Need to Know

WHAT TO DO WHEN PEOPLE OVERSHARE ON FIRST DATES.

I’ve had several first dates with men who have “overshared” personal details. This information is never particularly relevant to the conversation and sometimes it’s not even about them (the most recent example was when somebody shared with me about his friend’s parent’s serious illness). Do these men just need somebody to talk to? Do they lack a filter? Are they trying to gain my trust too quickly? It makes me think that they would, in the future, broadcast details of our personal life together. Things haven’t worked out with any of these men for other reasons, but I need advice about what to do for “next time.”

Anonymous / Boston

You’re talking about different men, not different versions of the same man (hi Ken!) so there isn’t going to be a single answer. Every individual has different motives and habits. One guy might be lonely, another might be socially uncalibrated, a third might be deliberately testing boundaries. There’s no Grand Unified Bro Theory that accounts for everything.

The only single answer would come from the common denominator, which is you, which . . . maybe? Without specifics it’s hard to say. The anecdote about a friend’s parent doesn’t strike me as oversharing, for example, unless your date went into gory medical (or financial, or family-scandalous) details.

You’re not likely to meet these people any time soon, and parents and illnesses are all very ordinary things, not shameful secrets. What’s more concerning is the relevance aspect. People have different privacy settings, but nobody likes awkward fact-dumping or having their conversation derailed. I’d pay more attention to that dynamic, if I were you.

It’s difficult! People are a lot more socially adrift than we were before the pandemic. Everyone’s gone a little feral and awkwardness abounds. And online dating, which I assume is what you’re doing, imposes pressure regardless of how chill the individual daters might be. You don’t want to speedrun a relationship, but you also don’t want to waste the other person’s time (or your own). And meeting someone on apps means that you haven’t seen how they act in their native habitat, as it were, which makes it harder to interpret their behavior. If you’d socialized or worked on a project a bit with Bachelor Number One, you’d already have some sense of how he treats people and information. Which doesn’t mean don’t use the apps! There are still plenty of success stories. But be aware of the inherent difficulties — which the person you’re dating is also facing, so maybe acknowledge and discuss that openly.

And don’t make assumptions about how loose-lipped an oversharer might be about you. I have met a lot of people who are oversharers about themselves but keep other people’s personal info in a locked vault. I’ve also met people who keep their own stories locked down and broadcast other people’s like CNN.