We accuse to express anger, defend to protect, complain to indicate something is wrong, and praise to indicate something is right. Almost always the purpose of the exchange is something practical. We want something to change, either an opinion or a behavior, or we want to reinforce. We want to know so that we can do, not necessarily so that we can just know. Yet, knowing is what intimacy is all about, and knowing does not imply doing anything.
Conversations are exchanges of information for their own sake.
Intimate conversations are the exchange of personal information, and they allow us to know something about each other. In them, when we share how we think, or what we feel, we are sharing information that can't be known unless we tell it. How we feel and think about what we've experienced is our personal experience of life. It is our story. If we are not to go through life experiencing it alone, we must learn how to tell our story and how to respond to another's.