Happy Monday everyone!
We’ve all been there. We do something we probably shouldn’t have or we find out a piece of information that we know is going to hurt our partner’s feelings. We may even be afraid they’ll end the relationship over it.
So, we don’t tell them.
We may tell our best friend what happened, but we say something along the lines of, “I can’t tell him. It’ll crush him,” or “I can’t tell her. What if she leaves me?”
Here’s an example.
Corey and I are currently re-watching How I Met Your Mother (minus the last season because the ending is absolute trash). We recently watched the episodes where Lily gets anxious about marrying Marshall because she hasn’t done the things she planned to do and is afraid that she’ll never get the chance to do them once she’s married. She’s afraid she’s settling.
So, just to prove to herself she’s capable, she applies for an art fellowship in San Francisco (they live in New York City). She doesn’t tell Marshall she applied, but she tells their friend, Ted. Ted tells her she needs to tell Marshall what’s going on because he deserves to know how she’s feeling.
Lily doesn’t tell Marshall because she’s afraid he won’t understand or that it’ll hurt his feelings and he’ll leave her. She says he doesn’t need to know about it because she doesn’t plan on taking the fellowship even if she gets approved.
Well, she gets approved for the fellowship, Marshall finds out from overhearing a message on their answering machine from the art school telling Lily she got approved, and they end up breaking up (temporarily) and she goes to San Francisco for the art fellowship.
This whole situation could have played out in a way that didn’t involve Lily lying to Marshall and breaking his heart, which is what she was trying to avoid in the first place.
Instead of keeping the fellowship a secret from her fiancé, she could have sat down and had a conversation with Marshall. She could have explained that she felt like she wasn’t getting to do the things she’d always wanted to do and that spending 3 months in San Francisco for this art fellowship is something she really wanted to do for herself before they got married.
It wasn’t as if she were trying to move to San Francisco full time, it was only going to be for 3 months. Marshall would have likely understood and they would have done the long distance relationship thing, stayed together while she completed the fellowship and then got married when she returned.
There is a slight chance they would have still broken up had Lily told Marshall about it from the get go, but I don’t believe that’s what would have happened. Marshall wouldn’t want Lily to put her dreams on hold indefinitely and would want her to go into their marriage without any regrets or hesitations.
With this example, I’m not saying Lily is abusive toward Marshall, but by keeping the fellowship a secret, she is manipulating him even if she isn’t doing so intentionally or maliciously.
Keeping secrets is a form of manipulation
When someone keeps a secret from their partner in an attempt to spare their feelings or because they’re afraid their partner will end the relationship, they’re manipulating their partner. Even if they don’t mean to or realize they are.
By keeping a secret from their partner, a person is actually robbing their partner of the ability to make an informed and autonomous decision to remain in the relationship.
It’s psychological coercion.
Let’s go back to Lily and Marshall. If Lily would have told Marshall about the fellowship from the start, Marshall could have decided to (a) stay with Lily while she did the fellowship or (b) end the relationship. Either way, the decision would have been his to make independently.
By keeping the fellowship a secret, Lily is making that decision for Marshall. She’s manipulating him into thinking everything in their relationship is fine and that she’s happy with their relationship and their life.
While one of the choices Marshall could have made is to end the relationship, causing sadness and heartbreak for both him and Lily, he still had the right to make that decision. Instead, Lily lied to him, kept the fellowship a secret, and they broke up anyway.
A relationship is a partnership and it only truly works if there is 100% honesty and an insane level of communication. So much of the advice that comes from couples who have been together for decades is something along the lines of “constant communication!”
It’s hard to truly understand the level of communication that is actually needed for a relationship to thrive until you experience that level of communication.
If there’s ever a time where you have thought “maybe I just won’t tell them,” it’s time to take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. It’s better to have a difficult conversation with your partner that may result in a break up than to keep something from your partner and them finding out and definitely ending the relationship because you lied.
When we keep secrets to spare our partner’s feelings, not only do we have to live with the negative feelings of keeping something from the person we love the most, but we’re also manipulating them and robbing them of their autonomous ability to make a well-informed decision about their life.
In Lily and Marshall’s situation, Lily’s manipulation isn’t malicious. She isn’t keeping the secret as a form of control, but rather because she loves him and doesn’t want him to leave her. It’s important to note that secret keeping can be used by abusive partners as a control tactic.
Until next week,
Rychelle
Thanks to my women’s jiu-jitsu coach, Destiney, for the inspiration for this post.
Sorry Rychelle. I was speed commenting and wrote the word "useless" instead of "useful" - which slightly changes how that would be received, to say the least. ; ( sorry for the typo.
It's interesting that your study of abuse in relationship provides such a useful entry point into how to conduct healthy relationships. After reading your publication for many months I'd say that the majority of relationships are suffering from some form of low-level abuse that flys under the radar of our ideas about abuse in relationship, but none-the-less does damage. The unconscious strategic withhold or partial dispensing of information to one's partner is no small matter, and yet I'd argue none of us escape it without a very high level of self-awareness and communication vigilance. In short, I find your publication articles helpful in the context my own ordinary day to day relating with my spouse.