone was judging our friendship and how genuine or close it is on what I had told them or not told them, I would finding myself backing off from them pretty quickly. It would ruin the comfort and fun of a friendship if I was going into meeting with them with a list of points I must tell them or else I am a bad friend.

I would neither intentionally leave them out or mention them without them coming up in conversation. I agree with the poster above - when you are speaking to a friend your conversation "flows" and what you tell them relates to what is natural as part of the conversation flow.

I wouldn’t deliberately not mention things to my close group of friends. We have a WhatsApp group that’s posted on most days so even the little stuff gets a mention.

I don't tell people much about myself unless they ask or its directly relevant to the conversation.

I believe that the less people know about me, the better.

Just out of interest, do you have any close friendships?

I don't go into depth about finances, but other than that I don't generally hold anything back. Conversation tends to be about weather, our children, partners, clothes, holiday/day plans, how we feel/are dealing with problems, something funny - one occasion a friend asked out group who would come with her after to choose her new glasses!

Close friends we chat about everything and anything. We don’t tend to talk about politics or money but it’s not intentional I don’t think. We had a bit of a barney about Brexit a few years ago so we tend to leave that subject well alone now.

I do have one friend who can be very prickly and opinionated so there are some subjects I avoid with her - I don’t want to go out for a drink with her and then be subjected to an hour of hectoring about my holiday choices for example.

Nothing at all unless I was doing it with them - or it somehow related to something we were discussing. I definitely don’t give friends a regular update on my activities.

It depends on the flow of the conversation but nothing is specifically off limits unless it affects someone else's privacy, you might want to avoid mentioning things that are costing a lot of money (eg the 2 x PT visits) if the friend was having money troubles I could understand that.

Op i am like you, and then a group of "friends" Complained that I didn't tell them I went out for a meal and it all kicked off. They said it was strange that I didnt share these things. I felt like they wanted complete access and insight to my life and that wasn't something I was happy with. The friendship with them had become a constant stream of updates and consciousness about things I didnt care about so I left the group chats and now they dont know anything about my life at all 🤷‍♀️

It depends what you mean by close friendships. I have a couple of friends I'm closer with than others - we hang out more regularly, we share more interests, conversation seems to flow easier, we do each other favours here and there.

But I have a lot of friendships with various people from various parts of my life.

I'm an only child, I've always found 'best friends' or even 'close friends' quite stifling both as a concept and in practice.

I sound like a right miserable twat in my posts but I'm honestly not. I'm really sociable, I chat to people easily and I'm always bang up for a laugh or trying new things. I just don't tend to reveal much about myself.

I would make sure I'm not saying something which could upset someone or make them feel bad. Eg. How well my kids are doing when they have just told me how they're struggling with theirs etc. I try to avoid money stuff unless it is a discussion about pensions.

I pretty much share everything. We don't tend to keep parts of our lives hidden.
We're very close though. We go on holiday together, look after each others kids, socialise at least once etc.

We're involved in each other lives so it would be odd to hide something. We also live in a small village so if one us uses a PT we'd all know as we'd either see it or be using the same one! Same goes for cleaners, trades etc.

This, with close friends things just generally come up in conversation. I do have a friend who’s a bit like this though, if you ask her if she’s got a holiday booked she’ll happily tell you, but otherwise she won’t, and then the following week you’ll see on facebook she’s in some other random country. I’ve come to the conclusion she’s actually just really crap at conversation and can’t think of anything to talk about unless I’ve specifically brought the subject up first.

I'm not sure I quite know how to answer this as I'm not entire sure what you are asking and why.

Nobody knows absolutely everything about what I'm up to - there's isn't enough time/contact so share every detail. Even my husband doesn't know all my movements! But there would be very, very few things I'd intentionally keep concealed either. If someone asked me what I was up to tomorrow/this week/next weekend/in the summer then I would give them the highlights. If I knew someone well then I'd expect the PT would come up at some point, as would the long walks. But they wouldn't know about every long walk. Similarly, I might mention I was going out for dinner with DH, but it might well not come up depending on timing. My friends would always know about longer trips and I'd be kind of confused if someone I considered a close friend didnt tell me about a trip that there were taking for a week or more.

I might sometimes not mention a social event that I was attending to a friend if I thought they might be hurt that they weren't included and it was just easier if they didn't know. But I wouldn't lie if asked.

Well I wouldn't actively tell my best friends if I was going for a walk / to the gym / out for dinner unless they either specifically asked or they called / text at a time when I was doing one of the above. I don't think they'd really care 😂We all have lives and none of us know what each other is doing all day every day!

But I wouldn't keep anything from them either?!

Strange question.

I don’t tell everyone everything, just because not everything comes up. Eg mum friends I don’t tell about my work stuff unless it comes up. Work friends I’m probably not going to tell them where I went with my daughter the other day. I do a have a friend who barely knows anything about me though because she never asks. But therefore she seems to think she’s the only busy person in the world despite me having something every evening of every week 🤣

I tell them if im doing something different, like going on holiday or seeing a concert, wouldn't bother telling them l was going to the pub or for a walk, unless they asked what l was doing on a certain day. But im deliberately keeping anything a secret, just think they wouldn't be intrested.

@poncholady i'm guessing the thing about the PT is that you feel you'll get criticised for spending the money. On something that other see as frivolous?

It's been a long time since I've had anyone close enough to be wanting to know literally everything. Lots of my life is private. I barely work these days well only a couple of days a week at the moment. (i'm not on benefits).

I don't tell people that, somewould judge some wouldn't but it's impossible to know how people will take it. I had a friend in her 60s being criticised for taking early retirement the other day. Not in front of her, but people were talking about it and saying she was making a mistake. I don't understand why people are so judging.

I think everybody does it. Because people judge things that are not their business.