Being honest with your partner does not mandatorily mean you must share each and every single thought, dream, fear, or fantasy with your partner. In fact, honesty might be a double-edged sword in your marriage.
Knowing what to share and what not to share is an essential communication skill for couples to learn and apply in their marriage. It might also be something that could help or hinder peace and harmony with your partner says Shivani.
Keeping secrets and the right to privacy in a marriage
It is vital to remember that you do not need to share everything with your partner in a relationship. Some things to keep in mind in any relationship:
- You have the right to privacy in your marital or any relationship, including with your spouse, and family.
- In any given relationship, you have the right to keep a certain part of your life secret, no matter how complex or how important, for the one reason that you want to.
- You also own the right to spend some time alone and solely yourself.
In any healthy relationship, or your marital relationship you honor the sense of emotional and physical privacy required for yourself and your spouse. Otherwise, absurdly, you end up restricting your intimacy with one another, not improving it.
You should know that you cannot be genuinely intimate with your partner without being in touch with the innermost feelings and parts of yourself, too.
Is honesty always the best policy to adopt in a relationship?
There are valid purposes for keeping a secret from your partner. You must not have to defend not revealing embarrassing or hurtful experiences from your past. It is possible that the secret involves somebody else who requested that the story not be revealed.
There are several successful couples who have been married for a long time and have certain personal secrets that they have never shared with their spouses. The sense of space and the sense of a private part of oneself are integral to several people.
How to conclude when to share a secret?
If you have a secret that you feel you should share, but you are uncertain about it, look at your own physical responses while you are hiding the secret. If your blood pressure goes up or you find yourself blinking a lot faster, or your heartbeat rates are higher, your breathing is heavier, or you are perspiring more than usual, then these could be signs that you must share that particular secret.
If you are keeping a secret because you do not wish to face responsibility, this could create problems in your marital life. Withholding facts or information your partner needs to know in decision-making is harmful manipulation.
Secrets that could harm your marriage are:
- Having an affair
- Job issues
- Keeping an addiction or substance use habits hidden
- Legal issues
- Lending money
- Lying regarding how you spend money
- Not paying bills
- Not revealing any illness
- Seeing family or friends secretly
Unsuitable times to reveal a secret
If you are going to reveal a secret or problematic issue with your spouse, note that the following times are not ideal times to have important conversations:
- During bedtime
- During moments of grumpiness
- If either of you is drunk
- When either of you is in a pressure-like situation
- When either of you is unwell or tired
- When you or your partner are angry
- When your partner is already dealing with bad news
Looking for help
Honesty and trust are key to the success of a marriage. It is a thin line between which secrets are acceptable and which ones will haunt a person and hurt a marriage.
A spouse who discovers that they have been straightforwardly lied to provided a half-truth, or not told crucial information could feel an enormous sense of betrayal. These betrayals could be hard to come back from and your significant other may never feel a complete sense of trust again. If this situation applies to you, the sooner you face it, the better it would be.
The blog has been written by leading marriage counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo.
Shivani Misri Sadhoo is an internationally recommended relationship Counsellor by world’s biggest and most trusted study and research-based foundation for couples therapy – Gottman Institute. She is trained on specialised key relationship counselling Skills from AIIMS, VIMHANS and various other reputed institutions. Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo, is also Certified for Emotionally Focused Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy.
Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo is also a Certified Neuro Linguistic Practitioner with specialised training and experience in the field of affairs/betrayals, trust issues, difficulty communicating, conflicting values, bereavement, grief and loss (affairs, separation, divorce, childhood) and emotional health issue (anxiety, social anxiety, fear, depression, low mood).
Currently, Shivani Misri Sadhoo is one of the top counsellors with the HIGHEST Success Rate with over 17,000 happy couples and individuals (based in India and abroad), who has benefited from her therapy. Psychologist and Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo not only practice independently from her clinic in Greater Kailash, Delhi, India but also listed on the panel of eminent hospitals like IBS Hospital – Institute of Brain & Spine, Express Clinic, Fortis (formerly) based in Delhi.
