Episode 116 : 3 Shocking Facts About Keeping Secrets From Your Partner
The Quiet Secrets That Can Slowly Destroy a Marriage
Most people assume the biggest threat to a marriage is conflict the blowups, the shouting matches, the moments when words cut too deep.But what if the real danger isn’t the fights at all?
What if it’s the things you never say?
In this episode of Marriage IQ, we explored a truth that stops many couples in their tracks: marriages don’t usually fall apart because of loud arguments. They erode quietly through secrets, withheld truths, and unspoken realities that slowly create emotional distance.
Why Secrets Feel Safer Than Conflict (At First)
Most secrets don’t start with bad intentions. They begin as self-protection.
You don’t say you’re unhappy because you’re afraid of hurting your spouse….
You keep doubts to yourself because you don’t want to rock the boat….
You avoid sharing certain thoughts, desires, or regrets because conflict feels terrifying….
So you tell yourself, This is no big deal. I’m just keeping the peace. But silence is never empty. It fills with resentment, loneliness, and the growing sense of not being truly known.
The Three Most Common Secrets Couples Keep
Research consistently shows that married people don’t just keep secrets they keep deeply personal ones. In fact, the average person is carrying around roughly thirteen secrets at any given time, and several of those have never been shared with anyone. In marriages, three types rise to the top.
The first is hidden dissatisfaction. Feeling disconnected, unhappy, or emotionally disengaged but never saying it out loud. Over time, this creates a quiet loneliness that’s especially painful because it happens inside a committed relationship. The second involves unshared sexual thoughts or desires. When curiosity, preferences, or longings are buried out of fear, intimacy slowly dries up. Desire cannot thrive where honesty feels unsafe.
The third centers on identity and regret the quiet thought that this isn’t the life I expected, or I don’t even know who I am anymore. These are some of the hardest truths to share because they feel frightening even to ourselves. Interestingly, major betrayals often aren’t the deepest secret. The most hidden layer is usually why something happened, not just what happened.
Why Secrets Damage a Marriage More Than a Fight
An argument, for all its messiness, is still engagement. It’s an attempt however imperfect to connect. A secret does the opposite. Keeping a secret splits your inner world in two. One part of you wants closeness. The other is busy hiding. Psychologically, this creates cognitive dissonance a stressful internal tug-of-war that drains emotional energy and increases anxiety, fatigue, and isolation. Even if nothing has been “discovered,” your nervous system knows something is off. And your spouse feels it too. You may not realize it, but secrecy leaks out through tone, distance, defensiveness, and avoidance. Conversations become cautious. Emotional intimacy thins. Life feels curated instead of real.
You’re still in the same house but no longer sharing the same emotional space.
When Secrecy Turns Into Gaslighting
One of the most painful consequences of secrecy happens to the partner who senses something is wrong. They feel the shift. They ask questions. And when they’re told, You’re imagining things, or Nothing’s wrong, they begin to doubt themselves. This isn’t just lying it’s gaslighting. Over time, the innocent partner starts questioning their own perceptions, instincts, and sanity. Anxiety rises. Trust erodes. Resentment burns quietly. Research shows this kind of reality-distortion can be deeply damaging to mental health and emotional safety. The harm isn’t just the secret itself it’s the ongoing denial of someone else’s lived experience.
Privacy Isn’t the Same as Secrecy
It’s important to say this clearly: privacy is healthy. Everyone is allowed private thoughts, personal reflection, and inner space. Secrecy, however, is different. It’s the intentional hiding of information that would change the emotional reality of the relationship if known. The damage of a secret doesn’t begin when it’s discovered.
It begins the moment you decide to hide.
How Honesty Becomes the Turning Point
Repair starts with courage not dumping everything at once, but choosing truth over comfort. Timing matters. Don’t ambush your partner in the middle of stress or exhaustion. Choose an intentional moment. Create space. Speak calmly. Begin with vulnerability, not accusation. “I need to share something that’s hard for me. I feel scared saying it, but I want us to be closer.” That tone alone lowers defenses and signals that the goal is connection, not destruction.
Owning the Truth Without Defending Yourself
When a secret is revealed, the instinct is often to justify, explain, or minimize. Healing requires the opposite. Ownership without excuses, Listening without interruption, Validating without defensiveness. Validation doesn’t mean agreement. It means acknowledging that your partner’s feelings are real and understandable. This is where emotional safety begins to return. The pain your partner feels is often less about the secret itself and more about the deception surrounding it.
From Repair to Transformation
Rebuilding trust isn’t instant. It’s built through consistent, honest behavior over time. Transparency replaces secrecy, Predictability replaces anxiety, Shared reality replaces isolation. Some marriages don’t survive deep deception and it’s important to say that honestly. But many marriages don’t need to end. They need to transform. Research shows three outcomes after major relational rupture: some couples divorce, some stay but remain emotionally disconnected, and some rebuild something entirely new and stronger. That third group doesn’t go back to the old marriage.
They build a new one: One without hidden basements, One without silent leaks, One where being known feels safer than being protected.
The Question Every Couple Must Answer
Which marriage do you want to be in? The one that looks fine from the outside but quietly crumbles beneath the surface? Or the one willing to choose honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable? Because intimacy cannot grow in the dark. And the strongest marriages aren’t the ones without problems they’re the ones brave enough to bring the truth into the light.
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0:00
Why Quiet Secrets Are the Biggest Threat to Your Relationship
What if I told you that the biggest threat to your relationship isn't those big, huge, explosive arguments?
0:06
Speaker 2
How can you hold someone else up to a standard that you don't even know yourself?
0:10
Speaker 1
Research shows that the average person like you or me is keeping somewhere around 13 secrets at any given time.
0:18
Speaker 2
You simply cannot build intimacy on a lie.
0:22
Speaker 1
My husband keeps trying to go back and unbury the old marriage and I tell him no, that marriage is dead, this is a new one.
0:31
Speaker 2
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast helping you become an intelligent spouse.
0:37
Speaker 1
I'm Heidi Hastings.
0:39
Speaker 2
And I'm Scott Hastings.
0:41
Speaker 1
We are two doctors, 2 researchers, 2 spouses, 2 lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose.
To change the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones using intelligence mixed with a little fun.
1:02
Secrets are like a hidden leak in your basement.
You don't see the damage until your whole house is about ready to collapse.
Today we're going to uncover the science behind why secrets are so corrosive.
We'll look into how they break down the psychological foundation of your partnership and most importantly, what you can do to fix the damage before the whole marriage comes tumbling down.
1:26
Speaker 2
I'm Doctor Scott Hastings.
1:27
Speaker 1
And I'm Doctor Heidi Hastings.
If your marriage feels distant, flat, or unsafe and you can't explain why, this episode might change everything for you.
1:37
Speaker 2
Picture a beautiful house.
From the outside, it looks really nice.
It looks perfect.
The lawn is pristine.
The windows are sparkling.
Hidden behind a wall, there's a single pipe with a tiny little crack in it.
A silent little leak for months, maybe even years.
1:55
Nobody has a clue what's going on, but you do drop by drop, just little by little.
The water seeps into the concrete, silently eating away the very foundation holding your whole house up.
One day, that damage is not invisible anymore, and you start seeing cracks in the walls.
2:15
The floors start to warp, the place that once felt like a stable foundation.
It doesn't feel safe.
And this is exactly what secrets do to a marriage.
2:28
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a bad day when all that starts to happen.
Well, what if I told you that the biggest threat to your relationship isn't those big huge explosive arguments, but it's all little quiet secrets that you keep?
It's not the fight about the money.
2:45
It's not about who forgot to take out the trash again.
It's those unspoken truths, the little white lies, and even those so-called harmless secrets that we tell ourselves just to keep the peace.
In reality, these secrets are like hidden leaks.
3:03
They quietly create a toxic environment of mistrust and conflict that can absolutely destroy your marriage from the inside out.
And hey, if you're on a journey to build a stronger, more honest relationship, think about subscribing.
3:20
We, Doctor Scott and Doctor Heidi, are all about giving you the tools that you need to build a marriage that doesn't just look good on the outside, but is solid right down to its very foundation.
3:32
Speaker 2
You know, Heidi, again, I like that idea.
It's not those loud arguments.
It's the quiet secrets.
Those are the most damaging, that's the most unnerving.
3:43
Uncovering the Top Three Secrets Married Couples Hide
You know, according to scientific research, including the National Marriage Project, the top three secrets that married people keep.
And it may not be what you think.
OK, so one of them is a really big 1 hidden dissatisfaction and emotional disengagement.
4:01
Speaker 1
Yeah, we have heard that one a lot.
4:03
Speaker 2
So I'm unhappy in this marriage, but I'm not going to tell you about it.
You know, we dodged these tough topics, these small hoots, unmet needs, these peers.
We're terrified of a fight.
4:18
We're scared of conflict, we're scared of being judged.
4:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm a peacekeeper and I know for me that is really difficult to talk about things that might result in conflict.
4:28
Speaker 2
Yeah, you know, And we stick to safe ground, but no harm, no foul kind of a thing.
And in doing so, we build this kind of invisible wall between us.
But that silence isn't empty.
It's filled with everything we're not, faint like those unspoken resentments, the things that maybe you said that hurt me.
4:51
The quiet insecurities, those deep seated feeling of not being known, feeling like your most intimate partner in your life doesn't know you.
5:02
Speaker 1
And sometimes those deep seated secrets are changes that are going on within me that feel kind of scary to myself.
And so it's really even hard to talk to you about them.
I'm afraid of how you'll react.
5:16
Speaker 2
Yeah.
So this creates a painful cycle.
You feel disconnected.
You don't share as much with me.
And because you share less, you're even more disconnected and vice versa.
And so we both start feeling lonely in this marriage.
5:32
That may be some of the most painful loneliness there is to be married and not feel connected.
And you might even be wondering, who are we anymore?
Do you even see me?
5:45
Speaker 1
Who am I?
Yeah.
5:47
Speaker 2
The second top secret sharing sexual thoughts desires that might be different from your spouse.
5:57
Speaker 1
Yeah, sometimes one partner is very much more open to things than another and it takes sometimes several years to be able to cross those difficult.
6:07
Speaker 2
So I might be thinking up here, this is what I want, but I'm not going to tell you about it because I fear what might happen.
6:13
Speaker 1
And then do you pull away or do people who engage in that kind of secret keeping then pull away?
Yeah.
6:19
Speaker 2
It goes back to that vicious cycle of disconnection.
Yeah.
And then a third top reason for secrets in marriage.
It really has to do with identity and regret.
This is the thing where you say to yourself, this is not what I was expecting out of life and.
6:38
Speaker 1
That sounds like expectations too.
6:40
Speaker 2
Yeah.
So part of that is really getting back to one of our four cornerstones here that we teach on marriage IQ, and that is learning who we are, our own identity, because how can you hold someone else up to a standard that you don't even know yourself?
6:56
And so we're going to talk about.
6:58
Speaker 1
This, and we have to remember that identity is constantly evolving.
7:01
Speaker 2
Constantly changed.
7:02
Speaker 1
Based on our experiences in life and our beliefs.
7:06
Speaker 2
So you may be thinking, well, past sexual indiscretion should be high on the list.
Interestingly, it is high on the list, but not in the top three because sexual betrayal, sexual indiscretions do tend to be disclosed more than the three than we talked about because the three we talked about are so personal to our own self that yeah, that it's just, it's so, so personal.
7:38
It's interesting because when we talk about sexual indiscretion, like, yes, I cheated on you, but I'm not going to tell you why the inner most secrets of why I did that cheating.
And that's what we're really delving into here.
7:54
Speaker 1
So it goes deep.
7:55
Speaker 2
It goes really deep.
7:57
Speaker 1
And sometimes maybe if we disclosed some of those deeper secrets, it would keep other damage from happening.
That's what you're saying.
8:07
Speaker 2
This might sound a bit overwhelming, right?
But stick with us because we promise to show what is happening and how to fix it.
8:18
The Psychological Weight of Secrets: Cognitive Dissonance
Let's jump into the science of secrecy, my love.
8:22
Speaker 1
The science of secrecy.
So why is the secret so much more damaging than a big fight, you might be asking.
Well, an argument, for all of its messiness, is still a form of connection and communication.
8:39
It's a painful and often really clumsy attempt to engage with each other, but a secret is the exact opposite.
8:47
Speaker 2
So you're saying if I'm fighting with you, I'm still connecting with?
8:50
Speaker 1
Yeah, we are engaging.
We are expressing opinions, even if those opinions are in opposition to each other.
We're having communication.
I do remember one of the women in my research that I found most fascinating and surprising, her husband completely emotionally disconnected from her, and she said she could be lying dead on the floor or bleeding or something.
9:16
She didn't really, but this is how she felt, that he would just step over and keep on walking.
You wouldn't talk to her about anything.
He just became so withdrawn, and that was more painful than some of the other things that later emerged.
9:32
But that secrecy does bring isolation and deliberate acts of disconnection, and sometimes it's through shame.
I'm going to be honest.
But research does show us that this act of secret keeping carries a really heavy psychological weight.
9:49
They know they're keeping a secret, but they don't know that's disconnecting them.
Oh I see from their partner.
9:55
Speaker 2
So it's deliberate, but not maybe consciously deliberate.
9:58
Speaker 1
Not consciously isolating or not consciously separating I see from their part.
So get this.
Research shows that the average person like you or me is keeping somewhere around 13 secrets at any given time.
10:12
Speaker 2
That's a lot.
10:13
Speaker 1
And at least five of those secrets, they've never told a single soul.
10:18
Speaker 2
Well, that's crazy.
That is pretty crazy.
10:20
Speaker 1
Now let's be clear, Scott, and I want you to know that there is a huge difference between privacy and secrecy.
Yes.
OK, so privacy is having your own space, your own thoughts, your own journal.
But secrecy is when you intentionally hide information that if your partner knew about, would change the whole dynamic of your relationship.
10:45
Here's the most important thing that people miss with this and that's the real damage from a secret doesn't start when it's discovered.
It starts the moment you decide to hide the secrets because now you're living in two different worlds.
OK, there's the part that you want to be honest and connected and loving, and the part that's holding something totally back.
11:08
And your nervous system can tell and feel that blitz in your reality.
In psychology, we call this cognitive dissonance.
And there is so much research on how cognitive dissonance, you know, the difference in the way that we believe and we behave or when there are two parts of ourselves clashing with each other.
11:35
It causes a lot of mental health problems.
It causes relationship problems that can cause even employment problems.
But this is what cognitive dissonance really means.
It means you're inside and you're outside, aren't any longer matching.
11:53
You're trying to be close while also protecting yourself.
And that internal tug of war that's constantly going on is exhausting.
And I think that is probably the part that leads to mental health outcomes and big relationship problems.
12:09
Research also shows that people who are carrying secrets feel more tired, they feel more anxious, and they're more lonely, even when nothing bad has technically even happened yet.
And here's the kicker.
12:25
That emotional weight never stays just contained in yourself.
It leaks out in your behaviors, in your attitudes, in the energy that you emit around you, and you start pulling back without even realizing it.
12:40
Get really snippy sometimes, or guarded or even strangely defensive.
You avoid certain conversations and you change the subject when things get a little too close to home or hit that trigger button slowly, the way that you talk to each other, which is the heartbeat of our marriage, right?
13:03
It becomes very careful, like you're treading on ice instead of staying connected.
13:10
Speaker 2
Or curated.
Curated.
13:12
Speaker 1
Is another good one or what's another C?
Just very cautious.
Yeah.
So you're still on the same house, but you're no longer living in the same emotional space.
13:23
Speaker 2
So how many of you out there have secrets?
Do you kind of connect with what we're saying?
If so, leave a comment and let us know what.
13:31
Speaker 1
Kind of comment, would you expect to?
13:33
Speaker 2
See, I don't know.
This is kind of a, a vulnerable conversation.
Just let us know.
Yeah.
But let's get back to that house analogy.
Heidi, the secret keeper, they're the ones who know about that leak every single day.
13:49
They're living with that knowledge.
It's there.
It's there.
It's there.
They avoid the basement.
They don't want to go to the basement.
They change the subject when somebody starts saying, hey, it smells kind of moldy down here.
14:03
Speaker 1
That's a good way to say that.
14:05
Speaker 2
There's this constant mental load that stress makes it impossible for them to really ever truly relax and to be present with their partner, their spouse.
As a researcher Michael Slepian found, the act of keeping a secret just hammers our emotional well-being, gets in the way of our natural need to connect.
14:26
Speaker 1
Yeah, I read quite a bit of research by him.
He's done years of research on secret keeping and very fascinating how it does impact our emotional lives.
14:37
Speaker 2
Here's a shocking truth, folks.
You simply cannot build intimacy on a lie.
Cannot happen.
Your partner isn't connecting with the real you.
They're connecting with a carefully curated.
14:52
Speaker 1
There's that curated word.
14:53
Speaker 2
Edited version of yourself that is not you, so you cannot fully be intimate.
14:59
How Secrets Create Emotional Distance, Mistrust, and Gaslighting
So there are three toxic impacts that we've discovered.
So we know, Scott, that keeping secrets is stressful for the person hiding him.
You've just talked about that.
But how does that dress actually tear the relationship apart?
15:16
Well, you've talked a little bit about the emotional distance that we have that blocks our ability to be intimate with each other.
So think of it when we go back to the house building analogy, kind of like with every secret that we keep, it's putting another brick in this invisible wall between US.
15:37
And at first it's just one brick and it's small and it seems like it's meaningless.
But so for example, maybe I hide A credit card charge that I mean, because we're an Amazon purchase, because I'm kind of embarrassed that you think it's going to be too much.
15:54
Or I hide A credit card bill that I don't want you to see not.
16:00
Speaker 2
Right.
16:01
Speaker 1
Yeah, it seems like it when it's.
16:02
Speaker 2
No harm, no foul.
16:04
Speaker 1
Or maybe you're just having some doubts about your faith and that seems very vulnerable and scary that I might react to an I.
16:13
Speaker 2
Don't want to share with you, right?
16:15
Speaker 1
Or maybe I've had an emotionally charged text exchange with an old boyfriend on Facebook.
Or some other social media.
And I just say to myself, I'm just not going to mention that.
It seems pretty harmless.
16:31
Nothing big was said.
But I might also be telling myself I'm protecting you.
I know that nothing big happened, but you might freak out about it.
So I'm just not going to say anything.
So we're just going to avoid this pointless argument.
But what I'm really doing, or what you are really doing instead, is protecting yourself from being vulnerable.
16:52
And then another secret, add another brick and another.
And before you know what, you've built this invisible barrier straight through the middle of our marriage.
You might be living in the same house and sleeping in the same bed, but you're definitely not intimate with each other.
17:10
Because intimacy is built on trust and authenticity, on that feeling that you can be vulnerable and truly seen with your partner and that will understand each other.
When you hide those parts of ourselves, what we're really doing is denying our relationship the oxygen that it needs to breathe, creating what experts call emotional distance.
17:34
And that is a silent killer of connection.
17:38
Speaker 2
So let's say Heidi, your partner senses the wall.
They sense something and begin to question.
OK, your partner doesn't know the secret, but they got their feelers out.
They know something's off.
They can feel that wall, so to speak, the shift in that energy.
17:57
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's really the second toxic thing that happens from telling secrets.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
18:03
Speaker 2
So yeah, that is an interesting these.
18:06
Speaker 1
Conversations without any conversation happening.
18:10
Speaker 2
Yeah.
But even when conversations do happen, sensing these non verbal cues that you're giving off.
18:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, How are you doing?
Fine.
I know you're not doing fine.
Tell me then.
I'm badgering you just to try to tell me.
18:25
Speaker 2
You're avoiding certain conversations, that hesitation in your voice.
Their gut says, ah, there's something off here.
Yeah.
They don't have all the facts.
They're trying to start filling the blanks now.
And when we start trying to fill in the blanks, sometimes that story gets blown way out of proportion and it might be actually worse than what's actually happening.
18:47
Speaker 1
Sometimes it's nowhere close to the seriousness of the reality.
18:51
Speaker 2
And that's where that suspicious takes roots, right?
Start wondering what else aren't they telling me?
That uncertainty begins to demolish that foundation of trust.
Trust in the marriage is the belief that you are safe with that person, that one person.
19:10
Speaker 1
And trust is the basis of attachment.
19:15
Speaker 2
And when that trust, that safety is gone, that intimacy is gone, it becomes impossible.
And not just physical intimacy, emotional, sexual, financial, all of it.
It dies because these conversations aren't open, they're not honest anymore.
19:33
And it's it's really hard to feel physically close to somebody when you can't trust them on these other issues.
19:40
Speaker 1
Yeah, I may not want you to touch me.
Yeah, well, there's a third toxic impact that secret telling has that we've also found, and that's the innocent partner, The partner who doesn't know the secret.
I guess we may not want to call them innocent, but they begin to doubt their own reality.
19:59
That's tough.
And I saw this so much in my research, interviewing dozens of women about their experiences with in part secret telling.
This is probably one of the cruelest impacts of all, because when the unsuspecting partner senses that something's wrong and they ask is everything OK and you seem totally distant, the secret keeper is forced to lie again.
20:26
If they don't want to reveal their secret and they say I'm fine, it's nothing or the.
20:30
Speaker 2
Classic.
You're just imagining.
20:32
Speaker 1
Imagining it or you're blowing this out of proportion.
What's wrong with you and folks?
This is called gaslighting.
The innocent partner isn't just being lied to about the original secret, but now they're very perception of reality is being denied.
20:48
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's rough.
20:50
Speaker 1
They start to question themselves, am I being too sensitive?
Am I crazy for thinking something is wrong?
And I saw this over and over and over again.
And this also greatly impacts mental health.
21:05
It greatly impacts thoughts of suicidality, actually, and we want to be really, really careful to not ever make someone feel like they're going crazy through.
21:19
Speaker 2
I think it's safe to say gaslighting is emotional abuse.
21:23
Speaker 1
It is, Yep.
I would join you on that.
21:26
Speaker 2
That is abuse of your spouse emotionally.
21:29
Speaker 1
This does incredible damage to a person's self esteem.
They feel this constant low level anxiety or intense anxiety if it goes on long enough that the sense that the ground under them is not stable at all and they're being told it's perfectly solid.
21:46
What's wrong with you?
It is an incredibly lonely and confusing place to be, and overtime it breathe deep burning resentment the.
21:56
Speaker 2
Problem.
21:57
Speaker 1
Is no longer just a secret, but it's the betrayal of being lied to and being made feel like you're losing your mind.
22:05
Speaker 2
Are you willing to keep living in a house that's slowly collapsing?
Put a comment below if you've ever felt this way, how did it make you feel?
22:14
The Courageous First Step: Revealing Secrets with Vulnerability
So how do we change this?
How do we make the move over the hump?
Is it possible?
It's possible.
22:22
Speaker 1
I agree it's possible.
It's.
22:24
Speaker 2
So possible it does take.
22:25
Speaker 1
Courage though.
22:27
Speaker 2
Yes.
22:28
Speaker 1
And a lot of honesty.
22:31
Speaker 2
Let's choose courage over comfort.
22:36
Speaker 1
And truth over.
Yeah.
22:38
Speaker 2
First things first, you have to bring truth into the light.
Yeah, but how and when you do this is critical.
Don't ambush your partner in the middle of a stressful day or right as you're getting into bed.
22:50
Speaker 1
Or when they're at work.
22:52
Speaker 2
Choose a time, an intentional time.
Say, OK, I'm going to set time after dinner at 7:30, Let's talk.
No kids, just you and me and you're both feeling rested.
You can talk without being interrupted.
23:09
And we like to say start with a kind of a low like a FM DJ voice so you're not reactive.
And you could say something like, I need to share something that's hard for me to say.
23:24
I feel a little scared right now, but I'm telling you because I feel a distance between us and I want us to be closer.
If you said.
23:34
Speaker 1
Something like that.
To me, I think all of the sudden my defenses would be less up.
I'd feel more compassion and just grateful that you want to be connected to me.
23:50
Speaker 2
That's courage, folks.
Yeah, it's hard.
And that just kind of sets that tone for healing, not for a fight.
That kind of shows that your goal is to repair that relationship.
Yeah.
Most people keep these secrets because they don't know how to do it.
24:06
They're terrified of rejection, of conflict, of intention, losing the relationship, of being told that I'm just not enough.
24:19
Speaker 1
And the risk for all of those is truly there, right?
I'm not saying that just because you start off with your low FMDJ voice and start with words like we just said that everything's going to go well, but it increases the odds, right?
24:36
Speaker 2
Right.
The paradox here in all of this, my love, is that what we hide to protect our relationship is that is what's slowly destroying it.
24:48
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's like that drip in the house, isn't it?
24:52
Speaker 2
And again, we're choosing this courage over comfort.
We're not dumping everything all at once.
You might need some professional help from a therapist to counselor who has experience in this area.
25:08
Speaker 1
Especially if it's something very serious.
25:10
Speaker 2
Right.
Yeah, that's true.
Because here's reality folks, either you or your spouse may have some emotional and mental health challenges.
And so even if you set up for the best case scenario, you may still be met with a lot of a lot of blowback.
25:34
Speaker 1
Especially if there's been trauma in the life of the spouse, because sometimes that enhances emotional reactivity anyway.
25:45
Speaker 2
So for those of you thinking I can't do this because my spouse is too emotionally overreactive, we're here to say that is false.
It has to happen.
25:56
Speaker 1
And that might mean that you need help from a professional to help you navigate it, but it doesn't mean keeping it a secret.
26:05
Speaker 2
Right this moment here is the emotional turning point when you're able to get that out.
It's where secrecy ends and intimacy begins.
26:17
Speaker 1
Or at least has a chance to begin, right?
26:20
Repairing Trust: Owning Your Actions and Validating Emotions
Yeah, so then the next step to repair is to move from being defensive, to stop justifying and start owning what the secret is all about.
When you reveal that secret, do it without excuses and without blame.
26:38
Own your actions completely.
Explain what you did.
And then this is the hard part.
Stop talking and get ready to listen.
Your partner's going to have really strong feelings like hurt, anger, and betrayal, especially if it's something pretty serious.
26:57
It can cause physical, emotional, and psychological responses that sometimes the partner is not even able to control.
But your job is not to defend yourself or put the blame on your spouse.
27:12
Your job is to listen and validate their emotion.
27:17
Speaker 2
And that's interesting because you in your research that is talking more about betrayal, about a sexual indiscretion, right?
And while we could refer to this in this podcast, it is also talking about those deeper seeded secrets.
27:32
Speaker 1
Yeah, we're not focusing so much on the sexual betrayal, but the same principles.
27:36
Speaker 2
Can It's not a secret of Commission, but a secret of omission, right?
We're not sharing what is driving a wedge in this relationship.
27:48
Speaker 1
Yeah, so as you're listening to your spouse and validating their emotions, validating doesn't mean that you agree with everything they say.
It just means that you accept their feelings as real and legitimate part of their experience.
28:04
You can say things like I completely understand why you would feel so hurt, or it makes perfect sense why you're so angry with me or why you're feeling scared right now.
28:16
Speaker 2
Yeah.
And even saying I completely understand, may not Yeah, be completely yeah.
28:22
Speaker 1
Because you wouldn't.
28:23
Speaker 2
Understand, right?
28:24
Speaker 1
Maybe I can understand.
28:26
Speaker 2
So I can understand or.
Wow, that must really hurt or.
28:32
Speaker 1
I appreciate your sharing your feelings with me because I haven't seen it from that perspective before.
That is empathy.
And by accepting their feelings without getting defensive and accepting and allowing them to feel whatever they do feel, you're creating the emotional safety that you both need to start on that path toward healing.
28:53
So remember though, this is really important, that their reaction just isn't about the secret that you've been hiding.
Whether it I'm not happy in the marriage or whatever it is, what the reaction in large part of is about is the deception.
29:13
Speaker 2
This is stringing them along so.
29:15
Speaker 1
Difficult, especially if there's been any kind of gaslighting where they've felt crazy, where they keep seeking and seeking.
I remember one woman who went to a marriage therapist with her husband for 10 years.
29:31
She kept saying I know something's wrong and the marriage therapist actually turned against her and sided with the husband, making her feel like she was crazy.
But all along he'd been hiding so much.
He had so many secrets from her and she really, really, really struggled.
29:52
This is very important to validate what her experience is, rather again than gaslighting.
So man.
30:01
Speaker 2
If you have hard time, well, women too.
30:04
Speaker 1
Yeah.
30:05
Speaker 2
Hard time with honesty you're going to struggle you're just going to struggle it will not ever work out if you keep lying let's just.
30:14
Speaker 1
A repair only begins when the secret keeper stops protecting themselves and start being more interested in rebuilding their relationship.
So, Scott, why don't you tell about the last step?
30:29
Rebuilding Intimacy: Transforming Your Marriage Beyond Secrets
Three, the third step, we go from damage control to transformation.
If you recognize your relationship in any of this, whether you're the one keeping the secrets or the one living in the shadow, know that there's hope you can fix the leak.
30:47
It takes that courage.
We talked about real commitment to being honest.
To being honest.
It's not about blame.
It's about rebuilding.
Rebuilding trust isn't just boom one and done.
31:02
Yeah, it's a long term commitment to consistent, honest behavior.
It means being an open book moving forward.
This doesn't mean you don't have your own privacy.
Remember we talked about the difference between privacy and secrecy.
31:19
Secrecy is that intentional act of keeping something from your spouse that would affect your relationship.
You can still have your own private moments, but full transparency with each other, your finances, you share locations with each other.
31:35
These are just some examples.
The specifics will depend on that secret that was kept.
31:42
Speaker 1
And agreeing together on some boundaries that will help both of you be safe.
31:48
Speaker 2
This demonstrates over time that you are dependable.
You're reliable and this era of secrecy is truly over and you have to prove that leak is fixed.
You're maintaining that foundation from now on.
32:04
Speaker 1
So in my research, Scott, there were massive, like you said, secrets and betrayals.
It's very interesting to point out that the women in my research 1/3 divorced.
32:20
They couldn't ever repair what had happened. 1/3 date in the marriage, but it was a very unhappy marriage and typically they economically could not survive independently.
And so they date in the marriage for his roommates.
32:38
And then one third totally transformed their marriages.
They were able to bury the past and recreate something truly beautiful.
And that third of the participants in my study were so inspiring to me just to see not only could they be resilient, but they could bounce forward and become a whole new individual and a whole new couple.
33:11
And one moment told me, my husband keeps trying to go back and unbury the old message, the old marriage.
And I tell him no, that marriage is dead.
This is a new one and so those who are able to transform their marriages through some of these steps, through working together, and it takes a long time sometimes depending on what the secrets are that have been kept.
33:36
But to have the vulnerability between each other to look at, this is where some things went wrong.
This is where we need to make some changes and we can work together.
To do that takes certainly a lot of commitment.
33:50
Speaker 2
So my question to the audience is, which third do you want to be in?
I know which third I want to be in.
33:58
Speaker 1
That's another thing they can comment below.
34:01
Speaker 2
So because we all have secrets, right?
34:02
Speaker 1
But let's let's have 13, yeah?
34:04
Speaker 2
Let's be in that thirds that truly becomes resilient and grows.
34:10
Speaker 1
I think it's important to note that this step is not about perfection.
A step from that's.
34:17
Speaker 2
True.
34:18
Speaker 1
Becoming transformed, really, that healing phase, being willing to try and heal.
It isn't about perfection, but it is about, I guess I could say, predictability, meaning that I keep showing up, I keep showing up, I keep showing up, I keep being honest.
34:34
And we're human and we make mistakes, right?
But the more we can keep showing up with honesty, I think the more trust can build.
34:46
Speaker 2
I think it's important to add in here, Heidi, that there's some levels of deception that runs so deep.
Yeah.
That's the only option is to leave the relationship.
Yeah.
And sometimes they might need to go to prison.
35:03
That is true.
And so we're not here to say that every marriage must stick together, right.
But what we are saying is there's a whole lot of marriages are splitting up that don't need to be.
35:15
Speaker 1
That's right.
35:17
Speaker 2
So we want to make that clear.
Some absolutely need to, but there's a lot that don't.
35:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, I would agree with that.
The relationship really has to shift.
Shift to heal from secrecy to a shared reality, right?
So many of the women in my study said it was the deception more than the actual secret.
35:42
So for you this might look like being more financially transparent with each other by having more open communication when you are feeling really stuck as an individual or miserable in the marriage.
35:58
How are things going to change if you don't talk about it?
It might like having big conversations about boundaries and regular emotional check insurance.
It might look like seeking out a therapist or a relationship coach that can help guide you in some of these conversations.
36:21
It could be having agreements about phones or who you talk with.
And I'm not saying one spouse should try to control the other spouse.
That's not what I'm saying at all.
But if you're talking with old boyfriends on Facebook, maybe it's a joint conversation with your spouse looped in.
36:41
Or maybe you decide together what is acceptable and what's not acceptable.
How you define fidelity.
It might be having agreements about schedules.
If one spouse feels so lost and disconnected because their spouse is constantly working Might include conversations about emotional safety.
37:07
But specific behaviors can change.
When we go back to the house analogy, there are no more hidden rooms, no more deep dark secret basements, no more silent leaks that have been going on for years.
37:24
This is not a return to the old relationship.
This is a creation of a whole new beautiful.
37:31
Speaker 2
Stronghold.
Sounds to me like maybe we tear the house down sometimes if we build a new one.
37:37
Speaker 1
Sometimes.
Sometimes it just takes a good overhaul.
It changed the way that couples relate to each other from hiding to being known.
37:46
Speaker 2
That feels really good.
37:48
Speaker 1
Yeah, from fearing all the time to feeling safe.
37:53
Speaker 2
That feels good too, yeah.
37:54
Speaker 1
From being distant from each other to feeling closely connected and from feeling isolated to feeling like a team, a partnership.
So this is where the house stops crumbling and we bring in the teams to start doing the reconstruction so it can become a home again.
38:14
Applying the Steps: Our Personal Journey and Call to Action
This kind of reminds me of a recent conversation that we had.
OK, that's became quite vulnerable and you know, I think using the steps that we talked about recently because we're people too, folks, we have our problems that are challenges just like the rest of us.
38:39
But it's so cool to see these steps in action and in real time and how we were able to repair something that was like really troublesome just overnight.
We sat, we talked, we listened to each other.
38:56
Truly.
38:57
Speaker 1
Listened with empathy, with compassion, with a desire to understand.
39:04
Speaker 2
Remembering to keep our voices low.
39:06
Speaker 1
FMDJ Voice.
39:08
Speaker 2
And to go back and forth, it was beautiful and it was wonderful.
39:14
Speaker 1
I think when we were able to do that, one thing that it allowed us to do is the that we were kind of in this cycle.
39:23
Speaker 2
Because we didn't see it when we were in it.
39:25
Speaker 1
Right.
We couldn't see it, but it was almost like doing an autopsy in a way.
You'll have to check out our autopsy episode.
But just peeling back the layers and thinking this isn't just one person in this issue, right?
39:41
I'm doing something that's triggering you and you're doing something that's triggering me.
And so we have this kind of low level underlying discontent about, you know, a couple of different things.
And combine that with some external factors that have been really hard, it gave us the ability to see more clearly our own part and how this whole thing was cycling together.
40:11
And I think the interesting part is I said, OK, so I think what you really need is this.
And I think what I really need is this, but we're doing the opposite to each other.
How about if we reverse engineer it and we both start at the same time being what each other needs, and see if that can reverse the the trouble that we were causing each other that we hadn't really even realized a whole lot until it kind of came to a head.
40:46
Speaker 2
So we'd like to ask you this week, sit down with your spouse and talk about something really vulnerable, a secret, using the steps that you've learned today in this video, in this podcast, and then reach out to us and let us know how it went.
41:06
Just e-mail us Hello at marriageiq.com.
41:09
Speaker 1
Or if you're watching us on YouTube, we'd love to hear your comments in the comments section.
It's really easy to do, especially if you're on your phone or if you're on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify.
Easy to leave some comments there.
41:24
Speaker 2
For us, please do, yeah.
41:26
Speaker 1
If you like this video, we have other videos that we think you'll love too that are very connected to this topic.
So click the link below or in our show notes or our description depending on what you're watching or listening on, and you can further explore this topic with us.
41:45
Speaker 2
We love you folks.
We're glad you joined us today and we look forward to seeing you on another exciting episode of.
41:52
Speaker 1
Thank you.
