How Self-Disclosure in Relationships Boosts Physical Health

When you’ve got something on your mind, it’s easy to let it go from slight concern to major preoccupation. Gillian messed up a major assignment at work, and she’s certain that it will get her fired. As she tosses and turns all night trying to figure out how to fix things, her fears continue to mount. This goes on for a few days, and by the end of the week, she’s fatigued and developing a bad case of the sniffles.

Situations in which you become preoccupied and worried can,as you can certainly attest,eat away at you. as shown in a new study, even as you try to solve problems that seem insolvable, you can protect your health—mental and physical—by confiding in your romantic partner.

The Value of Confiding in Your Partner

According to St. Louis University’s Lijing Ma and Eddie Clark (2025), communicating with your romantic partner, particularly the kind that involves self-disclosure, is a great way to build and strengthen your relationship. As the walls between you and your partner come down, the bonds between you will only grow deeper. In the words of the authors, “If two people do not share personal data with each other, then their relationship may not become intimate.”

It’s not just any kind of self-disclosure that matters, however. For your relationship to grow, that self-disclosure should involve information that is personal and serious. Social penetration theory, the basis for the ma and Clark study, suggests that, like an onion, peeling away at the outer layers of your psyche leads to increasing feelings of intimacy toward your partner.