Eat, Pray You'll Shut Up, Love

I've always been a feelings stuffer, but I've been reading about vulnerability creating intimacy, blah, blah, blah, so I'm trying to be an open book. Though my boyfriend appreciates this, he keeps telling me there's a line between expressiveness and my making everything an emotional issue to be hashed out. He last said this when I confessed that I had Googled his ex-girlfriend and felt threatened by how pretty she is. Should I have kept that to myself?

--Open

If you were any more open, you'd have squatters and roosters. It's great that you've thrown yourself into the trenches of Self-Improvementville, but the way you connect with someone is by letting them see who you are, not poking them in the eye with it every 20 minutes. Vulnerability shouldn't be a fancy word for "everything you say or do hurts my feelings." This Carnival Of Insecurities presented as problems for your boyfriend to solve turns his life with you into a never-ending emotional chorewheel. (Remember, he's in a relationship with you, not a psychology internship.) This isn't to say you're wrong to look to your boyfriend for soothing. But before you press a problem on him, ask yourself how it would affect him, whether he can fix it, and whether it's really his business to know. Not all feelings are made for sharing. Some need to go off in a corner and die a quiet death on their own. Still, you aren't without help in ushering them there. (This is what therapists, best friends, and the Journaling-Industrial Complex were invented for.) People think that keeping romance alive takes a $10,000-a-night Spanish castle package, complete with moonlight carriage rides with an aria-singing Placido Domingo jogging behind. But it's actually the mundane daily stuff that matters -- how you and your partner respond to each other's seemingly unimportant remarks and gestures. It turns out that telling your partner "I can't find the salt shaker anywhere" isn't just an expression about a lost object; it's what marriage researcher John Gottman calls a "bid for connection." In a study Gottman did with newlyweds, he found that the ones still married six years later were overwhelmingly those who consistently engaged with their partner and met those "bids" with "turn-towards." Turning toward a partner means being responsive -- soothing, encouraging, supportive, or maybe just showing interest. This involves, for example, replying to your partner's remark about the lost salt shaker -- even with "I hate when that happens!" rather than "Lemme finish this 'Minecraft' session" or saying nothing at all (effectively treating them like some old couch you stopped noticing). This "turning toward" thing is something you and your boyfriend can each do. Think of it as treating each other like you haven't forgotten you love each other. It's smart relationship policy and smart life policy -- wiser than getting in the habit of responding to a partner's "I'm starting a machete collection" with "That's nice, dear."