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"Charlie, don't you get it? I can't feel that. It's sweet and everything, but it's not like you're even there sometimes. It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder. What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of
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The issue of opening up is no doubt an important one. I completely understand your worry that the person you decide to open up to might use material you trusted them with as "dirt," but you really shouldn't think of it in that way. In a true friendship (as opposed to a professional one with a paid counselor) opening up has to be a mutual process. Obviously, you can't pour your life out onto someone you respect and trust and expect them to embrace it all - people don't do well with that sort of thing. The idea is to let someone in on your life a little bit, see if they reciprocate, and if so, go deeper. The point of this is that if you both share your lives and trust and respect one another then even if your friendship disintegrates or turns bitter both of you will have so much sympathy and understanding of the feelings and issues you shared (that so called "dirt") that to use them against each other would be plain stupid. Of course, as I too often do, I speak in terms of the ideal.
Now I'm not saying go out and pry the life out of someone so you can open up to them, rather I'm just telling you what you should look out for. I also hope that not too much of this has already been obvious to you - I'm not trying to patronize you, it's just that when I was in your time I didn't know how to trust my feelings to anyone.
I have more, but I don't want to continue when I'm just taking a guess that you might be interested in what I have to say. If you feel like it, I would have no problem with you visiting my own
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