do you keep secrets in your couple relationship? You do? Good!
From a survey carried out by the UK Law firm Slater and Gordon the results suggested that 20% of married couples in the UK are holding major secrets from their partners, secrets big enough to end their marriage, such as use of pornography or infidelity, or even disowned children from pervious relationships; these secrets are of a kind of ticking-time-bomb type that are sure to be found out.
The prevailing thinking that appears to dominate much of our views about couple relationships is that complete openness and honesty-no secrets and 100% transparency-is tantamount to good health and wellbeing for both partners.
But this may be misguided.
The belief around transparency may be anchored in the notion that keeping secretes indicates a lack of trust or intimacy and will lead to a slide into relationship toxicity, with both partners keeping the truth from each other, hiding their true selves and the secretive nature leading to manipulation, conflict, control or betrayal.
However, this may not be the construction of a transparent relationship but a relationship marked by compulsive self-disclosure, resulting in a kind of driven self-surveillance or a confessional led pattern of relating that serves only to suck out all of the mystery and wonder, surprise and strangeness out of the relationship. The energy, particularly the erotic energy in a relationship is often maintained by a certain distance, keeping a certain elan vital in the partnership. Complete openness might not be sexy.
Your own thoughts, dreams and idle fantasies are part of the very private, even scared, you.
There are other reasons to keep secrets, too
- You fantasise about other people during sex
- You got chatted up in bar last night and had a kiss
- You really can’t stand their friends
What use would it be to come home and bring this into your relationship?
The culture of transparency is part and parcel of an increasing and healthy feminisation in society itself, a refinement based partly on the skills of language and relational exchange. Yet we still know that relationships can be organised around traditional patterns of relating, often known as rapport-report talk. In traditional relationships “rap” exchanges are at their central core about constructing linking via self-disclosure, whereas “report” talk replays a more fact centred, agenda based set of operations.
In a characteristically traditional relationship this may account for what seems to be the secretive nature of “male” relating; the communication is via report talk, and as such may be more embodied yet less linguistic-he/she is not being secretive, it’s just another variation in language.
Keeping secrets is a tightrope walk that includes making very deliberate and skilful discriminations in your relationship. The secret to keeping secrets is perhaps
- what good will come of telling the secret?
- Is the telling of the secret about the good of the relationship or just about your confession?
Take Alice, for example. Alice was married to Bill. They had a very long (40 year) old marriage and recently Bill’s mother died. He held his mother in high esteem, yet Alice had a secret which only she knew, that Bills mother, 20 years ago, had an affair ending in an abortion.
Alice had keep this secret for decades, and sat anxiously in her chair in my consulting room wondering what to do next. Was now the time to reveal the truth, to not be secretive?
Alice decided to keep the secret to herself (and me), believing that revealing the secret would only cause her husband pain.
What would you have done?
