SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Secrecy and betrayal are the same thing. Secrets rob agency, and the loss of agency is betrayal. When someone keeps a secret from you, they are deciding what information you are allowed to have. They are deciding what choices you are allowed to make. They are building a false world for you to live in.

You cannot make informed decisions about a reality you are unaware of. Betrayal can hurt so much beyond whatever is actually being kept secret. It is not only, "You did something that hurt me." It is also, "You knew this might matter to me, and instead of letting me decide what I wanted to do with that information, you made that decision for me." It is a violation.

The person keeping the secret gets to live with the full truth. The other person is forced to live inside a version of reality that has been edited for them. That is a loss of agency.

People sometimes justify secrets by saying they wanted "something that was just for them." But if keeping that thing requires hiding information that would materially affect someone else’s choices, then it is not simply personal anymore.

Discovering a secret can be extremely destabilizing. You are not just learning what happened. You are realizing that someone you trusted has curated part of your existence. They had agency. You were denied it. That denial is the betrayal.

Edited to add: Privacy is healthy. Everyone is entitled to boundaries, personal space, and parts of themselves that are simply their own. Privacy protects autonomy. Secrecy is different because it withholds information that affects someone else’s ability to make informed choices.

[This message edited by LittleMonk at 2:21 PM, Monday, November 2nd]

You might find this interesting:

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/topics/666843/keeping-secrets/

I love your posts. I think they are insightful and provide valuable information for navigating infidelity.

One thing I wondered this morning, as this has recently been a theme for me:

I have done a lot of intellectualizing when it comes to issues of the heart. I have sometimes actually self-abandoned trying to follow the intellectual path too soon.

I am just wondering how you have found a balance between the two things. Integration is much more challenging at times.

I am highly integrated. So much so that I find I cannot really compartmentalize things. I cannot just put something painful or difficult in a box and leave it there.

I have to take things to their conclusions completely. I have to look at the different permutations, the uncomfortable possibilities, the implications, and what each of them means. I have to understand how something fits with everything else I believe, feel, and know before I can be at peace with it.

For me, peace does not come from setting something aside. It comes from integrating it completely enough that there are no parts of it I am still trying to make peace with.