Greetings, 24F here. I have this recurring guilt surrounding the instances in which I’ve majorly overshared. I’m someone who is either so quiet and private, or insanely transparent, only when comfortable and given the chance, which is rare, but the damage I feel like I do is pretty big. And when I say damage, I mean I breach my own privacy and/or the privacy of my SO.

I’ve had a few issues with him in the past, which I needed guidance on at the time. Unfortunately, the people I have chosen to speak to about it and get some advice from are not strangers on the internet, but worse, people that know us both and people who are not in my immediate circle. I’ll provide one example that left me with this undying guilt for almost two years now. I spoke to a friend, let’s call her Diana, who happened to be good friends both my SO and his former female best friend, who at the time, was trying to get with him in spite of my presence. What I didn’t know at the time was Diana was very close to my SO’s older brother’s girlfriend. Sorry if this is getting complicated. Anyway, my SO and his older brother are not on speaking terms. What I shared with her was the gist of our issues and I straight up asked her if I should be worried about this former best friend of his. I also mentioned to her that I have never met her and wish I had a face to the name. Diana, trying to be helpful, gave me the guidance she could and offered to also share a photo of this former best friend to give me some context as to what she looked like. Mind you, at the time, I was an anxious wreck for so many reasons, the pandemic, health issues, relationship issues, etc. A while later, I got a gut feeling that something was off and that maybe I shouldn't have spoken to her about it, and when I brought it up to her again she said she wanted nothing to do with this, that "it got out of hand" and promised she’d keep the convo between us. Admittedly, this was after I spoke to my SO's former best friend and set boundaries. I don't know if that's what she meant by things getting out of hand.

That whole thing was in 2020 and last week I found out that in a group setting Diana had a lot to say about the time I asked her for advice, basically suggesting I was being psychotic and advised a friend of hers, who is my now coworker, to stay out of my relationship no matter what because she senses it could get messy. My SO’s older brother’s girlfriend was there. My guilt lies in the fact that I gave Diana context on a private matter, which then led to his older brother having context. His older brother seems to be the type to ridicule his brother behind his back, which is horrible. I feel like I misrepresented my SO and gave people something to talk about, including his older brother. On top of it, I hate that people think I’m psychotic because of this.

Anyway, my coworker and I spoke about this last week, because we had a mini-altercation surrounding trust, and somehow this came up. She reassured me that it was harmless talk and that what Diana said did not actually alter her opinion on me or my SO. She said that everyone should be able to judge others for themselves, and that is, indeed, an ideal way to go about it. I don't know that I care what she or Diana think of me, as much as I feel guilty about giving people a prejudice on my SO, or especially his older brother basically judging him for being with me, the "psychotic" girlfriend.

I never discussed this with my SO and I guess I feel guilty about it or that I've somehow tarnished something so simple and so private by giving strangers context. I occasionally make mistakes like this, small instances in which I overshare or do little things that I end up feeling guilty about for ages, not necessarily lingering ones such as this. I know this is all just talk, but like I said, I have the tendency to feel overly guilty about the smallest of things, which I'm trying to work on.

I guess what I'd like to ask is how do I stop oversharing so naively or how do I stop feeling guilty about the times that I have?