Instagram’s increasingly annoying habit of showing me things I didn’t ask to see yielded the gem above last week. I immediately texted it to my friend, Stacey, and said, ‘This is the very opposite of me.’ ‘God, me too,’ she said. We laughed. Because we probably wouldn’t have ever met if we weren’t both gold medal over-sharers. We’d each been commissioned to write for national newspapers about being actual adult women who adore Korean pop sensations, BTS. I mean, it was kind of embarrassing, but funny. And it led us to each other - and a new, but nonetheless very close, friendship that I treasure.
Another example: Once, on the afternoon before the evening of the 2015 Glamour Women of the Year Awards, I’d had a terrible time of it. It was undoubtedly stress-related - that thing is a beast to organise - but, there’s no other way to describe it, I was suffering from a nuclear case of trapped wind. Seriously. It started as slight stomach pains, but got worse and worse over the course of about three hours. Nothing helped. When 6.30pm arrived and I was due at the venue, I couldn’t walk. Honestly, it felt like someone was attacking my insides with several knives and I looked six months’ pregnant in my borrowed Gucci dress. I was doubled over with pain and near tears as I said to our managing editor, Helen. ‘This is bloody awful, I honestly cannot even stand up straight.’ She had the solution. Go and lie on the ground, legs in a 90-degree table top position and just wait. ‘You’ll be farting like a tractor in minutes and the pain will go,’ she said. An old standby remedy of her actor wife’s, apparently, they learn it in drama school.
That was a life-changer. It worked. I was about 30 minutes late to my own party, but now free of wind, flat of tum and greeting guests who could not have guessed at the recent inelegant scenes.
That night, I was seated next to the one and only wonderful Amy Schumer and her sister and writing partner, Kim Caramele. When we’d dispensed with the whole, ‘When did you get here, how long are you staying’ stuff, she complimented my dress. I said, ‘Well, you wouldn’t believe what this dress has been through already this evening… but I think we’ve reached a stage in our relationship where I can tell you….’
‘Go on!’ she said immediately. And I told Amy and Kim all about the tears, the fears, the doubled-over agony and the eventual desperate farting in the Glamour boardroom that had all happened before they had the joy of being seated next to elegant, ladylike creature talking to them now. That opened up a whole new can of TMI that I wouldn’t reveal here without asking them, but, believe me, we laughed til we actually cried. Which mightn’t have happened if I hadn’t been courageous enough to dispense with the small talk.
It can be risky. Some people think it terribly inappropriate to pollute a brand new conversation with too much information. But most people, I find, immediately relax more and feel safe enough to be themselves and have an actually enjoyable chat.
I’ve definitely made my attempts at being that enigmatic person in the room who doesn’t say much, but when they do, it blows everyone’s mind with their brilliance. I’ve met quite a few of those people and they are incredible, go them etc But it’s just never going to be who I am. It takes very little time at all for people to understand my ‘essence’.
Of course, this desire to hold things back, to keep your secrets to yourself, to reveal as little as possible - if this happens to be your comfortable default setting, then I understand and respect that. I just don’t agree that ‘oversharing’ is some sort of exploitable weakness. In fact, I’m just not sure at all that withholding who you are is ever really a ‘power’. That sounds like some Game of Thrones rubbish to me.
Maybe it’s cost me politically at work sometimes? Being honest with a boss about my unhappiness about a situation, for instance. Maybe someone who works for me has lost respect for me when I’ve just come out and said I’m unsure about how to solve a problem, or when they’ve seen me drunk at the Christmas party. But however I behave, or whatever I say, is probably going to come in for some critiquing from someone, so why not just be who I am and take what comes with that? Far less hard work, in my view, than trying to be forever on my guard for these (mostly imaginary) ‘enemies’ trying to use my personality against me.
The times I’ve ‘overshared’ - had real conversations with people about what’s worrying and challenging me as a parent, what I think I might have failed at in managing a team that week, the things I’m really fearing about my own successes - have been the times that the person I’m talking to has usually also shared right back. I feel like I’m able to accelerate good working relationships with contacts precisely because people trust someone they can tell is being real.
I think it’s why I’m also still, at my age, making friends who are precious to me. I have people in my life I’ve known for 40 years, and people I’ve known for four months. What makes us friends instead of acquaintances is that willingness - on both parts - to cut the crap and be real with each other almost immediately: to ‘overshare’.
And my tip for next time you find yourself seated at some boring, dry dinner and the person next to you is in some way making you nervous - maybe they seem really cool and together and intimidating, or maybe they’re just shy and awkward (which always makes me nervous) - is this: Ask a really big, silly, unexpected question. One of my favourite authors David Sedaris asks strangers: ‘When was the last time you touched a monkey?’. Once the woman he asked came straight back with, ‘Oh can you smell it on me?’ Cue a delightful conversation that neither ever expected to have.
I like, ‘Have you ever seen a ghost?’ Mainly because I live for ghost stories and if you happened to think you’ve seen one, I’m deeply jealous. And everyone has either a story, or knows a story, or can at least have a lively argument about whether or not the whole thing’s nonsense.
Try it.
Hard relate from a fellow TMI-er 👋
This is fab. It’s difficult to know when to release the ‘real’ you sometimes.