Self-disclosure is critical in maintaining healthy and satisfying relationships. Talking with your partner and sharing feelings helps deepen intimacy. feelings of love, and even sexual satisfaction (Macneil, 2004). In addition, opening up and sharing your thoughts and feelings with your partner helps you to grow together as a couple. Self-disclosure lets your partner know what is wrong and how you feel about it, and enables you to ask for specific change (Fowers, 1998). To make it a bit easier, communication experts recommend editing during self-disclosure. Editing means that you decide which comments are the most courteous, polite, and sincere before disclosing. Overall, women have been found to engage in more self-disclosure than men (Dindia, 2000).
Keeping silent about your true feelings and thoughts or criticizing your partner instead of talking is much easier and puts you in a much less vulnerable position. Opening up and talking about yourself makes you vulnerable. Ideally, an intimate partner is one who can hear what you are all about and still love you.
One final note about self-disclosure: it is risky to disclose too much before the relationship is stable and communication skills are in place. This can cause the relationship to deteriorate. This is what we discussed in the onion theory earlier in this chapter. Problems and issues that are brought up before a couple knows how to communicate and discuss them may only get worse (Butler & Wampler, 1999).