I'm a 32-year-old gay man, and my boyfriend of three years sometimes vents to his friends about our relationship. I feel a little betrayed by this -- like my privacy's being violated. Why can't he figure things out on his own -- without bringing in a jury?

--Disturbed

A few years back, a woman with a grudge against my assistant called me to try to get me to fire her: "She talks trash about you!" Me: "Everybody talks trash about their boss!"

The truth is, we all do a lot of grousing to others about people in our lives -- our romantic partner, our business partner, our criminal conspirator. That's actually a healthy thing, though it runs contrary to what emotion researcher Bernard Rime calls the "Lone Ranger individualist perspective of adult emotional regulation." This, Rime explains, is the mythic view (held even by many psychologists) that healthy adult processing of emotions involves a sort of "rugged individualism" -- meaning being "self-contained, independent, and self-reliant."

In fact, Rime notes, emotion seems to have evolved to be not just an internal, solo process but a "fundamentally interdependent process." Research by the late social psychologist Stanley Schachter, Rime, and others suggests that experiences that give rise to emotion in us motivate us to seek out others -- to share the experiences and our feelings.

Rime explains that our emotions -- especially painful ones -- can be overwhelming to us. Experiencing emotion "is a dense and diffuse experience in need of cognitive articulation"; that is, it needs to be hashed out and understood. "By using language and by addressing others, individuals 'unfold' the emotional material" so they can understand and manage it and maybe gain objectivity and insight.

Understanding how driven we are to share our experiences might help you stop feeling like your boyfriend's betraying secrets and instead see it as his seeking a sounding board. There's a good chance that this serves to improve your relationship -- sometimes by confirming that he has a legit issue to discuss with you and try to resolve.

Of course, we're all prone to latch on to crazy and ride it like a pony. We need someone to talk sense into us -- like to convince us that the jail time isn't worth it, despite our partner's disgusting, depraved indifference to all that's good and right. Yes, I'm talking about atrocities like opening food packages from the middle ("Hello...are you a rodent?!"), vacuuming in weird, random lines (like a serial killer!), and setting the alarm an hour early and then hitting snooze five times (surely an underappreciated cause of homicide).

For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.