There's a lot of advice going around that being open and honest with people is always a good thing, which is true except when it comes to divulging personal information. In my experience, people with BPD tend to be a bit too honest about themselves to people too quickly (probably because we spend a lot of time in therapy and forums where we're used to verbal vomitting our feelings and past and situations) but actually I've come to realise that a) it's a really bad turn off to most people and b) it hurts us more when we do this and then when people leave us (with all the information we shared with them). There's a time and a place to divulge information, and for us it's better we give ourselves a lot of time to get to know the other person before we start sharing our personal stuff. Because we're naturally a bit needy for attention, love and support, we tend to like to share intimate details of our lives with people we think we're connecting with but another part of BPD is that we often misconstrue relationships to make them closer than they actually are. When we feel we really 'click' with someone, we tend to feel like it's a green light to share but we might not realise that they don't feel that level of 'clicking' with us yet. When normal people start clicking with each other, they feel happy in the friendship relationship but they don't actually start sharing their personal stuff like we do.

I know this because for all my teenage life I was only friends with normal stable people. I learnt not to share too much of my personal stuff (like my depression, my inner darkest feelings, my frustrations with relationships, family drama) because even though they were close to me, they never went into all that kind of intimate stuff with me. Then I met the first person I knew with BPD and she and clicked and she started sharing everything going on in her life with me on a personal level I've never experienced before. I thought that she and I were going to be the best of friends forever, until I did one tiny tiny thing and she cut me off after under a year. After her, I met a string of BPD girls and the same thing happened. I started getting comfortable with the idea of sharing intimate details with myself with people I 'click' with but I realised that if they don't have BPD too, they tend to get very overwhelmed and freaked out fast and even though they don't show it at first...eventually they do subtly distance themselves. 

So I'm trying to re-learn how I was as a teenager, that more guarded person who only spoke about the intimate stuff with my mother or diary or therapist and on here too now. Sure it's nice to feel like someone cares, it's nice to share those dark and fucked up stuff with someone when you really feel they will love you and be there for you and sure, they do tend to give a compassionate and warm response *at* *first* but then all too suddenly they distance themselves and you begin to realise that you've become this sort of dark presence in their lives, this sad tragedy that they don't want to know about anymore even if they care.

This hit me more than ever when I recently found out this was the reason a girl distanced herself from me last year. She was too polite to tell me her reasons why she stopped replying to my messages to meet up, and I didn't even share a whole lot with her, but the stuff I did share was enough to make her feel like she couldn't cope (depression, my deep seated anger at people). I didn't even do it all the time, in fact I think I only said serious things to her a handful of times but I had misunderstood our relationship to be that kind of way when looking back, she really just wanted to talk about guys, sex, future careers, clothes and travelling. 

So being guarded is helpful for us to maintain our relationships. 