Episode 6. Secrets that Corrode: Letting Integrity Strengthen Your Bond
In this week's show, we dive into a really important topic - integrity and honesty in relationships. We kick things off in our signature lighthearted style by explaining why integrity and fidelity aren't officially part of our Four Foundational Cornerstones… the "Four I’s.”. But ultimately, these values provide crucial underpinning for identity, intentionality, insight and intimacy to truly thrive.
We then get real, with Scott courageously opening up about his past struggles with pornography use. He explains how, despite shame and fear, choosing to be honest with Heidi relieved guilt and brought them closer over time. We stress secrecy and deceit often stem from inability to handle conflict, and suggest sharing vulnerabilities can build trust and connection.
Research shows keeping painful secrets also takes a major toll on personal wellbeing. So while discretion has its place, radical honesty is key for the intelligent spouse. As you listen, reflect on the promises made to your partner. Where could you improve integrity? How might confessing a carefully-kept secret, free your spirit and strengthen your bond? We believe living authentically aligns us with our highest selves.
-
00:00:02
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse. I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. And I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. We are two doctors, two researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose, to transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones, using intelligence mixed with a little fun.00:00:36
Welcome back, you amazingly scintillating and intelligent spouses. We're really glad you're here, Doctor Hastings, why do we have the cornerstones that we have the four eyes? Why is that so important? Well, in architectural terms, a cornerstone is the first stone to be laid in a building's foundation, to which all other stones are laid in reference. So, I guess because we've decided those are the four things that all other parts of a good marriage are built on.00:01:10
Well, wait a minute, though, Doctor Hastings. What about love? What about trust, loyalty, sacrifice? Those are all really good. Kindness, happiness.00:01:24
Why aren't those cornerstones? That's a great question. Why don't you tell us? Well, I think these are great qualities, right? Like people are asking, you know, why don't we have these other things as cornerstones?00:01:40
You know, they are great qualities to bring into a marital relationship. They should not be disregarded at all in our quest to establish a very firm foundation of identity, intentionality, insight and intimacy. Okay, true, but they don't all start with I. And we wanted. We wanted to keep it simple.00:02:03
IQ, easy to remember. Seriously, though, like, why the four eyes tell us. Well, I think. I like to think about these things a lot. You're a deep thinker.00:02:16
They demand ourselves to change. They invite us to become different. And love, faithfulness, loyalty, all those other things are important, but they're also kind of subjective, I guess. Right? And you can be kind to somebody without actually in your heart being kind, and the end result is not the same.00:02:49
You know, we can love better if we first know who we are. That's true. We can trust better if we first can be intentional and gain insight on ourselves. We can sacrifice for our spouse more easily if we first know our identity and truly understand on a deeper level, what intimacy is. Okay, so love is important.00:03:17
It's actually profoundly important. I kind of think of that more as maybe a capstone. Right? I would agree. I think it comes as you do these other things at deeper levels.00:03:32
Right. And so it grows. It grows, yeah. And I think it's important to delineate, because you can. You can be doing the exact same thing with two different frames of mind.00:03:45
One out of duty, resentment. Right. And one out of pure intention, pure love, desire. Like, isn't it nicer to do something for your spouse because you honestly actually want to do that thing? Right?00:04:06
Which doesn't always happen, but if we can grow towards that happening more often than not, then we're going to find more happiness and satisfaction in marriage. So I feel really good about the four eyes. I do too, but. Okay, I have a question for you. Okay.00:04:25
So we've had a lot of pretty intense conversations over the last couple of weeks between the two of us because we've wondered if maybe we missed an eye, a really important other foundational principle. Here's the question. Would you ever lie to your spouse? I would not like you to lie to me. Okay.00:04:47
I wouldn't like you to lie to me either. So unless you said I'm too fat, right? Or is it too ugly? Please make me look fat. Yeah.00:04:58
The answer is always, I love you.00:05:05
Do you want the truth, or do you want me to make you feel good? Oh. So some of our conversations about this have been, is integrity foundational to a good marriage? Is it like the.00:05:26
Is it like the underlying bedrock that then identity, intentionality, insight and intimacy are built on, or do those come first and integrity is over the top, like the roof or like the walls, the door? I know from all of the research I've done in my doctoral program on the experiences of religious women with husbands with problematic pornography use. The underlying problem in all of these betrayal trauma cases, which for most of the women, that's what it was, there wasn't integrity. So perhaps the man was really upstanding leader. A lot of my participants had husbands with really powerful positions that they held career wise, successful, or they were leaders in churches or even just cream of the crop good guys.00:06:39
And yet they were keeping these secrets about their sexual lives, that one missing element of integrity, even if they thought they knew who they were. I guess. Can you understand your identity if you don't have integrity with yourself? And how does that impact your relationship? So we've talked about that a lot.00:07:02
What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think that as you learn your identity and become more intentional, you develop integrity. Okay. And as you have integrity, you want to learn more about yourself. And if you don't have integrity, how does that impact your identity?00:07:21
Well, certainly you're not. Insight may be an issue. Yeah. So you lack insight. Right.00:07:31
If you lack integrity. But that's a hard thing to say because most people think they have integrity. Right? In fact, I don't know of anyone who doesn't clearly, that's not true. That's not the case.00:07:44
These are blind spots, right? These are blind spots. We love to talk about blind spots on this podcast. Okay, so a few scenarios I just want to ask you, okay. Like, what would you do?00:07:56
So you found some money, you saw it, somebody else dropped it. You have. Are you wanting me to answer these or. Just think about it. Just think about it.00:08:05
Okay? Just think. An attractive person of the opposite sex comes onto you in private, nobody else around. Okay? You eat whatever you want when nobody is looking but you.00:08:19
I mean, you eat right when they are. Right. Okay. The speed limit is 45, and it's late at night and there's nobody around. That's a particularly hard one for me.00:08:30
Yes. You charge more than what you agree to because nobody's paying attention. Knowing information that could help a colleague, but it may also help you advance in your career if you didn't share it with them. Okay? Avoid paying a bill because someone forgot to charge you for the service despite receiving it.00:08:53
So just think on those things. There's a bunch of others. These are just some I came up with. Why do we lie to ourselves? These blind spots that goes right in with integrity.00:09:05
In a previous episode, we talked about how utterly unaware we are about ourselves and our natures. Ask 100 people if they have integrity, and all of them will tell you, of course they do. Yeah, I've heard that statistic with even prison inmates. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we see it.00:09:29
It's there. There's this disconnect we have with the world. And what we're trying to do is help all of us see the world objectively, how it really is and how that can impact your relationship. So we live under this cloud of we call the good person bias, meaning that we all think we're above average in intelligence. We are all completely loyal to our spouse, at least in the exam room that everyone is.00:10:01
Everyone is loyal to their spouse, right? We all only eat clean food, whatever that is. We get plenty of sleep, exercise regularly. We have undeniable proof that all the things we think we do and all the things we actually do are wildly different. Can we, at least as people, a population, a group of people, acknowledge this?00:10:26
You don't have to be a narcissist, you know, to be unaware of yourself, okay? All of us are. So anyway, what do you have to say on integrity? Well, I've thought a lot about this, not only during my research, but as we've talked over the last few weeks, like I said, about where does this lie and maybe our listeners can. Can weigh in and let us know where they think integrity lies.00:10:57
But I think you're probably right. I think it probably comes from identity. And if you don't have integrity, then maybe something is amiss with your identity, with your insight into your own personal life most likely is impacting your, your ability to be intimate with your spouse. But in simple terms, I think integrity really means just keeping our promises. So you've been talking some about lies that we tell ourselves, some that we tell other people, dishonest things that we do.00:11:37
But really down to its very core, integrity is just keeping your promises and doing what you say you'll do. This really is important both in our personal lives and in our relationships with our partners. So are we holding ourselves accountable when we say that we're going to be faithful to each other throughout our lives? When we get married, are we truly. When we commit to fidelity, when we commit to only loving each other, when we commit to.00:12:12
To being kind and honest and faithful, are we truly doing that? Do we fulfill the promises that we make to each other, even if it's as simple as, hey, will you pick up the dry cleaning today for me on your way home from work? Do we stay conscious of the little promises that we make to each other, the little commitments that we make with each other? So in your opinion, what are some of the things that you think get in the way of integrity?00:12:45
Well, I think that pride, you know, not listening, not being curious, not perspective seeking. And it's really hard to do. It's really hard to keep that open mind all the time. Be curious, curious, curious with your spouse. I think a lot of times we tell ourselves lies.00:13:12
We tell ourselves stories that then allow us to make excuses. The stories that we tell ourselves. Yeah, I agree. That gets in the way of integrity, feeling stress, feeling painted into a corner like we, for whatever reason, whether it's choices that we've made, addictions, whether it's committing to things beyond what we can control, I think those are some things that get in the way of integrity. Blaming the other person.00:13:49
Yeah. And that's something that I have to take on.00:13:54
It starts with me, right? Starts with me. Not you. Not your fault. It's not your fault.00:14:03
That's not how I'm going to grow at all. Right. So there's actually a study by Doctor Chelom Leavitt that found that couples who are more satisfied in their marriages are more likely to have the core values of integrity and fidelity. So when we go back to identity and knowing who we are, are those part of your core values? And if so, are there some things you need to do to remind yourself that integrity and fidelity are part of who you are?00:14:37
So those couples that have the core values of integrity and fidelity, they found in their study, are frequently tied to deeply held religious beliefs. And they've found that religion actually influences marital, marital integrity. And it does that through lifestyle, through beliefs, through commitment to a higher power. In her study, Doctor Leavitt also found that challenges to maintain integrity and fidelity in marriage showed up and were really complex. But while several of the people talked about how religion helped with that, there were some.00:15:21
That religion actually caused frustration. I remember one. So hers was interviews done with, I want to say, a couple of hundred couples. And when one man left the religion that they had agreed upon in the beginning that they both entered the marriage with, he expressed really some great frustration that his wife really struggled to continue to have that same level of fidelity with him at that point. And so it's complex.00:15:56
It's not easy. She was so disturbed by his change in religious beliefs that she had a hard time connecting deeply with him, and she didn't want to talk about it. He felt disconnected. He felt that that was a source of not having integrity, remaining in that same level of fidelity because of that change. So let.00:16:22
Okay, doctor Hastings, let me. Let me ask you this. Does this mean that intelligent spouses must believe in God? No, not necessarily. Does that mean.00:16:35
But this study, to attend that a religion. I guess most religions believe in God. I guess maybe not all of them, but most do. Are you saying that that's part of having an intelligent marriage? I think it doesn't need to be necessarily.00:16:57
It is part of ours, but I don't think it necessarily needs to be. But what I think is at the core of integrity is having some sort of a moral compass. And I think what the people in her study were saying is that was the religious messaging that they received in terms of marriage especially. And fidelity was supported and sometimes taught through religion, because I can give you several examples of very religious people who have zero integrity and they have terrible marriages. That is true.00:17:35
That is true. Absolutely. So it's not a. It's not a guarantee. Yeah.00:17:41
So, but I think the point, though, is in this study that she found that perhaps just having a higher power, whatever that is, right. To say, look, I'm not doing it all on my own, there's gotta be some higher power, and using that higher power or religious beliefs or moral stance, moral compasses to find common ground. And to say this is what we're going to be integrous to. This is where our integrity is going to lie. And it doesn't have to be the same for every couple.00:18:19
It's that you can define together what might include living a life of integrity. All right, well, let's take a little bit. We talk about integrity, but part of integrity is really being honest. Right? Okay.00:18:36
And it starts with being honest with myself. Okay. Can I just be an honest for a moment here? As long as you don't tell me I'm fat. I didn't know this until literally this past year, but research, deep diving research from multiple perspectives.00:18:54
And it's hard to find this data because a lot of people don't want to talk about it or want to think about it. But research from multiple perspectives show that just about 100% of men consume porn in one way or another. It might be daily, weekly, monthly, annually, whatever that is or have done in the past or in the past. Look, it's part of that y chromosome. It's part of what's genetically put into our DNA.00:19:28
But not an excuse. But it's not an excuse. It's an explanation, but not an excuse. So, having said that. So about 65% of men have consumed it within the past month.00:19:39
So with that backdrop in mind, I don't feel so bad about having to say this because it's really hard for me. You know, I struggled with it as well in the past. I say it's largely out of my life now, but, yeah, I struggled with it off and on, especially since medical residency when I finished medical school. And you're up all night. We're up all hours of the night.00:20:07
We have to be awake to be available for these emergencies. And, you know, I always hated it afterward, but years of being honest with myself and my spouse, I was able to disclose each time that that happened. So, yeah, it sucks. It sucks for me. It sucks for her.00:20:33
So why did I do it? Why was I honest? Why didn't I just keep this little secret for the rest of my life and avoid the pain and anguish? That just makes the most sense, right? Well, 20 years later, I'm very glad that you made that decision because it's made all the difference.00:20:56
So you tell me, why do you think you made that decision? Well, part of it is you always say it's far worse for me not to tell you than for me to actually do it. And I think that's probably true for a lot of people that did that. Transparency. And it's hard.00:21:14
And I invite the intelligent spouse out there listening. If they have an issue with pornography, to take a chance to speak with their spouse about it in a way that's not. That's a loaded and complicated challenge. Yeah, it is. And it's probably for another podcast.00:21:40
I need to do another podcast giving more specific information on how to do that. But let's just for sure tie this to this is part of integrity, and we want you to start thinking about it. We'll do another podcast because if you just go out there and just blab it and you've been involved with it for 20 years or something, it might be a big problem. It could blow up. So let's prepare them.00:22:04
All right, but keep in mind that this is something that we're going to talk further about. So fidelity is a part of integrity that really, the two are iterative, they're closely aligned, and fidelity within marriage typically encompasses both physical and emotional commitment and dedication to our partners. Physical fidelity implies that we're being sexually exclusive to a spouse, while emotional fidelity involves being committed to the emotional well being of the partner and maintaining that deep emotional connection only with them. So both aspects are important for building trust and intimacy and a strong foundation for a lasting relationship. Fidelity is really often seen as a cornerstone of a healthy and successful marriage.00:22:58
It's not one of our five, but it's built upon those foundational cornerstones that we have, those four eyes, because it fosters mutual respect and loyalty and security between partners. And you're right, a lot of spouses and those who are viewing porn would consider that to be a breach of fidelity. So, doctor Hastings, we're talking about integrity here.00:23:31
Part of integrity is being, like, honest. We talked about honesty, and a part of honesty is. What's the other side of honesty is deception. Deception. And we like to say secrets.00:23:50
I think secrets come before deception. I think deception starts with secrets. So go ahead. According to Divorce.com, keeping secrets about things like finances, friendships, infidelity, addictions, and more in marriage can cause serious relationship issues. If you find yourself hiding things from your partner, think about why you're doing it and what might happen as a result.00:24:17
Open communication is essential for a healthy relationship, right? So secrecy involves purposefully withholding certain information, typically because it's embarrassing, shameful, or feared to harm relationships or your reputation. Right? Going back to that porn example, in the studies that I've done, a lot of the men were afraid their wife would leave them if they told them, or they just felt so much shame about it that they kept hiding it. All of those things.00:24:51
Embarrassment, shame, and fear, or that they don't have the language to speak about it. I've seen a lot of research on that, that secrets often stem from the inability to know how to talk about it. So talk about doctor Hastings. There's a study about sharing personal vulnerabilities. Do you want to talk about that?00:25:18
Sure. There's a new study just a couple of months ago out by Davison Tabri, that found that sharing personal vulnerabilities and weaknesses in a relationship can strengthen trust and emotional closeness. But contrary to that, on the other hand, choosing not to disclose such things can suggest a lack of confidence in your partner's ability to support you through that. It also might show lesser commitment to striving for that deeper relationship. So if I keep a secret, often it's that I'm upset in the relationship, I'm unfulfilled in the relationship, I don't trust my partner to support me, or I'm just not that invested.00:26:04
So keeping secrets might indicate that there are underlying issues with the relationship to start with that can breed resentment and compromise trust. Gottman and Gottman. John Gottman and his wife Julie, proposed that at the core of secret keeping within romantic relationships is the inability to resolve conflict peacefully and without a flood of emotion. So what that might look like is, say, a guy has an issue with porn, and he tries to tell his wife about it, and she becomes emotionally flooded. She either bottles up and won't speak about it ever again.00:26:46
She says, you do that again, and I'm going to divorce you. She becomes just very emotionally unstable. That is one of the reasons why they just. The inability to resolve conflict, to sit in discomfort and move through those conflictual situations, they're like, I'm just not going to talk about it anymore if this is what it does to her. But we really are going to encourage you to get beyond keeping secrets for that reason.00:27:21
But, doctor Hastings, I don't want to hurt my spouse or my colleague or my dad or someone else special in my life. Right? I don't. Shouldn't you have some level of discretion? You know, like, read the room?00:27:38
You know, what about confidentiality? As a physician, I'm required to keep things confidential. Right? So it gets really tricky here. It does get tricky.00:27:52
And if you're saying I spent $100 on a purse, and I'm hiding that from my spouse because I'm afraid that he's gonna, like, blow up at me, the long term impact of that is going to be different than hiding an addiction or a compulsion. Compulsive behavior, compulsive sexual behavior, or hiding friends that may turn into relationships that could compromise the marriage. So what I hear you saying is that it's much worse down the road by keeping these secrets than being. Than the upfront trauma that you get by sharing it. That's true.00:28:37
That is true. But with that, if we're truly moving towards being a person of integrity, then we need to be able to sit in discomfort and talk about things that are difficult. We need to really work on doing that in a way that's safe. And we'll have a couple of episodes that will give some suggestions on that. Our episode coming up on couples council will have a little bit of information on that and some other communication episodes that we're going to do in the future.00:29:12
But ultimately, what, as a couple, does integrity look like to you? And if you're violating what your partner sees as having a life of integrity, living a life of integrity and fidelity to each other, then you've got to figure out how to disclose, even if it's hurtful. And probably the best thing to do is to stop doing things that are hurtful. And for those intelligent spouses out there who just are saying, look, no, I don't believe them, they're wrong, the research is not going to be on your side here. The research is going to agree with doctor Hastings and the journal Scientific American.00:29:59
We find that at least 97% of us have a secret that we don't want anyone else to know about. That's pretty high. Wow, that is really high. We find from the work of Aslepian Chunin Mason that mental pain and anguish arising from keeping secrets creates a lower sense of well being, happiness and joy. So what they're saying then is not only is it hurtful to the spouse, but it's very hurtful to the secret keeper.00:30:27
And it's for reasons that are different than you might think. Okay. Most people, when asked, think, well, it's the difficulty of trying to keep the secret a secret, trying to make sure everything's hidden all the time. But in reality, that's not what they found. What did they find?00:30:46
They found that the biggest issue with well being had to deal with having to think about it all the time. Always thinking, thinking, thinking. Not how they're going to keep their spouse from knowing, but just actually thinking about it. Think, what's it thinking about? The things that they did.00:31:10
The secret itself was not a decision of integrity. So the bottom line is we feel miserable, not because we got away with it as much as we feel miserable, because it's constantly coming back into our mind about what that secret is, and it wears on us. And we have scientific evidence from multiple lines of evidence that keeping secrets is not a long term solution for healthy mental health. Okay? So if we're going to go back to the porn issue with that, I will tell you.00:31:51
The women in my study disclosed that their husbands had, without me ever asking a question about it, their husbands had terrible mental health. They had really significant depression, struggled with, you know, one woman was telling that her husband was curled up on a ball on the floor, unable to go to work and do things. Part of that, perhaps, was the dissonance between behavior of viewing porn and their beliefs and being a good, righteous person or a good moral person. But what you're saying is the other part of that, which I hadn't really thought about in my research, but which could be, is that they were so plagued with constantly thinking about the things they were doing wrong because they had to keep it a secret that that's what actually is impacting their mental health. That's correct.00:32:48
Wow. I like. I mean, that's insightful. Yeah. There's no other way around it.00:32:54
Research also shows vulnerability is hard, vulnerable, meaning being open. So it's scary. It's ultimately freeing. If you find yourself struggling how to be vulnerable, don't worry, the vast majority of us do, too. Never fear, though.00:33:13
Dear, loyal, intelligent spouse of the marriage IQ podcast, the doctor's Hastings, will guide you oh so eloquently and so meticulously through these strange new corridors of life. All right, well, we do want to have you start thinking this week about living lives of integrity, because research ultimately shows that is what helps create strong, stable, committed relationships. Research also shows that if there are a lot of areas of conflict in our lives and individuals feel like their needs aren't being met, they begin to vilify their spouse. They make their spouse the enemy, and they're constantly looking for things that their spouse does wrong. They're being very critical, and so they have to have someone that will validate the things that they're saying.00:34:11
So often it's somebody at work, it might be a mother, a girlfriend, saying, yeah, he's such a jerk when he does this, or, yeah, he's too married to his job, or, yeah, he does whatever it is, they find someone who will be their ally, and then that person starts to meet their needs. They start crossing little boundaries at first because they viewed their partner as the enemy, but then the deceit continues, and so making those little concessions for either secrets, lies, lies we tell ourselves. Joining with an ally to validate the stories that we're telling ourselves can really enhance those times within our relationship that we're not living with integrity and ultimately cause a lot of destruction to the relationship. So let's this week reflect on the promises you made to yourself and to your spouse. Identify where you might have fallen short in those commitments.00:35:17
Yeah. Take responsibility for these lapses and commit to improving. Don't blame your spouse. Right. Hold yourself accountable.00:35:25
Right. So let's do that for this next decided to do better. Hold yourself accountable. Oh, for next week. For next week.00:35:34
What is the big o? We're going to talk about it. Thanks for listening. See you next time. So if you like this podcast, we want to ask for your help with just three little things.00:35:45
First, rate our podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. Second, review it. Tell others what you liked about our podcast on your social media. Third, share it. Send a text of the link to this podcast to anybody that you think could be would like to become an intelligent spouse and can benefit from listening.00:36:03
So again, rate it, review it, and share it. We really are so grateful that you joined us today, and we look forward to having you join us next time on marriage. Marriage IQ.
