The essayist is a self-liberated man sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. (Preface to The Essays of E.B. White)

It started out as an attempt to extricate myself from several casual dating relationships on Match.com. I was making the awkward transition from adventure to commitment in dating. For some reason I expected the women I was dating to be curious about how I decided not to date them anymore and actually want the details about who had captured my heart. And perhaps there was just a little guilt about abandoning a relationship and an urge to justify what seemed like rejection.

Apparently there is a point when your explanation of yourself becomes no more than self-justification and what you assume is generous and expansive becomes smug and insensitive. In separate cases I tried to explain that I had chosen one woman over another by going into unnecessary detail about the old or new relationship. I will not compound the error by going into unnecessary detail about how I offended two women in one day, but it was interesting to notice the same mistake with different relationships.

And just to show that my naivete knows no bounds, I made a similar mistake with my true love– information about women I had passed on for her. Altogether in 24 hours I offended three women by reporting about their rivals, always in the attempt to explain that I wasn’t rejecting them.  Beware whatever you might say in self-justification to a woman you have dated.

Beyond naivete I think my TMI also relates to the self-centeredness E.B. White describes to the forward of his collected essays.