From Crushes To Childhood Trauma: What's OK To Keep From Your Partner?

4 days ago 4

I don’t know about you, but I always grew up hearing that you should be as honest as possible with your partner.

After all, as BACP-registered therapist and coach Vasia Toxavidi told HuffPost UK, “A healthy relationship thrives when a deep trust between partners has been established through honest communication”.

But does that mean you have to share everything for that trust to remain?

What about passing crushes or brief feelings of uncertainty about the relationship (both of which can be common)? Do you have to reveal your deepest childhood secrets or traumas in order to be truly known?

Learn the difference between secrecy and privacy

Alongside honesty, Toxavidi told us that boundaries are key for a healthy relationship.

“Keeping secrets and keeping one’s privacy by establishing healthy boundaries are two different things, and this will depend a lot on the open and transparent communication between two people,” she shared.

However, some topics need to be broached openly for a partnership to succeed.

“True intimacy requires honesty on issues that can impact the core of the relationship and the shared reality of the partners,” the therapist said.

This can include subjects like:

financial obligations,sexual health and intimacy,major addictions,infidelities,plans for and/or issues with children,desires, andin general, “issues that, when concealed, can deprive the other’s own informed consent within their own life”.

But privacy is more to do with “maintaining ownership of your own identity and internal world” than it does with your shared reality in a couple. That distinction “can give you the right to share as much as you want with your partner,” Toxavidi explained.

Some examples may be:

a discussion you had with a friend on a night out,details of your childhood,individual therapy sessions,previous relationships, and“minor annoyances that someone feels towards the other that hold no bearing on the relationship’s security”,fleeting crushes you don’t plan to act on, and brief doubts about the relationship “when there is no constructive evidence that can affect the relationship and sharing it can actually cause [un]needed anxiety and insecurity.”

There’s a caveat about that “crush” one, though.

Toxavidi advised, “If a partner just sees another person as attractive and has a fleeting thought of a crush with no intention of acting on it, then it is better to be kept private.

“But if someone finds themselves actively seek[ing out] the attention of that crush, text[ing] them secretly, [or] obsessively thinking of them, then possibly that fleeting crush has crossed a relationship boundary, and the underlying issues of why this has happened will need to be addressed within the couple.”

Intent matters, too

According to the therapist, it’s usually a good idea to ask yourself why you feel obliged to share information before spilling to your partner if you’re not sure about the disclosure.

Are you revealing the information because you “want to share and connect? Offload [your] own guilt?”

How do you think your partner will take the information, and is that possible cost worth the divulgence?

“Again, a lot depends on how the couple perceives transparency and privacy within their own relationship and... the boundaries they have established (or not) since the beginning of their relationship.”