Secrets in marriages: No more secrets, No more lies.... I am not going to go into details of secrets and lies that marriages can have. No, I am going to concentrate on one aspect that couples experience on a daily basis: Sharing their day with each other. Most couples in relationship have a habit of sharing their day to each other. As you share your day with your spouse, be careful what you choose to leave out. It makes sense to leave out all of the repetitive tasks you do or the boring details of your day, but be careful that you don’t leave out too much more than that. Often times in relationships we feel the need to censor our conversation by leaving out bits of information we know our listener will not agree with or will be upset by. There are situations in other relationships where you feel this is necessary, but there should be no secrets between husband and wife. When we begin the practice of selecting which things to share with our spouse and which to withhold from them, we start to enter very dangerous territory. If you have done something that would hurt your spouse if they knew about it, you obviously need to stop doing it. Secret behaviours have no place in a trusting relationship. If there are parts of your day that you can’t share with your spouse because of this, you need to stop. Bring it up with your spouse and apologize. There isn’t room for secrets in a strong, happy, healthy marriage. Clearly a marriage where each person is comfortable and able to tell their partner everything is stronger than a marriage where they can only tell each other most things. Secrets will weaken your relationship. Assuming you are not deliberately deceiving your partner and we aren’t worried about major breaches of trust, what other reasons might you feel justified in withholding information from your spouse? A very common answer to that is to prevent them from worrying. As a result a husband may fail to tell his wife the truth about their current financial situation. He has it under control, no reason to stress her out about it, right? Well, there are two approaches to this scenario. You can either take care of it on your own, and let your family finances be your personal problem while your wife continues buying organic apples for twice the price of regular apples, which you will end up resenting her for, or you can fully disclose the situation so you both have all of the facts and work on it together. Working together to solve a problem can bring you closer, working in different directions during that same problem will pull you apart. Because your life is so intertwined with that of your spouse, you will have numerous conversations about how to handle problems. You will turn to each other for advice, and you will make decisions based on the information you are given about the life of your spouse. If every day you leave out 25% of your day in an effort to protect your spouse from worry, stress, or getting upset, then their advice and ability to work through a problem with you won’t be based on ACCURATE information. When you both know 100% of the facts (and I don’t mean the 10 minute story leading up to the problem, I mean the ENTIRE life story that made you who you are) you can really give great insight into a problem for each other. No one else in the world will be able to give you the kind of perspective on a situation that a person who knows you as well as you know yourself can. Someone who knows you 75% as well as you know yourself will not be able to bring the same kind of understanding to a situation as someone who knows you 100%. Is it really possible to know someone as well as they know themselves? Our minds are so complex that I’m not sure how close you can ever get to knowing someone that well, but I know you can get a lot closer if you choose to share everything with your spouse (even the things that are difficult to talk about) than you ever would, by trying to filter what you do and do not share with them. If your spouse decides to try this openness with you, and starts sharing their thoughts, feelings, and anything else on such a personal level, consider yourself lucky. This is information that is rarely shared with people. To have a candid insight into a person’s day, or a true version of what they are really thinking when they read a controversial news headline, is a tender thing and you need to be extremely cautious that you respect the information you are given. If they are daring enough to trust someone on that kind of level where they would share sensitive parts of who they are, with all facades removed, their deepest inner selves, be careful and sensitive so that you do not ever make them regret it. If they feel threatened because you laugh or mock them or blow up at them for the way they think, you can guarantee it will be a long time before they trust you enough to try it again, if ever. You are different people, and you won’t always see things in the same way, and that’s okay. Learn and grow with each other as you try to understand a different point of view. I’m sure you know your spouse well, but there is always another layer, more that you can learn about them. People are fascinating! Take the time to really talk in depth about marriage, family, religion, politics, ethics, nutrition, sports, finance, education, everything in the world! As you do this with your spouse, take it beyond the mere facts of the article, or the book, or what you saw, and discuss what you believe, why you agree with it or disagree with it, what you would do differently, why you think they did what they did. Allow your spouse to see what’s really going on under your surface and as you do, your understanding of each other will increase immensely. You will truly become one.
Posted on: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 21:41:04 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015