You are acting the role of the “savior” but in fact are taking away my agency.
Let’s talk about saving others. I want to talk about this in the context of those who have secrets to keep from a person they are in a close, intimate relationship with. Maybe they have cheated or stolen. Maybe they are drinking in secret. In some way or another they have betrayed their loved one.
There is a popular idea that if the betrayer has quit the behavior and has addressed the problem within him or herself it is somehow selfish for him or her to “unburden” themselves to the person they betrayed. They are performing an act of kindness and saving their partner from pain by holding guilty secret inside and live with it for the rest of their lives.
This sounds good. I heard Ester Perel, a world-famous, well respected marriage therapist say recently on a podcast that this is the way to go. But is it?
I have questions.
First of all, this approach assumes that what a person doesn’t know isn’t hurting them. I question this assumption. If I am in a close, intimate relationship with you and you have betrayed me and are keeping it a secret, I’m pretty sure it is hurting me. I am wondering why, although everything seems fine, things don’t feel right. I will feel the distance that the secret creates and will be robbed of the intimacy that honesty brings. If my intuitions are online, I will doubt myself because my intuitions say one thing and the partner says another. And often, I will shut down my intuitions in an effort to quiet the dissonance I’m experiencing. Shutting down my intuitions hurts me in a myriad ways.
Second, the dishonesty robs me. It creates a false pretense in the name of saving me from pain. It robs me of the opportunity to make an informed decision about our relationship. Do I want to be in a relationship with this person - given the truth? You are acting the role of the “savior” but in fact are taking away my agency. It’s very patriarchal. If you are the betrayer, you are holding the betrayed hostage in a sense with your dishonesty aren’t you? They are in a relationship under false pretenses. You want the relationship to continue, despite your betrayal and you have made the decision for them. You have not been willing to turn the decision of whether or not they want to continue over to them.
Thirdly, it robs the betrayer of the chance to be loved fully. For the rest of his or her life when the partner says, “I love you” the betrayer will be thinking “well, if you only knew about my betrayal, you might not feel that way.” This leads to all kinds of issues. The betrayer might become distant, he or she might try to compensate for the betrayal and rather than being able to give to the relationship from a free and unfettered place of intimacy, gives out of guilt, fear, anxiety. He or she may try to protect the self and the secret, or may try to make up for the betrayal in any number of ways. I will be an attentive partner or lover. I will be generous. To atone. To make it right. But is love given from this place really love? Does the receiver feel it as love? Or do they feel the anxiety behind it?
Finally, the betrayer is telling him or herself a lie. They are telling themselves that they are protecting the person from hurt and pain, but that’s just not true. They have inflicted the pain, they are simply trying to anesthetize, cover it up so that it remains below the surface and no one has to see it. It reminds me a little bit of colonizers who took land away from indigenous peoples, then “saved their souls” to try to justify in some way that what they stole was for the good of the person.
I’ve been on the receiving end of secrets. I lived 17 years in a relationship in which I was being betrayed, and it was kept secret. Believe me, I knew it. I mean, I didn’t know it consciously, but my soul knew it. I was lonely, I knew there was not the connection and intimacy I longed for but was gaslighted into thinking it was my delusion. I felt it but didn’t know enough to know what I was feeling. And when the truth came out – which it very often does - the betrayal was double. Not only had the betrayal occurred, but the lies and gaslighting were betrayal heaped upon betrayal.
When we say we don’t want to hurt the other person by unburdening ourselves, we are lying to ourselves because you see, it’s too late - we’ve already hurt them with our betrayal. At that point it simply a matter of whether we want this truth to be out in the open if we prefer to keep it hidden even if that means it festers and robs us and them of joy and a chance for real intimacy.
I guess it depends on the goal. If the goal is simply survival - to stay together at all costs, and you’ve done something that jeopardizes that, then keeping secrets might keep things together. If the goal is something real, honest and intimate, then you’ve got to give it a chance by telling the truth.
It’s like so much of culture. We prefer not to see or feel the hard, cold truths of life. We take pills to cover over our symptoms rather than get to the bottom of the issue, we have surgery to hide our aging, we smile and pretend that everything is alright even if we are grieving deeply. We hide our shame and our vulnerability because we don’t want to do the hard work that is required to dig deep and deal with the real issues. We don’t want to risk failure and rejection. And a lot of people will reject us if we risk honesty, and some relationships won’t survive it to be sure. But I think it’s worth it to take the risk. It’s like the line from Steel Magnolias, “I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.”
You see, I suspect that love – real love is only possible when we are willing to risk it all. Willing to be so devastatingly honest that we risk losing it.
That’s the kind of love I want.