Secret Shame

Audio By Carbonatix

A secret is a secret. There are not different types of secrets, but there are different people you might share a secret with. I’m thinking about the secrets you shared in elementary school with your best friend about who you liked. Those were sacred at the time and harmless to keep. Secrets about who is going to win an award like an Emmy or Oscar are good secrets to keep as it adds to the fun and drama of the award ceremony. Sometimes parents keep the names they’ve chosen for their unborn children or the gender of a child a secret until the birth. In some cases, the pregnancy is kept secret for a while. Those secrets are all fine. 

But secrets are not good when their exposure might hurt someone. You might immediately think of celebrities, professional athletes, and politicians who try to keep secrets of infidelity. Those secrets eventually blow up in their faces. There are men, women, and children who are harboring a secret about being abused. They are too afraid to tell. Secrets that involve something immoral or illegal are not good secrets to keep. People who try to get away with something are rarely able to keep it a secret.

One of the biggest pitfalls of any marriage is having secrets. Those secrets might range from hiding financial purchases from each other to having an affair. There shouldn’t be any secrets between a husband and wife unless it has something to do with a gift. How often do parents tell their kids to keep secrets from the other parent? A dad might say, “Don’t tell mom about the ice cream sundaes we had for breakfast.” Or it could be mom saying, “Don’t tell dad about the purse I just bought.” It seems harmless at the time, but it does send the message that secrets between couples are okay. 

Even though trust is intangible, it’s at the foundation of every marriage. Your spouse has most likely demonstrated through their actions that they are trustworthy. But what if something happens to make you question that trust? Consider the couple where one spouse has an affair. The cheating spouse doesn’t want to get a divorce, so they promise to never cheat again. There are few tangible things the unfaithful spouse can do to prove they won’t cheat again, leaving the other spouse to simply choose to trust again and hope that their spouse won’t betray them again. This recovery can take a long time and will look different for each couple.

Keeping a secret that is harmful to others can be the equivalent of carrying a hundred-pound suitcase around. It’s the kind of baggage that weighs heavily on your mind and may cause you to act differently toward those you love. You’re restricted in your speech because you fear you won’t remember all of the lies you told. You don’t act like yourself because you are afraid your body language will betray you or whoever’s secret you are keeping.

Is there a secret in your marriage that needs to be revealed? Not saying anything will only prolong the pain of exposure. Deal with it now. Seek forgiveness and try to earn back the trust of the person you betrayed. It will help you to win more often at home.