Openness as problematic in ongoing friendships: Two conversational dilemmas1

This research investigated the management of interactions sustaining close friendships. Ten pairs of close friends were interviewed individually on two occasions and together on a third occasion. An interpretive analysis of subjects’ remarks identified a dialectical principle organizing the communicative practices of these relationships. The dialectic of expressiveness and protectiveness regards the decisions of self to reveal and conceal personal information. Because an individual must continually face the contradictory impulses to be open and expressive and be protective of self and/or of another, two generic conversational dilemmas result. These two empirically grounded dilemmas, termed tolerance of vulnerability and likelihood of candor, are discussed in this paper.