Dennis Prager H2 today: Why do couples have trouble opening up about marital issues to their couple friends? If they did, they would probably discover that their friends have some of the same issues they do.
Dennis: Couples should open up to couples.
Caller: “My wife is a very private person.”
Dennis: “I don’t get that. That doesn’t come from a good place. It’s not psychologically healthy. It’s not a virtue. It means you don’t talk about yourself to anybody, just your husband? Why is that a virtue?”
“You will go to your grave and you will have opened up about your feelings to one person on earth and that’s an achievement?”
“If you say it’s just your nature, well, the purpose of growing up is to learn to overcome those parts of you that are bad, bad for you and bad for the world.”
“Saying, ‘I’m a very private person’ means you don’t trust anybody. That’s bad.”
“It’s narcissism. I’m so precious, I don’t want anyone to see my gold.”
“I don’t know what discretion you need about your marriage. Obviously you don’t open up about all the details of your bedroom but you get close to people by opening up. That’s how you get friends.”
On his show Oct. 7, Dennis returned to the topic: “You will be a happy and healthier person who brings more joy to the world if you are able to open up to friends.”
“I define a friend as someone you can tell everything to.”
“Why would you not open up to a friend? Because you don’t trust they will continue to love you if they know all about you.”
“You don’t want to show that you’re flawed. You want to maintain the aura of a perfect life. What have you gained? You’ve lost the ability to have intimate conversation and intimate friendship.”
“I don’t want on my tombstone – ‘Here lies Dennis Prager. He kept a lot of secrets.’ What do you gain?”
“If you don’t open up to your friends, you don’t love them.”
“You don’t open up because your friends will solve your problems. You do it because you want them to know about you. You will feel better just by saying it. That was Freud’s original thought with regard to talk therapy. Just talking is a help.”
