The Secret Life of Secrets by Michael Slepian

CHAPTER 1 What Is a Secret?

Psychologists have long believed that secrets take a toll on our mental and physical health, but the question of why has proved difficult to answer. For years, most researchers assumed that the act of hiding our secrets was what made secrets harmful to our health. The classic study design placed research participants in conversation with another person from whom they were asked to conceal a secret. Often, the other person in the study was instructed to ask questions about the very secret the participant was instructed to hide. But does this situation capture the full scope of how people experience their secrets?

DEFINING SECRECY

Being asked a question about your secret might be the most awkward experience you can imagine, but how common of an experience is this, really? I’ve never outright asked any of my friends, even my best friends, if they ever cheated on their partner, had an abortion, were abused during their childhood, and so on. Dodging questions about our secrets doesn’t happen in real life as often as it does in our worst fears, or in psychology experiments for that matter. In fact, that kind of situation captures only a small slice of the experience of secrecy.

The problem with defining secrecy by the actions we take to hide secrets is that we don’t have to hide them very often, and hiding them is not necessarily difficult

This is why we must define secrecy not as something we do, but as an intention: I intend for people to not learn this thing.

When we recognize that dodging questions and biting our tongues in conversation is only a single chapter in the story of secrecy, a much broader understanding of secrets—and the roles they play in our lives—can come into focus

SCALING HILLS

Neuroimaging studies find that imagining a sensation activates the same neural regions associated with experiencing the sensation

People talk about secrets in a curious way, often in terms of carrying them around and being weighed down by them. Interested in this physical weight metaphor for being burdened

When people feel fatigued, they judge the world around them as more challenging and forbidding, judging hills as steeper and distances as farther. This is not a bug but a feature of the human perceptual system. On a hike, you wouldn’t want to be cutting it close, having just barely enough energy to get to the top. Overestimating the steepness of a hill—and therefore the work required to scale it—prevents us from embarking on overly ambitious climbs.

THE SECRETS WE KEEP

Take a moment to consider the following experiences. For each one, ask yourself: Have I had an experience like that? And if so, was it ever a secret? Even if you have discussed the experience with someone, if you still intend to keep it from someone else, then it would still count as a secret.

Hurt another person (emotionally or physically). Illegal drug use, or abuse of a legal drug (e.g., alcohol, painkillers). Habit or addiction (but not involving drugs). Theft (any kind of taking without asking). Something illegal (other than drugs or theft). Physical self-harm. Abortion. A traumatic experience (other than the above). A lie. A violation of someone’s trust (other than by a lie). Romantic desire (while single). Romantic discontent (being unhappy in a relationship). Extra-relational thoughts (thoughts about having relations with another person while in a relationship). Emotional infidelity (having an inappropriate emotional connection with someone, engaging in something intimate other than sex). Sexual infidelity. A relationship with someone who is cheating on someone else to be with you. Social discontent (unhappy with a friend, or unhappy with current social life). Physical discontent (dislike of appearance or something physical about yourself). Mental health struggles. Inappropriate behavior at work or school (or lying to get hired or accepted). Poor performance at work or school. Profession/work discontent (unhappy with your situation at work or school). A planned marriage proposal. A planned surprise for someone (other than a marriage proposal). A hidden hobby or possession. A hidden current (or past) relationship. A family secret. Pregnancy. Sexual orientation or gender identity. Sexual behavior (other than sexual orientation). Not having sex. A hidden preference (or non-preference) for something. A hidden belief (e.g., political, religious, views about social groups, prejudices). Finances (e.g., spending, amount of money you have). A hidden current (or past) employment or school activity. An ambition, plan, or goal for yourself. Unusual or counternormative behavior (unrelated to the above). A specific story you keep secret (unrelated to the above).

These are the most common types of secrets that people keep—38 in total. I should mention that these categories come from a survey I conducted of 2,000 people living in the United States that simply asked: What is a secret that you are currently keeping?

There were a few distinctions that our participants cared about, which we respected when making the list. For example, the difference between so-called emotional infidelity and sexual infidelity was clearly important to the people with the secret, and so the list makes this distinction

BY THE NUMBERS

Among more than 50,000 research participants I’ve surveyed, the most common secrets include a lie we’ve told (69%), romantic desire (61%), sex (58%), and finances (58%).

The least commonly kept secrets include sexual orientation (12%), pregnancy (12%), a marriage proposal (10%), and abortion (9%). Relative to all the other secrets on the list, fewer people in my sample currently have these secrets.

When I say that people on average have thirteen secrets from the list at any given time, you should take that to be an underestimate, as what this count really reflects is the number of categories of secrets people have. You could have two or more secrets that fall into the same category, especially for those that are broad, such as finances, sexual behavior, violating someone’s trust, or doing something illegal

IS IT A SECRET?

When you go through the 38 categories, there may be a few for which you think, Well, I have had this experience, and I don’t really tell people about it, but is it a secret?

What sets a secret apart from other things we don’t talk about is an intention—specifically, the intention to keep the information unknown. To help identify which experiences count as a secret, we need to distinguish secrecy from privacy.

You can draw a line between secrecy and privacy by considering secrecy as an intention to hold specific information back, and privacy as a reflection of how much you broadcast personal information, in general. People who are more private require closeness before they let you in. Yet those who are less private may be happy to disclose personal information, and not just to friends and family, but to coworkers, acquaintances, and even people they’ve just met

I find in my research that there is another major reason you may choose to avoid a conversation topic: you are trying to avoid a conflict. A conversation at the Thanksgiving table might turn toward politics, where your views are well known and not secret

You can bite your tongue in conversation for any number of reasons, of which secrecy is only one. Whatever actions you take around keeping your secret, and whatever the context is that surrounds this decision, what is common across all secrets is one thing: you intend for other people to not learn the information. This is what makes something a secret.

THE SECRETS YOU KEEP

When I share my list of the 38 common secrets, people are often interested in how their number of current secrets compares to the average number we see in our research, 13. Often, the question they have in mind is: Am I more secretive than the average person? To answer this question, it’s important to understand that the number of secrets you have from the list captures not only how many secrets you have, but also how often you get yourself into the kinds of situations that people tend to keep secret. So, what makes us more or less likely to land in such situations? And when we do, what makes us more or less likely to keep them secret?

When we start talking about tendencies for secrecy, we bump right up into personality psychology. A common way of measuring personality is to ask about five broad traits: Openness (open to new experiences and to things being complicated), Conscientiousness (organized, disciplined), Extraversion (enthusiastic, social), Agreeableness (polite, eager to please), and Neuroticism (the less polite word for high negative emotion; many prefer to call this low emotional stability instead). Just remember the acronym OCEAN if you ever need this information in an emergency.

My research finds that someone who is more secretive (whether having had many experiences from the list or just a few) tends to be less extraverted and less emotionally stable, but more conscientious. The profile of someone more likely to get involved in the kinds of situations that people keep secret, however, is that of someone who is open, extraverted, and emotionally stable, but less agreeable and less conscientious.

This means that while extraversion gets you into more situations that people might keep secret, it is also associated with keeping fewer secrets. Neuroticism and conscientiousness are associated with getting less involved in these situations, but keeping more of them secret.

In general, we see lower well-being among people who are more secretive. But simply having more experiences that people tend to keep secret is not associated with lower well-being

This is good news. Having many experiences on the list of commonly kept secrets does not mean that you have to suffer. It is keeping these experiences secret that brings potential harm to your well-being, and possibly to your relationships

You might have noticed that the categories of secrets on our list are those kept by adults. These describe the bulk of our secrets, because people have far more years of adulthood than childhood during which to keep secrets. But adulthood is not where the story of secrecy begins

CHAPTER 2 The Birth of Secrets

By the time we enter our adult years, we regularly take other people’s perspectives to infer their inner thoughts and feelings. Children can do this too, just not as well, but of course they get better. As they pay more attention to their own mental states, children develop a sharper sense for how to think about others’ mental states and knowledge, including when that knowledge differs from their own. This, as we’ll see, allows them to keep secrets

HOW UNIVERSAL IS SECRECY?

Like humans, chimpanzees are a social species; their young play, they grin and laugh, they create bonds, they hug and kiss each other

But do they also keep secrets from each other? If chimpanzees do keep secrets (or at least, if they try to), this will offer us a glimpse into how other social species hold back from one another, and in turn also reveal which of our experiences with secrecy are uniquely human

We have to look at real behavior, rather than simply where their eyes are pointed, to see if children can truly understand when something is secret.

Both baby humans and chimps attend to and keep track of another’s eye gaze and follow others’ basic intentions and goals. And like chimps, toddlers recognize when there are no witnesses

Where children first surpass chimps is in their ability to grasp that just like objects, information can be concealed. This understanding takes some time to develop, however. It emerges gradually and in degrees, over years. And with this progress comes a progression in their use of secrecy.

THE PRE-SCHOOL YEARS

If you’re a parent—and even if you’re not—you know that pre-school-aged children need to be watched. Once they can walk around, they become able to step away from their guardians’ sight. This offers ample opportunity for children to wreak havoc, and so the earliest of kids’ secrets often involve them trying to keep their little indiscretions hidden

Hidden Mischief and Accidents

Children’s first efforts to keep secrets are often comical. For instance, a parent told me that his two-year-old loved to blow out candles, even though she knew it was forbidden

In their pre-school years, children will often try to conceal their behavior simply by denying it

Unfortunately for parents, children’s initial forays into secrecy also typically occur before they become fully toilet-trained. And so, around ages three to five, a very common secret that children try to keep is wetting their pants or their bed

Unlike chimpanzees, however, children can talk. By age three, children are capable of more complex verbal expression. This means that not only can they issue denials when confronted with evidence of their mischief, but they can also share their secrets with others

MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

By around age six, children understand that their past experiences accumulate into knowledge and personal memories, which expands their understanding of their self, and their capacity for understanding when something is secret. At the same time, children have a better understanding of other minds, and so they get better at keeping secrets

At this age, children get better at hiding the evidence, although they are not criminal masterminds just yet. One six-year-old hid dinner food that she didn’t like in the floor air vent, which was effective until the family dog began licking the vent

With an increased ability for perspective-taking, children think more about their own self, particularly in relation to others. This has the side effect of increasing self-consciousness, and so children start to become embarrassed by some of their proclivities

Sharing Inner Worlds

From the new explosion of peer interactions that children encounter in middle childhood, kids begin to develop friendships: real friendships. Whereas in the pre-school years, friends were simply playmates who happened to be nearby, in older years children can take others’ perspectives, and so they notice with which kids they better gel. Friendships become forged in similarity and liking. Children begin to connect more deeply with each other by sharing personal stories.

TEENAGE YEARS

Who Are You??By the time children enter adolescence, they have larger social networks, which means more interactions with more people. Teens’ growing ability to express themselves and exchange observations, ideas, and stories deepens their relationships with the people around them. This allows them to form meaningful relationships not just with their peers, but also with non-parent adults, such as teachers and friends’ parents, when given the opportunity. But what are these teens talking about to all these people? For the most part, themselves

Teens can avoid parental control by keeping secrets from their parents about the very behaviors they would seek to control: drinking, dating, ditching school, and so on. And whereas younger children may be willing to discuss secret crushes and kisses with their parents, talk of romance drops sharply in adolescence

Teenagers draw a line between issues that are under parental control and those that are personal and so deemed as outside of it—though of course parents may seek to weigh in. Issues that teens see as personal tend to revolve around taste and preference, such as clothing, hairstyle, lifestyle choices like diet and bedtime, friendships and relationships, and the one topic that both parents and teens often would rather not discuss with each other: sex

Discrepancies over what authority parents have in these domains can lead to conflicts, which can be avoided, as many teens come to learn, by holding information back

It’s Complicated

While we have been charting how secrecy develops from its earliest incarnations up through adolescence, we have yet to discuss any potential harms that secrecy might bring

Keeping certain secrets from parents—like feeling down, struggling with schoolwork or substance use, or a lingering discomfort, worry, or shame in any domain—can put teens at risk for a host of harms ranging from depression to loneliness to delinquency

But when teens believe that their parents will express understanding, compassion, and acceptance, and will respond to revelations in a reasonable manner, they are more likely to confide, ask for help, and disclose more freely. As hard as it can be, in the moment, for parents to respond in this way (best of luck to you), doing so is the most effective way to keep the lines of communication open

When teens have healthy relationships with their parents, they are more likely to volunteer stories of their lives: how classes are going, what’s happening with their friends, and so on

Relative to parents, who might not understand or who might punish for misdeeds, disclosure to friends is safe. In most cases, friends will be best able to understand the teenager’s situation; they may even be going through something similar themselves. And so it is often friends’ advice and opinions that teenagers most want, but also their social approval.

Secrecy is a common reaction to feeling uncertain or worried about rejection, but these are exactly the moments when we could most use the support of a trusted other. When it comes to teenage friendships, the holy grail is social validation; teens crave approval from their peers

In the fast-moving social world of teenage life, with ever-changing connections and relationships, fears of rejection and disapproval can eclipse the ability to place trust in others. This is when secrecy is first clearly associated with lower health and well-being

This is when secrecy, as adults know it, is born

CHAPTER 3 Secrets on the Mind

Whatever actions you take to keep a secret hidden, to have a secret is to have an intention: keep some piece of information from being known by one or more others. Our minds prioritize anything related to our intentions; this keeps us on the lookout for opportunities to act on those intentions. But this means that our minds will return to thoughts of the secret, even when there is no other person in the room. Like shadows, our secrets can follow us wherever we go. And often, part of the problem is that we are traveling with them alone

LESSONS FROM COPING WITH TRAUMA

These studies suggest that a habit of not coming to others with emotional struggles is a habit that sits with other harmful ones, like avoiding problems rather than dealing with them. And aside from these unhealthy tendencies, not all secrets are harmful. Some can even be exciting, like secrets about sex and romance. By extension, keeping a secret from others is not inherently harmful. So, what separates the secrets that hurt our well-being from those that don’t?

SECRETS IN THE PARK AND ON THE MIND

The more participants’ minds returned to their secret, the more they reported that the secret hurt their well-being. And this was even true for the secrets they did not need to hide in conversation.

These studies, along with the hill slant studies I told you about in the first chapter, converge on the idea that part of the burden of secrets comes from having those secrets occupy our thoughts. But if thinking about secrets is so harmful, why do our minds so frequently return to them?

THE WANDERING MIND

The human mind has a tendency to wander away from its immediate surroundings. We stare at a work task or chore that must get done, and yet our mind is off somewhere else entirely. Even during a conversation with just one other person, your mind may wander away, which places you in the embarrassing situation of having to pretend that you’ve been listening, or having to ask for a replay of the last ten seconds. This has nothing to do with how much we like our work or find our friends interesting. Studies estimate that we spend around 40% of our waking hours mind-wandering.

The reason our minds so often leave the here and now is because we can only lavish attention on something for so long. When you don’t busy it with the thing right in front of your eyes, your mind can roam free—such as when looking out the window on your commute, or when taking a stroll on a nice day

Anything related to your current concerns will easily catch your attention, which is exactly how you want your mind to work. You wouldn’t want it to be so focused on something that you wouldn’t hear a predator in the bushes, someone calling out your name at a party, or your doorbell. If your mind was never distracted by sounds like these, you might be eaten, fail to realize that your friends are calling you over to their conversation, or never receive your pizza delivery. Your own thoughts usefully distract you in the same way.

Intentions, current goals, and ongoing concerns are hubs to which the mind wanders for good reason. If you mean to buy a carton of milk, it is actually very helpful when your mind goes milk, milk, milk as you enter the grocery store. Likewise, if you have an important deadline to meet, you want to keep that thing top of mind

Being overly sensitive to something of concern can occasionally lead us to become startled by a shadow behind us, even when it is simply our own. And so, sometimes we find ourselves thinking about our secrets even when we’re alone, without a person around to keep the secret from.

STUCK ON A THOUGHT

When we are in a bad mood, our mind doesn’t always go to good and helpful places. A natural response to feeling blue is to search for the reason why. What could be bringing you down? Work? Your social life? Your love life? Something else? In your very quest to find the source of your melancholy, you will be hitting play on a montage of sorrow. Negative moods can cause cascading negative thoughts.

Thinking about something over and over can all too easily slide into rumination, which psychologists define not as merely repetitive thought, but persistently negative repetitive thought. If we get stuck on a thought, we feel a loss of control, as though we are at the mercy of our own thoughts, and this is why rumination is often paired with feelings of helplessness. To make matters worse, thanks to the fast-moving nature of the mind, we can quickly cycle through many negative thoughts in a very short period of time.

Once your mind wanders toward a secret, it can be difficult to stop thinking of it. The secret can bring to mind negative thoughts, which further push the secret into the spotlight. But what happens when we try to push away thoughts of the secret?

I have good news for you. The act of trying to not think about something doesn’t always fail. We are much better at suppressing familiar thoughts than thoughts we’ve never tried to suppress before.

The question of whether you can or cannot push away thoughts misses an important point. If you are not talking about a secret with other people, thinking about it is the only way to work through it

While thinking about a secret can be productive, my studies show that people too often simply rehash the details of the secret, or reiterate their regrets. Thinking about a secret is not intrinsically harmful. A persistent focus on the past, however, can be. The more my participants focused on the past when thinking about their secrets, the more mind-wandering to those secrets resembled harmful rumination. But with some degree of forward looking, mind-wandering to the secret was not harmful.

Even people with relatively happy childhoods and relatively levelheaded parents can slide into unhelpful negative thinking. And they can keep on sliding, and sliding. Rumination contributes to the onset of disorders like depression and anxiety because it acts as a magnifying glass for currently felt negative emotions

FROM INTENT TO BURDEN

The moment you intend to keep something hidden away from someone, or some others, is the moment that something becomes a secret. You might have to hide it in conversation tomorrow, next week, or never, but none of this changes your intent to keep the information unknown to others.

We’ve heard from lawyers keeping a man’s innocence secret, from grievers and hospice workers grappling with loss and death, teenagers dealing with insecurities, a government agent discovering secret mass global surveillance, and both a New Jersey mobster and an anthropomorphic talking horse dealing with depression. What this diverse cast of characters have in common is that when they held back from the people around them, they had no difficulty biting their tongues and keeping their stories straight. This was not the source of their pain. Rumination and helplessness, feeling alone and unsupported, worry and uncertainty: these are the common threads in our experiences of secrecy.

CHAPTER 4 The Three Dimensions of Secrets

If we think of our core selves as moral, and that morality is central to who we are, then what happens when we’ve done something wrong? I asked Strohminger this very question after learning about her work, and we exchanged a few emails. Based on her findings, we expected that when people did something morally wrong, they would likely see the behavior more as a slip-up than as a reflection of who they truly are; and so they would be more likely to keep that behavior secret, for fear of people drawing the wrong conclusions.

If you feel that you have changed over time, you are likely to see the positive changes as reflective of the real you, and the negative changes as dips in the road: mistakes from which you’ve recovered. A view of your self as having changed over time, combined with a generally positive self-view, enables the narrative that your former self no longer reflects the latest and greatest version of who you are today

We care about being seen as moral. We care so much about morality that how morally wrong we believe a behavior to be is one of the three primary dimensions of secrets—with the other two being whether the secret involves our relationships, and whether the secret relates to our personal or professional goals

By dimension, I mean a criterion (or criteria) by which you would naturally organize a set of items

The primary dimensions by which we perceive our secrets hold the key to understanding how our secrets hurt us, and how we should, in turn, cope with those challenges. But before delving into these dimensions in more detail, let’s look at how we found these dimensions by which people mentally arrange their secrets. And to do that, we will revisit the New York City subway.

MAPPING THE DIMENSIONS OF SECRETS

In the image that follows, you can see that the farther a secret is to the right, the more it has to do with our relationships and social connections. And the closer a secret is to the top of the map, the more the secret relates to our professions and goals. Last, the larger the circle, the more the secret is seen as immoral (a proper 3D map would be cube-shaped rather than square, but to provide you a sharper image, I’ve flattened the map to a square here. You can recover the cube shape by imagining that the immoral dimension is represented by depth, such that all the circles are actually the same size, but the secrets that are seen as not immoral are far away, and that’s why they appear smaller)

Certain areas of this map are more associated with harm to your well-being than others, and by knowing where your secrets sit within this map, you’ll be better equipped to cope with them. So, let’s explore this map and the ways in which you can use it to better understand your secrets

DRAWING THE MAP AND EXPLORING THE THREE DIMENSIONS

Drawing a map is typically straightforward: look at the real world, and spatially locate the landmarks to reflect their relative positions. But how can we obtain the cartographer’s vantage point for secrets? To trace out a map of secrets, we need to know where different secrets should be placed relative to one another. For example, should sexual infidelity appear closer to extra-relational thoughts, or to lying to one’s spouse about finances? This is where Alex Koch comes into the story. Alex—a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago—is an expert in a statistical method called multidimensional scaling. That sounds fancy and complicated, but he will be the first to tell you that at its heart, it’s quite simple. Because he is German, he will say this in a German accent: all the method does is visualize differences as distances.

If most people agree that one kind of secret—say, a secret hobby—is very different from another kind of secret—a secret infidelity—then on the map we should place these secrets far apart. But if a secret—say, a secret preference—is seen as relatively similar to another secret—a secret belief—then those secrets should be placed closer to each other

We next considered every possible way to arrange the secrets in space. This is the kind of task that you hand off to a computer. With the help of an algorithm, we imagined a series of different universes, shuffling the secrets into random spatial positions

In each imagined space, the distance between each secret and each other secret was measured by the shortest line connecting the two. By plotting the secrets in a three-dimensional space, we could produce a map that matched the distance table generated by our participants

The final missing piece was a compass; a map is a lot easier to use if we agree on how to align it with the space it is mapping

To figure out where we should place our straight lines, we drew roads at every possible angle cutting through the 3D space. We then asked our participants to provide a label that explained the order of the secrets as you would pass them along each road

Before participants provided any labels, the 3D map looked like a jumble of secrets floating in a sphere; we did not know from which angle we should view it. We knew that many paths cutting through the space. This left us with the three primary dimensions.

First, morality: How morally wrong is the secret? The farther you drive in this direction, the more immoral the secrets get. Second, relationships: How much does the secret involve your interactions with other people? The farther you drive in this direction, the more the secrets are about your relationships and social connections. Third, your personal and professional goals: How much does the secret relate to your goals and aspirations? The farther you drive in this direction, the more the secrets are about getting ahead in life

By examining each possible path through the space of secrets, we exposed our participants to each potential dimension that made up the space of secrets, and participants told us which orientations made the most sense. Like rotating a map in your hands a few times until it looks right, we asked hundreds of participants to look at the map from every angle. In so doing, not only did our research participants create the map of secrets, but they also helped us find its compass

Secrets perceived as high on the immoral dimension included illegal acts, harming others, drug use, addictions, lying to others, cheating at work, and violating someone’s trust

Secrets high on the relational dimension often deal with romantic relationships. These include romantic desire, romantic discontent, romantic thoughts about others while in a relationship, and infidelity, whereas secrets low on this dimension are more centered on the individual, including issues of mental health, a personal story, a hobby, and personal beliefs.

The third dimension is about our goals, strivings, and aspirations, which often (but not always) are related to our professions. The secrets high on this dimension include cheating at work, secrets about money and finances, and secrets about sources of income and employment. In most cases, for secrets like these, we can point to an obvious practical reason for having such secrets

When it comes to our secrets, we think about them in three ways: whether they are wrong, whether they involve someone else, and whether they are goal-oriented. A secret can contain any mix of these. Cheating a client or stealing from a business partner, for example, would be immoral, relational, and related to your goals/profession

Any secret can be placed anywhere on the map. To understand what these dimensions mean for our well-being, we need to look more closely at each.

Morality

Dilemmas like these tend to capture the imagination because it is not exactly clear which is the more moral action. Is it wrong to intervene at the cost of someone’s life, or is it wrong to let five people die, when the casualties can be limited to just one?

Everyday moral actions included giving a lost tourist help with directions, giving a homeless person food, and fessing up to a waiter about being undercharged. Everyday immoral actions included smoking a cigarette with a child in the car, having a few drinks while on the job, and stealing a coworker’s artisanal balsamic vinegar. The researchers also found that we mostly notice our own good deeds and yet pay more attention to others’ misdeeds.

When we do notice ourselves committing an immoral act, one of the most debilitating consequences we can experience is shame: feeling small, worthless, and helpless. We generally believe that immoral acts should be punished, even when the misdeeds are our own

When we keep a wrongdoing secret, we escape our justly deserved punishment, and therefore miss out on an opportunity to restore our sense of moral worth. Outside of something like a Catholic confessional, how could you hold yourself accountable for a secret wrongdoing? I posed this question to Brock, and shortly later we designed a study to find out.

Shame is a particularly painful punishment that people inflict on themselves, prompting feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, and low self-worth. There is unfortunately no magic pill that turns someone from a bad person to a good person, and so, when people see themselves as bad or immoral, it may seem as if there is no way to change that. This is why people who feel ashamed can feel powerless and helpless.

Relationships

One million affairs. This is the number of affairs per month that the dating website Ashley Madison, designed specifically for married individuals, proudly claims to help facilitate. The site’s slogan: Life is short. Have an affair.

Are that many people really having affairs? The current best estimate is that between 20% and 25% of people commit infidelity at some point in their lives, and about 3% of married individuals have engaged in infidelity in a given year

While sexual infidelity is seen by many as immoral, if not unforgivable, it is also an example of a highly relational secret—both because it involves a romantic or sexual relationship with someone (however fleeting it may be), and also because it is a betrayal of a relationship with someone else.

Few variables predict sexual infidelity. Sexual interest and permissive views on sex, low marital satisfaction, having previously had an affair, and having weak ties to a spouse’s friends are all predictors of engaging in infidelity. Infidelity also has a seasonal cycle. During the summertime, infidelity peaks. This could be due to increased travel during these months, creating increased opportunity. People also tend to wear less clothes during the summer, perhaps increasing temptation

Infidelity can mean different things to different people (and implies a closed relationship, as opposed to an open one), but one thing is consistent across cultures and contexts. And so, of course, infidelity is often synonymous with secrecy

Secrets low on the relational dimension are those that center on the self, such as issues of mental health, self-harm, discontent with your physical appearance, a personal habit, a hobby, and a personal belief. These secrets are more individually oriented, and they often make people feel more disconnected from others, more isolated, and alone

A secret can simultaneously offer both high and low social connection. Having a secret affair may foster feelings of increased intimacy and romance with the extra-relational partner, while simultaneously increasing distance from the partner. Such is the power of relational secrets, providing different degrees of social connection and social disconnection

Profession/Goal-Orientation

Finally we come to the third dimension of profession/goal-orientation, which captures the degree to which a secret is about trying to get ahead in life. At the high end are the secrets related to work, school, and money: cheating at work or school, poor work or school performance, discontent with your profession, secret employment, and anything having to do with your finances

Financial secrets are often kept from family members, friends, and coworkers, but also spouses. A common secret in marriages is hiding sums of money, or secretly spending money in ways of which a spouse would not approve. Finances are a common source of conflict and strain within a marriage, and keeping financial secrets is one strategy to avoid arguments

It is clear why you might hide a purchase from a spouse, or not reveal the true cost of something: you want to avoid a conflict. Likewise, if you take some shortcut or break the rules at work, it is clear why you would keep that secret. You want to avoid the repercussions. Having a clear instrumental reason for secrecy seems common to the secrets that rank high on the profession/goal-orientation dimension

Secrets that are very low in profession/goal-orientation are the opposite: they don’t involve striving, aspiring, or working toward some specific goal. Certainly, people do not aspire to have traumatic experiences or mental health challenges, nor does anyone purposefully seek to be in the position of deciding how to handle an unwanted pregnancy. These secrets are more based in emotion and feeling, whereas secrets high on the profession/goal-orientation dimension tend to be based in logic and deliberation

A COPING COMPASS

Our studies find that the more you see your secret as immoral, the more shame you are likely to feel. The more it feels solitary and personal, the more it feels isolating. And the more it is based in emotion rather than logic, the less insight you feel you have into it. By mapping out people’s secrets along the three dimensions, we’ve uncovered the three primary ways in which a secret can hurt you: shame, isolation, and lack of insight. The good news is that these same three experiences point to three different paths forward: three ways in which a secret does not have to hurt you

The dimensions on our map can be experienced to any degree, and, across each, you can travel in either direction; there are no one-way streets. We can feel more ashamed of a secret or less ashamed. We can feel more alone with our secret or more connected. We can feel uncertain and that we lack insight into our secret or feel that we understand the secret and our reasons for having it

Knowing where our secrets sit along the three dimensions points us to three distinct avenues for coping. In one study, we gave participants the list of secrets I shared with you in the first chapter. Per each secret that our participants had from the list, we asked questions like How in control do you feel over this situation? and How capable do you feel in your ability to cope with this secret? Half of the time, before answering these questions, we asked our participants which of the following three options fit their situation best, and all they did was choose one of these three: 1) There is no harm in having this secret (meaning that no one is hurt by the information being contained), 2) This secret protects someone I know (or protects my relationship with that person), and 3) I have good insight into this secret (why I have it and/or how to handle it). To help you pick, consider each option on its own

Is there harm in having your secret? If you do not feel your secret is wrong or immoral, then you might endorse the statement that there is no harm in having the secret. This is a good thing. And even if you see your previous actions as morally wrong, you may recognize that you can act differently next time; you can learn from your mistakes.

Does your secret protect someone you know? If someone else is in on your secret, perhaps that secret brings you closer together. Or maybe you’re keeping the secret to protect someone else, or your relationship with them. In these cases, your secret might be doing some good.

Do you understand your reasons? Even if you acknowledge that you aren’t protecting anyone but yourself with your secret, and even if it is causing some degree of harm, simply understanding why you are keeping the secret will help you feel more in control of the situation and therefore better equipped to cope with it.

These questions form what I call a coping compass, because the answers can point you to three distinct paths forward for better coping with your secrets

Coping Strategy 1: Remember that your past mistakes are in your past, and that there’s no harm in keeping them there.

Many of our secrets can fit this mold. Even when you recognize your prior actions as morally wrong, if nobody is being hurt by the information being contained, then keeping the secret is not necessarily morally wrong. Rather than focus on the mistakes of past-you, which cannot be changed, you can focus on the lessons you’ve learned. You can still feel bad about your past behavior; guilt is a healthy response to judging your behavior as wrong. But rather than feel ashamed of your past-self, recognize the improvements you’ve made and the ways that you’ve grown. You may have done wrong in the past, but you’ve changed over time—for the better—and you can continue to do so.

Coping Strategy 2: Think of how keeping your secret benefits others

What impact would revealing your secret today have on the others around you? Could someone get hurt? Even if the journey of your secret ends at confession, think about the good your secret-keeping currently brings. You may be protecting not just the people involved, but also their relationships, including their relationships with you

Coping Strategy 3: Recognize that you have your reasons

When the decisions surrounding your secret were not easy, there is great comfort in the fact that you have carefully considered all your options, and have made your decision with autonomy, consideration, and care. Understanding the implications of a secret—and why you’re keeping it—can bring great clarity. We find that people with insight into their choices and actions feel more capable of coping with their secret.

Just like a magnetic compass, the coping compass will not automatically point you to your destination. But you can use it to orient yourself in the right direction. In the vast majority of situations, one of the three strategies can help. We see in our studies that only 1% of the time do people report very high shame, isolation, and lack of insight. And only 4% of the time do people report moderately high shame, isolation, and lack of insight. This means that 95% of the time, you have at least one lifeline. The question is: Which is it?

CHAPTER 5 Concealing Our Secrets

Why did she come forward in the first place? Why would she risk such significant personal cost just to get something off her chest? I can’t take no more of the pain, she said when explaining her motivation to come forward and reveal the long-hidden secret. But to what pain was she referring? And why would this confession fifty-two years later help ease it?

PROTECTING YOUR SECRETS

Sometimes keeping a secret is merely a matter of staying silent. But other times, silence is not enough; there may be evidence that you need to physically stash away

I find that 26% of secrets require some hiding of the evidence, but the extent to which people physically hide evidence of their secrets is not related to reports of the psychological harm those secrets bring. You might feel a little shady, but the hiding itself doesn’t seem to have long-term consequence. After all, hiding at least small objects—say, in the back of a drawer—is not so hard. If you feel the evidence is well hidden, if not destroyed, you can feel more secure that no one will be able to glance upon evidence of your secret.

If you could just put all your secrets in the back of your sock drawer and forget about them, keeping secrets would be so easy. But it is rare that keeping a secret requires only hiding the evidence (just 3% of the secrets in my study). Sometimes, we need to dance around the truth: dodging questions and avoiding entire topics of conversation if they hit too close to home.

Avoiding Conversations

One way to keep a secret is to avoid having any conversations related to it

Actively avoiding specific topics of conversation, however, doesn’t seem to be a good ingredient for a high-quality relationship

Does a relationship in trouble lead to conversation avoidance, or does it go the other way around? One experiment shows the latter is possible: conversation avoidance can be a cause of relationship problems, rather than merely a symptom. When participants were asked to imagine that a friend avoided discussing a topic with them, the participants felt hurt, especially when they imagined the topic had something to do with their relationship. A study of newlyweds also supports the idea that avoiding conversations causes problems

Avoiding difficult conversations can be perceived as a lack of trust in your partner. This doesn’t mean that you should discuss every inner thought or disclose every detail about your past. Couples are often quite happy to never discuss the intimate details of prior relationships and prior sexual experiences, for example. The past should stay in the past is the idea here, and this explains much of the avoidance around talk of prior sexual experiences. These issues are often deemed not relevant to discuss, and so they feel more like private matters than secrets

Secrecy emerges when one party not merely fails to mention something, but specifically intends to hold information back. Often, when we keep something from a partner, we believe we’re doing so for the good of the relationship—to avoid conflict or spare the other person’s feelings. But while keeping a secret from your partner may prevent whatever imagined reaction you expect from them, it has the potential to do more harm than good, especially if your partner senses that you are hiding something. (The nature of this harm is much more obvious when we are the ones who think our partners may be hiding something.)

Suspicions of secrecy, whether right or wrong, are not very good for a relationship

When the road is rocky, we may feel hesitant to open up to a romantic partner, fearing a negative response, or that an admission would only make matters worse. But there is one lever we can use to break these harmful cycles of concealment: trust. Trust your partner, and trust yourself. It may take some courage and vulnerability to initiate a conversation, but don’t let your fear close the door on the conversation before it begins

Dodging Questions

Maybe you are not ready to talk about something. That’s okay. The catch is that we are not the sole arbiters of which topics are introduced into conversation. Another person could always bring up a topic or even ask a question related to your secret. If the topic or question was raised at the wrong time or by the wrong person, what can you do?

If there are multiple people involved in your conversation, count yourself lucky. Two can be intimate, but three (or more) is a crowd

But what if a question is directed specifically toward you? The most straightforward way to avoid answering a question is to say that you would rather not speak to the topic

One especially effective way to deflect a tough question is asking a question of your own. The person’s answer can take the conversation in a new direction. A joke can also be very effective

Answering a question completely honestly but as if sarcastically can also work on occasion, if you can nail the delivery

If you can’t think of a jokey response on the fly, an abrupt shift of topic will also deflect attention and keep the conversation moving

But if for some reason they do, here’s one final strategy for your back pocket: thanking them. You may not be especially glad that someone has asked you a question that you wish to avoid, but assuming the interaction is a friendly one, you can be sure that the other person isn’t trying to take you down. If you communicate your recognition of the person’s well-meaning intentions, declining to answer will go more smoothly.

Now of course, if the person asking is your romantic partner, you may not be able to slink away so easily

HOLDING YOURSELF BACK

The hard part of keeping many secrets goes beyond just dodging questions or avoiding conversation topics. The truly hard part of keeping many secrets is making sure that you don’t guide the conversation to the unwanted place

Across diverse situations and circumstances, we found that when something about the situation made people feel that they did not belong, participants held back parts of their selves, which made them feel inauthentic. Across everyday social interactions, feeling inauthentic in turn, was associated with daily stress and lower self-reported health.

One especially frustrating aspect of holding back some part of your identity, to avoid appearing different from others (what psychologists call covering), is that there is no end in sight. Successfully concealing once doesn’t mean you will never have to do so again. Goffman saw this as an added burden for those who must constantly be alive to the social situation as a scanner of possibilities.

The study suggested that the negative effects of concealment came not from the work people put into hiding their sexual orientation, but rather the negative feelings that go along with not feeling supported enough to disclose it in the first place. And so, as long as you have other sources of support, if concealment protects you from others’ unsupportive responses, it may help more than it harms

CAN PEOPLE TELL?

If you choose to hold back some part of yourself from others, what’s the likelihood that any of those others can accurately tell when you are hiding something in conversation? While people can tell if you are in a bad mood or if you are looking for your keys, they can’t tune in to your thoughts.

You have thoughts all the time that you don’t share, and people are none the wiser. You had the perfect anecdote to add, but the conversation moved on and you missed your chance

WANTING TO TALK

There may be times when a secret of yours is so far from your mind, it’s as if it doesn’t exist. Yet specific events, conversations, or concerns can bring the secret into focus, and when they do, the secret may pull at your attention. As the secret’s relevance to your life ebbs and flows, so will its burden. But the burden of a secret comes not only from having thoughts of the secret hang over our heads, but also from having the secret on the tip of our tongues

It’s a mistake to assume that when people keep a secret, this means they don’t want to talk about it

Generally, we want to share with others what is on our mind. When it comes to our secrets, we just don’t let ourselves. I find that a useful way to measure this tension is asking people how much they wish they would let themselves talk about the secret. Answers to this question correspond with how frequently my participants say they conceal their secrets, even when accounting for how relevant the secret is to their everyday conversations.

WHEN DO SECRETS HURT MOST?

As we’ve seen in the last two chapters, secrets that take up more mental space tend to be more harmful, generating feelings of shame, isolation, and uncertainty. But does this harm come from thinking about the secret, or from concealing it? People’s minds tend

Outside of social interactions, however, your secret can come to mind at any time. The potential to relive the experience, to think about the secret itself, and to ruminate on how bad you feel is limitless. While thinking about a secret can be productive, it is too often the opposite for one reason: you are doing it alone. When we choose to be alone with something, we often do not find the healthiest ways of thinking about it. We fixate on the negative, blame ourselves, and throw our hands up in the air. Personal tendencies toward unproductive lines of thought will go unchallenged when you keep something hidden away from all others.

Concealment can sometimes be stressful, but not necessarily because of the work it takes to keep the secret hidden. Not feeling comfortable enough to be yourself often hurts more than any conversational gymnastics that a secret requires. Concealment can be uncomfortable in the moment, but then relief settles in and we move on. I find that people tend to construe effective concealment as an accomplishment. You’ve averted disaster. Seen through that lens, hiding your secrets isn’t so bad; from the perspective of your secrecy intention, each concealment is a success

CHAPTER 6 Confessing and Confiding

People want to confess their secrets. Why wouldn’t they? As we’ve learned, people don’t like to be alone with their thoughts, and having a secret can evoke feelings of shame, isolation, and uncertainty. We confide in at least one person for more than half of the secrets we keep, suggesting that, often, the internal suffering isn’t worth it

With good reason, we tend to share our stories with other people. Opening up to others is how we become known, and opening up to others is how we learn about ourselves, as well. And then sharing a secret with someone, something you wouldn’t tell just anyone, can open up whole new worlds of potential: for advice, connection, support—if you choose the right person.

STORIES FROM OUR PAST

The past is so special that sometimes you can feel it in the making. We cherish our memories: a moment with friends, an overseas trip, a wedding.

Cognitive scientists have long known that our episodic memories—memories of our past experiences (like that moment on the hillside)—are notably different from semantic memories, that is, knowledge and stored facts (for example, that France is the name of a country). Most notably, memories of a past experience are so rich that they include how you came to have the memory. This is not the case for semantic memories. You know that France is a country and what makes someone a grandmother, but you don’t remember how you came to learn these facts, where you were at the time, and who else was there. Compare this to your memory of your last joyous occasion or celebration. You don’t just remember the facts of it, but you can re-experience the event itself. You also know exactly how you came to remember the event: you were there, experiencing it.

The richness of our memory for past experiences is what enables us to share them with others. And we do. A lot. By one estimate, past experiences encompass 40% of what we talk about. Sharing stories of our past helps us learn from each other and learn about each other, which allows us to get close to one another

BEING KNOWN

Humans have a memory system devoted to storing memories so rich that we can share them with others, and much of our communication revolves around telling stories about our past experiences. Sometimes we want to vent, other times we have an important lesson to convey, and on occasion we have questions we plan to ask, but in all cases, sharing our stories with others is how we become known by others

We may know ourselves better than we know other people, but this doesn’t mean we know ourselves entirely. How can we, when the self keeps changing?

There is always more to learn about your self. Conversations with others allow us to listen in, and other people offer us feedback, providing us with new reflections of our selves. If you think you are funny, you might crack a joke among friends. If they laugh, your intuition may be right.

But why do we want to learn about ourselves? With a treasure trove of neuroimaging data, social neuroscientist Diana Tamir, a professor at Princeton, finds that at the most basic level, we want to understand others so that we can predict how they will act. When we understand other people’s mental states, we know what set of things they are likely to do next, and which are less likely

WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?

When we choose to be alone with a secret, we often focus on the worst and draw the worst conclusions, but people do empathize and people do forgive. It may require courage to bring something up, and if

this is the case, know that people will likely recognize it. Revealing something sensitive makes you vulnerable. That might sound terrible, but it conveys trust, and others will recognize when you are placing this trust in them. This is the stuff of intimate relationships, and this is how we get help and support from others

TO CONFESS OR NOT TO CONFESS

It can feel good to unburden yourself of a secret, but what happens after that? Confessing might feel great until the person you confess to breaks down in tears, bursts into anger, or in a dramatic gesture rips off a wedding ring and throws it into the ocean. Of course, only a subset of confessions will end so poorly, but the point here is that the consequences of confessing will largely depend on how the person responds

People keep secrets to protect their reputations, relationships, and others who could be hurt by the revelation. Yet we feel obligations of openness and honesty toward others, especially with close others

When choosing between putting a kind spin on something and being brutally honest, most folks agree that being nice is the preferred option. But this is not the dilemma for many of our secrets. Confessing to having gambled away your child’s college fund, having lost your job, or having violated someone’s trust is fairly different from giving a generous five-star review instead of your honest three-star one

In general, we would all be better off with fewer secrets, but at the same time, not every secret should be revealed. So which should you confess?

One factor to consider is whether trust in you could be damaged or destroyed if the other person found out about the secret through some means other than your telling

So, if it is possible that the secret could come out accidentally or be learned without your telling, then your best bet may be to get out in front of it, and at least have control over the revelation. For the secret that will be found out eventually, or for which concealment is hardly a workable permanent solution, the question of confession should be when rather than if.

Aside from what the secret is about, if keeping the secret, if holding back itself, will upset the other person—how could you keep this from me?—then confessing sooner is better than later. It can be hard to find the right time to have a difficult conversation, but putting it off may only make matters worse. You can build up to it. Let the other person know that you want to talk about something, and maybe even mention what general topic you want to discuss. Even if you don’t have the conversation right there and then, this will reduce the shock factor when the conversation happens later.

But what if confessing the secret could damage the relationship; then what should you do?

You should also consider: What would your partner’s wishes or preferences be in this matter? I presented the following scenario to three hundred participants in committed relationships. Imagine that your partner while on a trip (that you were not on) got drunk one night and committed infidelity (had sex with someone). Imagine that this was a huge mess-up, and that it was not a symptom of some larger problem. Imagine it was 100% guaranteed that this was a one-time thing and would never happen again, with this person or with any other person. Would you want to know? Of the two options, 23% of my participants said, I would prefer my partner keep this secret from me and 77% said, I would prefer my partner confess this to me.

CONFIDING IN OTHERS

Confiding is like eating your cake and having it too. You get to talk about your secret while still having it remain a secret. Why don’t we do this more often?

People rarely ask us about our secrets. On balance, this is a nice feature of the world, but this also means that people rarely tee up our disclosures, bringing up exactly the topics we mean to discuss

The best time to confide a secret in someone is when you feel comfortable doing so. Maybe you feel comfortable revealing a secret because the person you are talking to just revealed something personal; or maybe the interaction is simply going well, and you see a way in. If you choose the right person, that person will help.

If confiding in others somehow entangles them in the problem, or places a difficult burden on them in terms of having to stay quiet, you would be doing those others a favor to not confide in them, and instead choose someone else. You could confide in someone removed from it all, even a stranger. I’ve heard from people who’ve revealed their secrets to fellow bar patrons, cab drivers, and, of course, therapists

FINDING NEW PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGING YOUR THINKING

If you have yet to find the right person to confide in, one avenue for better coping with your secret—one that doesn’t involve other people at all—is putting your thoughts into written words.

So, can we skip confiding in someone altogether, and just journal through our problems? I have some bad news for you. Pennebaker is the first to admit that journaling doesn’t work for everyone. Journaling, in other words, is not a silver bullet

If you are not ready to talk to someone, finding a way to take a step back and organize your thoughts is the only way to begin coping. If putting words down on a page sounds appealing to you (or at least not off-putting), you should know that it is more likely to help the coping process if you use the space to step outside of your usual perspective. Try to challenge your usual ways of thinking. And do not overly focus on the negative or the past. Focus more on the present and the future

Secrets are not all bad. They can bring people together. In fact, we’ve been skirting around a really good kind of secret throughout this whole book, and now we can finally turn to?it

CHAPTER 7 Positive Secrets

When it comes to many positive secrets, the whole point of the concealment is some big future reveal, and looking forward to that revelation has its own benefits

BREAKING THROUGH THE EVERYDAY AND LOOKING FORWARD TO THE FUTURE

We don’t really look so much to the future when it comes to our secrets. Even when we build cunning defenses and clever cover stories to keep some experience hidden, these exercises are more backward-looking than forward-looking, as they push attention onto the past events (and perhaps alternate versions of them). Not until we begin considering the act of revealing a secret do we typically start thinking about its future

When it comes to positive secrets, however, we are much more likely to look ahead to that moment when our secret will be revealed. Thinking about revealing something positive can make that positive shine more brightly, not only during the lead-up to the reveal, but often afterward too.

Something Good on the Horizon

Having something to look forward to promises not only a positive future experience, but also an unknown that will become known

While the future is uncertain, we get to experience the thrill of possibility. For as long as we can delay knowing that future, anything is possible.

In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert explains how uncertainty magnifies emotional experiences—both positive and negative

The Good, the Bad, and the Savoring

As we look forward to future events, we spend more time thinking about them and what they might look like. And the more we think about and anticipate a positive event, the more we tend to appreciate it when it arrives.

Savoring is the psychological term for the actions you can take to increase your attention to and appreciation for positive experiences. You can savor events before they arrive by imagining them and looking forward to them—like looking forward to a weekend with friends and imagining the good times to come. You can savor events afterward through private reminiscing and through sharing with others—like my study participants who planned to share their good news and small wins. You also can savor experiences as they occur. If you search for stock photos of savoring, you’ll see several images of people so focused on some positive experience

For something positive to stand out, it needs to be really positive. And so we will often go to great lengths to make ordinary positive events feel more special. This is where secrecy comes in

GIFTS, PROPOSALS, AND OTHER SURPRISES

The emotional experience of surprise is one of humans’ most fleeting emotions. So why even bother at all? Surprises, by definition, contain some level of unexpectedness, and we tend to better remember unexpected happenings and treat them as more special paper. But it does offer a psychological benefit. People have been wrapping and unwrapping gifts for more than a thousand years, according to anthropologist Chip Colwell

Would you ever buy something just so someone else could tear it to shreds? Put that way, wrapping a gift sounds like a pointless and frivolous exercise, not to mention a colossal waste of often non-recyclable

Now imagine that instead of a surprise party, a life-changing proposal, or some other bombshell that catches you off guard, you received the perfect gift—something you absolutely love but had no inkling was coming. That sort of surprise is typically delightful, and delight is exactly what I felt once I understood that it really was Rachel standing in my living room that day

Unlike the secrets discussed in the previous chapters, keeping something positive under wraps until just the right moment feels good—even if it requires careful monitoring, avoiding conversation topics, or hiding the evidence. The person planning the surprise is able to savor it from the moment the idea is conceived, and also gets to look forward to the revelation and the other person’s (hopefully) delighted response

Feeling in control is one of the most important qualities of human life. When we feel in control of our lives, we feel more capable, and so we better manage stress and more effectively cope with life’s challenges. Those who feel in control of their lives are happier and healthier than those who don’t. They also live longer

Some of life’s most joyous and momentous occasions start off as secrets we keep in order to reveal: the gifts we give, pregnancies, marriage proposals, and more. Both the joy of anticipating the revelation of a positive secret and the feelings of control that come with the positive secret are experienced as satisfying and energizing

SECRET JOYS

We’ve been discussing the ways in which secrecy can make a positive event all the more exciting when you reveal it. But there is another kind of positive secret, one that you may have no intention to ever reveal. I call these secret joys

Compared to gifts, proposals, and other surprises, there is a different tone to these positive secrets. Rather than exhilaration and bursts of energy, these are stories of contentment and independence

Rather than isolation, these secrets can provide healthy forms of solitude: independence and autonomy. Sometimes you don’t need others’ thoughts on a matter, and it helps to recognize when that’s part of your decision

We have a degree of control over all our secrets. We choose which ones we share, and how we share them. But for many of the secrets we hold back, it may not seem clear to what end we exercise this control that we have—especially as we try to reconcile our secrets with our human needs to relate, connect, and be known. Understanding these universal and human desires provides us with one final window into our secrets.

CHAPTER 8 Culture and Coping

And so, our experiences of secrecy are much more similar to those of people who have the same types of secrets or similar dispositions, rather than random people from the same country. But my global study of secrecy didn’t just look at the country my participants were from. It also looked at specific features of the environment they inhabited; for example: Is it easy or difficult to form new relationships? Is your social network clumped into a tight cluster like a constellation packed full of stars, or does it look more like a galaxy of solar systems with their own internal orbits, to which you belong and travel through? And then, for the social group in which you are most embedded, would you sacrifice your own interest for its benefit? Would you put the group before yourself? Your answers to these questions have direct implications for whether you tend to keep secrets or reveal them, and the emotional experiences that come with each

MANAGING RELATIONSHIPS

In low relational mobility environments, bonds are not easily broken. In some regions, the idea that you could lose touch with your parents or break off from family is unheard of; such bonds are considered permanent. And divorce might be difficult to obtain in such environments. At the extreme end of low relational mobility, you may have less choice over the person you marry in the first place, not to mention the inability to split up if things don’t work out

In general, East and Southeast Asia, Northern Africa, and Arabic-speaking countries tend to be relatively lower in relational mobility, whereas North and South America, Australia, and Europe tend to be relatively higher in relational mobility. Of course, these are just trends; each country contains a diversity of individuals and cultures mixing and mashing. And so, relational mobility varies within countries too

Relational mobility, as a feature of your environment, is neither good nor bad. A significant downside of high relational mobility is that it makes it easier for people to reject you. Your friends and romantic partners will have an easier time ditching you for someone else in high relational mobility contexts, and so if you want to maintain the relationship, you’ll have to put in more work. In high relational mobility environments, romantic relationships are more passionate, friendships are more intimate, and here’s the big one: people self-disclose more. It takes trust and courage to open up, even with people you are close to. Making yourself vulnerable in this way is an act of intimacy and a strong signal of commitment in high relational mobility contexts

MANAGING VALUES

Behaviors connected to duty, obligation, and putting others before yourself are hallmarks of collectivism, a broad cultural construct characterized by interdependence, a focus on others as opposed to the self; collective goals, and values for group harmony and cohesion. Collectivism occurs within many different types of groups—a small residential or religious community, a workplace, or another institution—but where collectivism really shows its stripes is within family dynamics. We all belong to several groups, and sometimes a group’s interest conflicts with our own.

I am prepared to sacrifice my own interest for the benefit of my group. I think it is more important to give priority to group interests rather than to personal ones. Folks who agree with statements like these tend to give priority to collective goals over personal goals when they conflict.

While low relational mobility is associated with less self-disclosure and more secret-keeping, collectivism does not uniquely relate to the amount of self-disclosure or secret-keeping that people engage in

So while collectivism is not associated with having secrets that are more immoral, it is associated with the experience most closely linked with having immoral secrets: shame. Holding back from others itself feels more wrong. Similarly, collectivism is not associated with having secrets that are more relational, yet it is associated with the experience most closely linked with having relational secrets: feeling inauthentic

Who you are is not fully separable from your relationships. And when our relationships sit within more collectivism-oriented communities, to have a secret seems more in conflict with other values. But that doesn’t mean keeping the secret is wrong. In many cases, we keep secrets with the intention of protecting others or our relationships with them. In a study where we gave participants a coping compass that pointed them to this very recognition—of relational benefits and prosocial aspects of their secrecy—they felt more authentic as a result

When it’s unclear whether a secret is better off revealed or concealed, don’t focus only on what you are holding back. Reflect also on what you are putting forward, whether it is the emotional health of someone you care about, group harmony, or something else. If you are keeping the secret with someone else’s best interests at heart, even when you feel conflicted about it, recognize you are putting the needs of others before your own. There is nothing inauthentic about that

MANAGING EMOTIONS IN TIMES OF NEED

Much of the time we show our emotions on our faces, but we have some control over what we show, and sometimes it’s more polite to mask a feeling than to express it

Those oriented toward personal independence place more importance on expressing feelings to others and asserting them as valid. This influence extends beyond emotion expression to self-expression more broadly. At one extreme, some cultures value speaking your mind as an important form of self-expression; and at the other extreme, other cultures may view silence as a sign of respect and attentiveness, and speaking with others is more about maintaining relationships than expressing oneself.

CHAPTER 9 Secrets Shared

We can share our secrets with others. We’ve heard from people willing to reveal their secrets on the Secret Telephone, on mail-in postcards, and to strangers they just met: revelations that came with no costs. But you need not search so far and wide to confide; family members, close friends, a romantic partner, a colleague—they also make for great confidants, people who can see the whole picture and who won’t forget everything else they know about you when learning something new. People who will empathize, and forgive

If you take away only one lesson from this book, I hope it is this: If you have a secret that is bothering you, consider sharing it with someone you trust. If there are legal or professional reasons for the secrecy, then your situation is more complicated, but there still may be someone you can confide in. Even if you don’t reveal the specifics, you can still benefit from talking to others. Rather than turn inward, look outward, and seek others’ help.

A colleague once told me a story about a woman who was seeking help. She was trying to locate her biological relatives, and she found a match through a genetic testing service. It turned out that she had found her half-sister, who could confirm that her father had been a sperm donor in the past. Over the internet, she found her biological father.

If you are not ready to reveal your secret to someone, ask yourself why that is the case, and also remind yourself why you are keeping the secret in the first place. Importantly, could someone learn it without your telling? And are there people in your life who would expect you to share this with them? Your answers to these questions will point you to your best path forward

If the secret drags on your well-being, even just occasionally, take a close look at that hurt, and try your best to understand it. Now consider that perhaps keeping the secret does not cause harm to anyone else. Perhaps your secret protects someone you care about. Or maybe you have your reasons for keeping the secret. If one of these seems closer to your situation, then that is your coping resource, your lifeline

We share our inner worlds with others to form and maintain relationships, but sometimes we hold back in order to protect those relationships as well. In other words, we don’t share for the same reasons we do: we seek to establish and maintain close bonds

Besides a shared experience or physical touch, sharing our inner world with others is the central way to connect with others and to be known. And sharing a secret with someone—something that you wouldn’t tell just anyone—is a profound act of intimacy. Opening up, whether in a newly formed relationship or in a long-established one, brings you closer to your confidants and deepens your relationships with them

iBooks Store

YouTube with the Author