Is Your Spouse Keeping Secrets From You? Good!
Hope you will check out my most recent article for psychologytoday.com on partnership, love, and lust. What role do secrets and novel experiences play in keeping marriages alive?
Tell me about it: Do you keep secrets from your husband or partner? Your comments will be kept secret, as always…
Tags: Ashton Kutcher, couple, couples therapy, Ester Perel, Katherine Heigl, Killers, marriage, Marty Babits, Mating in Captivity, remarriage, remarriage with children, romance, sex therapy, sexuality, step mother, stepmonster, stepmother, stepmother advice, stepmother support, The Power of the Middle Ground, wednesday martin
June 9th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
I loved this “stupid” movie too! It was nothing deep except as Wednesday says the question What if I don’t know my partner as well as I think I do, in a good way? is deep!
Yes, I keep secrets if my own secret bank account is a secret. It helps me feel independent and safe.
Also on the topic of doing exciting things together, my husband and I recently both learned to waterski. Okay, not the same as international espionage but it was thrilling to learn something new, together. I recommend doing something new together to get out of the rut of constant fighting about stepchildren, or any rut in a marriage. Thanks for this!
June 9th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Secrets? Hmmm- not really, I’msorry to say. My first husband had secret affairs, so I’m a little touchy around secrets! Does my new(er) man have secrets- I don’t think he tells me everything that his kids tell him- but I agree, that’s a good thing. Oh, I suppose I don’t tell him that bit either. so we’re about even
I agree with Juliette about the shared interest. We have learned to dance latin together – salsa, bachata, cha cha and we love it. Maybe it kind of brings back that mystery of first meeting? It’s certainly great for stopping us from endlessly talking and “sharing”- which can get negative and not lead to problem solving at all. We love the dancing! We dance socially with lots of other people, so we have to trust each other, as well.
June 10th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
This idea is one whose time has come for me and my husband. Too much talking and not enough dancing, as Nelly says. Seriously I do find that the communication is necessary especially when I’m upset about his kids’ behavior and how he mis/handles it! But after that, we need some fun, some mystery.
I don’t know what the exact solution is but this has got me thinking.
June 10th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Totally agree, Jill- communication is necessary, but we need to make sure some is positive, and have some fun and re-connect as a couple. How to balance all this? Not easy!
June 12th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
I see where you’re going with this, and I agree with it to a degree: mystery adds to sexiness. Probably humans were not meant to have sex with the same person for years and years. (If God had wanted us to get married, he would have invented marriage. Instead, men had to invent it.) There was a book years ago about how to make your man think that you were a different woman every night. I think Saran Wrap was involved somehow.
The truth is, I think that no matter how long you know a person, they can still surprise you, both in pleasant and unpleasant ways. Just this summer, a neighbor I have known now for almost thirty years has suddenly started harassing me sexually almost every day. Why did this suddenly start? I have no idea. But I hate it. And so on Friday I took my shirt off and whipped him with it several times across his fat bare belly, while screaming, “I don’t want to hear any sexual harassment on Brangus Lane ever again! Do you understand?” I did this with another neighbor as a witness. Unfortunately she just kept on picking beans.
I’m sure I surprised him too. It just goes to show: you can know somebody for thirty years and they can surprise you.
June 12th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
I would like to add that the article in the April issue of Stepmom magazine about all the summer weddings and graduations was also right on. I am boycotting the two weddings, but they are very stressful nonetheless, because the last time one of the daughters got married (there are three of them), my partner had his photograph made arm-in-arm with his ex-wife, which I thought was really in appropriate. I didn’t make a big fuss at the time, but it rankled, and that incident was followed by months of persecution by one of the other daughters. Because my partner acted like a wuss and allowed himself to be railroaded into this photograph that he was uncomfortable with, the other daughter took that as a green light. And she was right: my partner let her made all sorts of inappropriate demands for the next nine months or so, with very little objection. If I hadn’t spoken up, he would have made Christmas dinner for his ex-wife and had another formal portrait made arm-in-arm with her. (As it was, he was manipulated into bailing her out financially a few months later also, by the same daughter.)
So I have been very worried about whether these new two weddings would similarly launch a new campaign of boundary violations. I have been talking to my partner about it, and hopefully, forewarned is forearmed.
In my younger days I actually babysat the kids during long summer days while their parents got to work and make money. Silly me. Hope nobody else ever does that.
June 12th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
DW,
Nobody writes a comment like you. Or has your…adventures and misadventures. Good luck on Brangus Lane. The reunion of your husband and his ex-wife at weddings…not a pretty picture. You are spot on in your assessment of this as a boundary issue, your partner’s boundary issue that becomes yours. I like your solution or attempt at one here–to have a discussion, hopefully as calmly as possible, ahead of time, so you feel a modicum of control. Hopefully your partner is now aware that having no boundaries or rules regarding this situation will not do for you. As for feeling worried, what helps with that? Talking to him? Meditating? Gardening? I’d like to know. Keep us posted. xx wednesday
June 12th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Nellie, Juliette, and Jill B.,
Well, I do love the suggestions about exciting and novel undertakings with your partners. They’re inspiring. Waterskiing could get your adrenalin and endorphins up, and ballroom dance seems a great choice for the way it gets partners into a romantic frame of mind. Interesting point about partners rotating in the class. This is exactly what Ester Perel talks about as a moment when partners see one another anew in her book Mating in Captivity.
Thanks to you all for reading and commenting xx wednesday
June 15th, 2010 at 1:50 am
You know, Wednesday, this brings me back to some articles and comments about 6 months ago. It seems to me that it’s a question of whether the “secret” keeps the stepmother outside the stepfamily circle or inside it. The issue of what’s going on with the kids…..well, that’s a really mixed bag and lots of times those are NOT the best secrets to have between “remarrieds with children.”
But, I completely get the point of not “over-sharing.” I think it’s soooooo easy to get into the thinking that this is my friend, companion, etc and I’ll tell him everything on my mind. He doesn’t want to know everything on my mind and frankly I don’t want to know all that’s on his mind either. We’ve got tons in common, I mean stuff we both really, really enjoy, but I was interested in the idea and advantages of doing new things together.
Great inspiration.