You might call it love at first refusal. About a year ago, I fell head over heels for a man who refused to tell me a secret. We were in the midst of a raucous party in a high-ceilinged, echoing loft and had hit it off instantly. As the evening went on, the voices swelled around us, so we leaned in close to talk. Somewhere in our conversation, he’d mentioned something in passing that had piqued my curiosity. I tried to ignore it but in the end couldn’t resist: I asked what I now realize was a presumptuous question given that we had known each other only a few hours. He easily could have brushed off my question with a glib response or even lied. Instead, he told me, quite affably but in no uncertain terms, that the answer was private.

I was immediately taken with him—but taken aback as well. I am nosy by nature; as a child, I was a shameless snoop, always looking for clues about people before I understood the mystery of their private selves. As an adult, I seek permission for my curious questions and get the green light more often than not. My dismay in that moment made me realize how rarely my prying is met with rejection.

As a culture, we share too much. At best, our tell-all tendencies are rooted in rejection of the solitary suffering that some secrets cause; a quick perusal of PostSecret.com demonstrates the poignancy of catharsis. At worst, though, we are a society saturated with secrets offered unbidden and to no one’s benefit: on reality TV programs, on confessional talk shows, in autobiographies by celebrities barely out of their teens. The question of quality aside, this vast quantity of unveiled information has fetishized truth, as if experiences are made real by, and only have value in, their telling.

I worry that we are giving too much of ourselves away. We control our secrets, those private parts of ourselves, only so long as we don’t speak them or put them in writing. Our experiences become most powerful in private spaces, because in reflecting upon them, we imbue them with meaning. Disclosing details of our private lives is how we come to know each other and create intimacy with someone we trust. If we fail to first make sense of a secret for ourselves and instead quickly confide it, that intimacy is compromised.