Privacy vs. Secrecy – What’s Healthy and What’s Not

Is privacy good or bad for your relationship?

Too much privacy can border on secrecy.

Too little privacy and you’ll feel engulfed in relational claustrophobia.

How can we be together without losing ourselves in our relationship?

These are the questions (and more) that I’m going to answer in this lover’s guide to privacy and secrecy.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SECRECY AND PRIVACY?

At first glance, it appears that privacy and secrecy are close cousins, so let’s begin by getting on the same page about what they mean.

So, privacy is about being on your own, with your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

The fact that you cheated on your grade 12 exams or that you had a threesome in your 20s are things that you might choose to keep private.

“But Bruce, why are those examples not secrets?” I hear you ask.

Because where privacy is about having a life that you don’t share with others, secrecy is about intentionally hiding information.

A telltale characteristic of a secret is that hiding it tends to be motivated by two feelings – shame and fear.

Shame, because we feel bad about what we have done.

Fear, because we’re afraid that revealing what we’ve done
may result in the loss of our spouse’s love, respect or loyalty.

So, if you’re feeling shame or fear about something you’re not sharing with your spouse, chances are good that the thing you are keeping to yourself goes beyond your private life and falls into the secret category.

For example, “I have a rainy day bank account that I’ve not told you about… ” would be a secret if you were hiding it for fear of upsetting your spouse.

By this definition, having cheated on your grade 12 exams might be a secret if you’re too ashamed to talk about it with your spouse.

By the same token, that threesome in your twenties might be a secret if you’re intentionally hiding it for fear of being rejected by your more sexually conservative spouse.

See the difference?

But what if your spouse wouldn’t care that you cheated on your Grade 12 exams? Is that still a secret?”

No, not in my books. It would have to be important information to your spouse for them to consider it a secret. How can you tell what information is important to them?

That’s easy… It’s important if they would be upset if they found out that you were hiding it!

So, now we have three characteristics of a secret.

SO, ARE SECRETS BAD?

I’m not a fan of labeling things good or bad. I prefer useful or not useful.

If you were a Jew in Nazi Germany and your life would be threatened by revealing your faith, then keeping it secret would be useful.

But we’re not in a war. We’re in an intimate relationship. And in my books, intimacy and secrets are like water and oil – they don’t mix well.

After my TEDx talk, The Big Secret Nobody Wants To Tell became popular (you can watch it at the end of this article), I had the opportunity to speak with a ton of people about their secret lives.

All of them were burdened by the weight of carrying their secrets. The only people who believed that keeping secrets from their spouses was a good idea were the ones with secrets that directly impacted their spouses.

They’d say things like:

“He might not be able to handle it…”

“I don’t want to hurt her…”

“What good would it do sharing it?”

“Some things are better off kept unsaid…”

“We have a don’t ask don’t tell policy…”

Almost everybody else agrees that under most circumstances, keeping secrets from your spouse is not useful. It kills aliveness and promotes mistrust.

And for the record, don’t ask don’t tell is an awful idea if you value emotional intimacy and personal growth. It’s through knowing each other deeply that we grow as people and as a couple.

WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE PRIVACY & A PRIVATE LIFE…

We are all entitled to our privacy. In the west, it is one of your basic human rights (although that right is rapidly being eroded by our governments).

Privacy is also a basic human need.

Without a private life, we cannot possibly shut out the world, drop our social mask, and discover who we are when we’re not being observed.

Without a private life,
we cannot truly know ourselves.

In a marriage, because you share a home with your spouse and kids, your privacy is constantly under threat.

Without a private life (not a hidden life), the two of you will “lose yourselves”, merging into a WE. In the Romance Stage of your relationship, merging is perfectly OK. In fact, merging is a necessary part of falling in love.

However, when you outgrow the Romance Stage and graduate to the Power Struggle stage, being merged with each other becomes a big problem. I’ve lost count of the number of couples that seek me out for help saying:

“I feel like I’ve lost myself in this relationship.”

Having a healthy private life is how you “find” yourself without losing your relationship.

Having a private life is the healthy expression of your personal boundaries.

The challenge is that in order to fall in love, you have to merge your boundaries.

You can think of it like this:

A private life promotes a fulfilling sex life…

Merged couples often tell me that they feel more like brother and sister than vital lovers.

When I work with a couple who are seeking help because their sex life has died, one of the first things I seek to discover is how merged they are and then support them individuating.

Developing their individual private lives is one of the first tasks I assign them.

WHAT DOES A HEALTHY PRIVATE LIFE LOOK LIKE?

Here are some examples of what a healthy private life may look like in the context of a marriage. Please bear in mind that everyone has different needs and values, so an arrangement that works well for one couple may be a disaster for another.

• She takes herself to the salon for 2 hours and gets her nails and hair done.
• They both shut the door when using the bathroom.
• They both have their own friends outside the relationship that they see and enjoy without the other (and occasionally together).
• He stays out until 2 am one night a week jamming guitar with his band at the local pub.
• She attends night school at a local university twice a week studying business.
• They both have hobbies and interests outside of their relationship.
• They may choose not to share every detail of what happened that day.

This is a very short list (mostly inspired by my own life). I welcome your suggestions in the comments section below about what your healthy private life looks like.

Of course, a high-functioning relationship also includes a healthy shared life with mutual friends, mutual activities, and mutual interests.

Speaking of shared lives, the next question I get a lot is…

HOW MUCH SHOULD I SHARE WITH MY SPOUSE?

Determining what to tell your spouse and what to keep to yourself is a bit of a balancing act.

I use these two rules of thumb to determine what to share and what not to share with my spouse.

MY PERSONAL POLICY IS TRANSPARENCY…

In other words, when it comes to my private life, if my spouse asks me about it I answer truthfully.

I will never intentionally hide anything from her that she would want to know or feel angry or betrayed about if she found out from someone other than me.

If you’re still unsure of whether or not to share the thing you’re withholding, use this guideline:

If you’re feeling shame or fear around sharing it, or your spouse would feel angry or betrayed if they discovered this information themselves, share it.

NOTE: This assumes that you’re not in an abusive relationship where sharing your secret may result in physical harm to you or someone else.

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS TOO MUCH DISCLOSURE?

Absolutely.

Your husband doesn’t need to know that your ex made you orgasm 10 times in a row. That will only lead to comparison and possible feelings of inadequacy.

Your wife doesn’t need to know about your bowel movements. That will just turn her off.

Some people argue that if you’ve got nothing to hide, why hide anything? Isn’t full disclosure the most honest way to live?

Perhaps, but it certainly isn’t the most exciting or sexy…

Sharing everything with your spouse removes any mystery from your partner’s perception of you… and mystery plays a vital part in keeping the spark alive between you.

Full disclosure will kill the spark between you.

ARE THERE THINGS I SHOULD HIDE FROM MY SPOUSE?

Believe it or not, not all secrets are bad.

There are situations and times when keeping things hidden is beneficial. For example, lies and deceit are the basic ingredients of a good surprise.

Knowing what to keep from your spouse is a grey area and largely dependent on the situation or context.

Here’s what I personally keep hidden from my spouse. If you have any worthy additions to this list, please share them in the comments section below and I’ll consider adding them to the list.

WHAT IF MY PARTNER IS DEMANDING ACCESS TO MY PRIVATE LIFE?

If your partner is demanding, jealous, hyper-vigilant about monitoring your whereabouts and interactions with others or is prone to behavior that could be construed as policing, monitoring or spying, then they may have experienced a trauma of some kind.

I often see this kind of behavior when working with couples who are recovering from an affair and trying to restore the trust between them.

The betrayed spouse doesn’t know if they can trust the cheating spouse again, so they become hyper-vigilant and intrusive in their demands to information about their spouse’s private life.

Often, to keep the peace, the cheating partner hands over their phone, email passwords or banking passwords.

However, this strategy of compliance mostly backfires because it doesn’t address the reason that the cheating partner cheated.

Usually, after reading every message on their spouse’s phone, the betrayed spouse feels worse, not better.

When they can’t find evidence of the spouse’s betrayal, instead of being comforted, they look harder, convinced that there must be something they are not seeing.

This partner struggles to heal from their trauma and remains constantly alert for another betrayal. That’s because information alone cannot heal. We need comfort and empathy to heal.

So, if your partner demands access to your private life, you’ll need to set a boundary.

Gently remind them that your private life is your private life, followed by healthy doses of comforting reassurance that whatever they are scared of is not happening.

The idea here is not to hide anything, but to set a boundary around invasive demands that are driven by fear (as opposed to requests where you can accept or decline without consequence).

IN CONCLUSION

Privacy is essential. Secrecy, not so much.

Secrets are distinguished by intentionally hiding information, feelings of shame or fear, and the fact that your partner would be upset if they discovered what you’re hiding.

Develop your private life. Privacy prevents you from suffocating from too much closeness and helps keep your spouse attracted to you over the long-term of your relationship.

If you’re not sure what to tell your spouse, use these two rules of thumb:

1. If your partner would feel angry or betrayed if they discovered this information themselves, share it with them.
2. If you believe that sharing the information will increase your partner’s understanding of who you are and how you came to be you, share it.

Practice transparency. If your spouse asks, answer honestly.

I hope that you found this (long) article useful. It is by no means the last word on privacy and secrecy and is a constant work in progress for me.

If you have any useful ideas to add to this article, please do leave them in the comments section below.

* Credit to my teacher Ellen Bader for sharing the ME WE circles and individuation concept with me. Credit to my teacher Esther Perel for her work that popularized the connection between separation and desire.

WATCH MY TEDX TALK ON SECRETS