How open would you ideally be with your spouse?

[Kelfa28]

I put open with reservations…but only because of past events that I don’t feel comfortable sharing with anyone…especially my husband.

He doesn’t need to know details about my past relationships. I see nothing positive or productive about sharing details about any of my old boyfriends. I don’t want to know about any of the details of his former fiance. I will feel nothing but contempt and judgement…and there is nothing good that can come from that.

But…we do check each others email, answer each other’s phones and check text messages for each other. We don’t do it because we don’t trust each other…just the opposite actually.
This evening I was cooking dinner and was handling chicken. My phone rang and my husband picked it up and handled the call for me. He would have done the same if it was a text.
We are very open with each other…with specific reservations that neither of us wishes to share with each other.

 

[misspriss]

I said radically open and honest. I have a past, I really wish I could share that with my husband, but he prefers to be honest with reservations. He just doesn’t want to know. I’m the share everything type, he’s not. So I use my brain filter and don’t share everything,

It’s just my personality with him though, I prefer to share it all, but he doesn’t always want to know.

 

[Litcrit]

I took it to mean our own personal thoughts, ideas and opinions and how open we are with our spouse in sharing that information. My understanding is if you have a secret, its your own, not someone else’s, at least that’s what I thought the OP meant.

Yes, thank you for clarifying - this is about just being open and honest without the complication of “being open and honest about other people.” Simply how much of your own thoughts, feelings, opinions, history, everyday life you (want to) share with your spouse.

I’m not sure now what exactly the OP meant, but my answer remains the same. Whether it’s secrets or just general thoughts that I don’t think my wife needs to or would want to know.

That’s what I asked, thank you for the answer!

 

[bunnykisses88]

I’m radically open and honest because he knows if something is bothering me and I can’t help but to vent to him. We both shared so much basically everything we could think of about our past and attractions etc.

 

[Debora123]

Initially I thought “radically open and honest of course!”

… And then I read the descriptions and now I’m thinking probably more between radically open and open with some reservations.

I wish there was a choice for “Very open and honest, with very little reservation.”

For example, when I see an attractive man walking down the street, there’s 0 reason for me to point him out to my husband and talk about how hot the man is. I mean, if my husband asked me, I’d be honest… but there would be no reason for me to just come out and say it. I think it’s kind of rude.

I’m also not going to tell him something like “Ugh, oh my gosh your mom really got under my skin today… that lady needs to chill out!” …At least I wouldn’t word it like that.

But I think those are pretty much the only type of things I’d be more reserved and tactful about.

So I go with OTHER - “Very open and honest, with very little reservation.”

 

[Debora123]

He knows my passwords. If I’ve been constipated he knows that. We go to all doctors appointments with each other. If one of us gets a text and the phone is across the room the other will read it to us, etc.

Same here.

 

[Debora123]

I picked radically open and honest as well.

I’ve got to say though, its not as if I go around blurting out every little mundane detail or thought that comes into my head, but there really isn’t anything about myself that I would hide from him or refuse to tell him if he asked. I wouldn’t go around saying everything that pops into my head about other people, but I absolutely would have no qualms letting him know that I found some other man attractive, or what my weight is, or what stupid thing I did this morning etc etc, so between the two radically open and honest seemed much closer to the mark.

Ditto^^^

 

[Litcrit]

Initially I thought “radically open and honest of course!”

… And then I read the descriptions and now I’m thinking probably more between radically open and open with some reservations.

I wish there was a choice for “Very open and honest, with very little reservation.”

For example, when I see an attractive man walking down the street, there’s 0 reason for me to point him out to my husband and talk about how hot the man is. I mean, if my husband asked me, I’d be honest… but there would be no reason for me to just come out and say it. I think it’s kind of rude.

I’m also not going to tell him something like “Ugh, oh my gosh your mom really got under my skin today… that lady needs to chill out!” …At least I wouldn’t word it like that.

But I think those are pretty much the only type of things I’d be more reserved and tactful about.

So I go with OTHER - “Very open and honest, with very little reservation.”

I’d still put you in the “radically open” category, as you wouldn’t actively want to hide anything that was on your mind, especially if asked, you just don’t immediately have to say it out loud.

It appears to me that the same people from the other thread who prefer to have “spousal privilege” (for their friends to know that anything shared with them might be shared with their spouses, although it might not be) are the people who generally don’t keep their own thoughts from their spouses. We don’t necessarily blab all our thoughts all the time, in stream-of-consciousness fashion (“Nice restaurant. Good soup. That waiter is very good-looking. Oh, a stain on the sheet. Your mom really annoyed me when she pointed out a stain on my shirt the other day. Pretty flowers!” etc.)

I suppose it’s a personality thing. For me, it’s difficult to understand how someone can live with the knowledge that some part of themselves is off limits to their spouse. For others, I’m sure it’s difficult to understand why I’d point out to my husband that I thought another male person was attractive (I point out attractive female persons as well; beautiful landscapes, too ).

 

[Ms_Manners]

I chose open with some reservation, but very little reservation.
I don’t share the mean little things that sometimes do pop into my head when I get upset because I do my very best to chase those thoughts away and not act on them. Like if I hear something insulting and feel like shouting back something mean, or if someone annoys me for a moment and something uncharitable pops into my head. Some of those things would only cause similar thoughts in him, and that’s no good.
I didn’t take being open to mean telling each other other people’s secrets, that we don’t do, since they aren’t hurting anyone, they are just private thoughts, for example a friend whose parents are going through a rough divorce, a friend who is coming to terms with his own homosexuality and the way it will influence his life (he is not acting on it, he is making his peace with the face that he will be single forever).

 

[Sarabande]

I feel I’m in between radically open and honest and open with reservations. I like sharing almost everything with my husband. By almost anything, I mean that I won’t usually share my bodily functions with him, for example, although it seems like we’re always mentioning our children’s bodily functions whether it’s daily poop blowouts from my son or my daughter’s potty training process. Lol! Also, if we had a disagreement or when I went through PPD after my first child and the baby blues after my second, some of the things that went through my mind could have been so hurtful to him or to anyone. I preferred just putting those thoughts in my journal and then the next day feeling much better, wondering why I felt that with my husband or someone else. So, for me, it’s better off not saying things I would regret saying later.

And it’s also not like I’m just constantly telling him what’s on my mind. It’s just that I’m usually not reticent about mentioning anything in front of him and won’t hold back if asked. The last person I want to keep things from is my husband and best friend. He knows things about me that no one else knows, as I’m not an open book with mostly anyone else with the exception of my parents, but even they don’t know as much that I’m thinking as my husband. Most people know aspects of me (sometimes many aspects of me, but not all of me) as I’ve guarded myself through the years. But my husband understands me better than anyone and knows everything about me. And it’s the same for him. That is how we like it.

 

[Sarabande]

I picked radically open and honest as well.

I’ve got to say though, its not as if I go around blurting out every little mundane detail or thought that comes into my head, but there really isn’t anything about myself that I would hide from him or refuse to tell him if he asked. I wouldn’t go around saying everything that pops into my head about other people, but I absolutely would have no qualms letting him know that I found some other man attractive, or what my weight is, or what stupid thing I did this morning etc etc, so between the two radically open and honest seemed much closer to the mark.

Yes, I think we’re similar. I even point out attractive women to my husband. I have no problem doing that because I do think God creates some physically beautiful people and why not point them out?

 

[Irishmom2]

Open with reservations. There is so much charity to be done by not always saying what’s on our minds.

That is why I chose this option also. People say many more things than they really need to say at times. Some things can go unsaid. Of course, sometimes, there is a fine line between what should be said and what shouldn’t.

 

[chevalier]

Would you ideally be radically open and honest? (share everything, every embarrassing detail, every time you find someone attractive, everything that pops into your head about his mother, etc.)

That’s not radical honesty, that’s either compulsive honesty or some kind of exhibitionism. There’s no need to talk about that, just as there is no need to talk about bodily functions at a dinner table.

Or would you be open with some reservations? (share almost everything, definitely all about your romantic past, family history, relevant happenings in your life, but refrain from sharing thoughts that might hurt your spouse, like the fact that you noticed her sister is very attractive)

There’s nothing wrong with complimenting her sister or complimenting her on having such a pretty sister or something along those lines, but at the same there’s really no need to run to the wife with the thought that the sis-in-law is rather shapely. There is no need to share those thoughts. The spouses’ brains don’t need to be united surgically. I definitely don’t need to or especially want to know whenever she finds a man attractive. I know that happens and it’s actually normal and there’s little point thinking about it, but why should I need to hear about it. It goes both ways.

Or would you prefer to be relatively private? (share only information currently relevant to your marriage, which might exclude events from your past or about your family or friends or anything that doesn’t directly concern your spouse)

Secrets have a tendency to be relevant actually. Anyway, I guess there are things I’d keep to myself. What point is there recalling every single embarrassing detail to share it? Does she really need to know I was so fat I couldn’t get up on my own if I tripped when I was 5?

Or would you like to be as private as possible? (share only information necessary for the daily functioning of the family unit - i.e. when you might be expected home, but not who you’re going out with, etc.)

Depends, I might get to that point with some things, usually in reaction to questions or suspicions. But it’s definitely not only my business who I go out with (while there’s a notable difference between being asked and being interrogated about it.), which goes both ways. And I can recognise the behaviour of a person being attracted to someone but clueless about it. That’s one of the easiest things to tell in body language. I would know if it happened to her, likewise, it could happen to me without my conscious knowledge but with her being able to spot it.

If you’re married

Nope, and I’m slowly beginning to understand why. Your poll helped me on the way today.

 

[Rosary_Girl_1]

I didn’t want to post in the other thread (don’t want to stir things up any more than they are).

I prefer to be somewhere between “open with some reservations” and “relatively private” with my personal stuff in my marriage. There are things in my past that are nor relevant to our marriage and would hurt my husband more if he knew about them than if I keep them in the past. There are things I cannot say to my husband now because he is very sensitive and gets his feelings hurt easily. Then there are things my husband just doesn’t want to know about, like anything to do with my girl parts or if I’ve had a bad day or something is bothering me.

I hate that my husband’s need to be “as private as possible” means we have no real communication in our marriage and that our marriage has suffered because of it, but I have to respect his comfort level, right? I would like for us to have more openness in our marriage, but I can’t force him to be more open with me, no matter how much I may want it. :nope: He was more open before we were married, but after the blessed day, I guess he thought he had said all he needed to say.

 

[Scott_D]

After a quarter of a century, I find it impossible to hide anything from my wife. Not that I try, but I know I couldn’t anyway. We share everything from pain to pleasure.