‘While secret lives are fundamentally dishonest, we all need and deserve a private life —including one that is concealed from our partner.’
This post was originally published on TheFrisky.com.
Last week’s discussion about guys, porn, and honesty raised a number of interesting questions. How much truth do we owe our partners about what we do when they’re not around – and how much should we share about what runs through our heads? Almost everyone agrees that outright lies are bad. But are there some questions that invite lies? Are there some questions we shouldn’t even ask?
One helpful way to think about this topic is to draw the distinction between a private and a secret life. Secrecy is toxic, because it involves either a spoken lie (“Honey, I didn’t sleep with your cousin”) or the deliberate omission of critical information (like “accidentally forgetting” to mention you hooked up with your ex-boyfriend while your current guy was out of town). But while secret lives are fundamentally dishonest, we all need and deserve a private life —including one that is concealed from our partner.
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The most obvious way to distinguish private from secret is to think about bathroom habits. Even when we’re around people we love and are intimate with, a lot of us still close the door when we’re planning to sit on the toilet. There’s no deception as to what we’re doing in there with the door shut. We’d just like to poop in peace without an audience. We’re asking for the right to privacy, not secrecy.
How does this private/secret distinction work around sex? One example concerns the number of sex partners you’ve had before you met your current boyfriend or girlfriend. He or she may have the right to ask how many people you’ve slept with, but you’re not obligated to answer. What you did before you were committed is private, and though you’re free to disclose your number if you like, you’re not being inappropriately secretive by lovingly saying “it’s none of your beeswax.” (For more on talking about a sexual past, see this post.)
In other words, the fact that you cheated on your current boyfriend is a secret. The fact that you had an incredibly hot ménage a trois in Florence during your junior year abroad – that’s private. And you have the right to keep your mouth shut about the latter.
Even in the most devoted of monogamous relationships, you’re likely to find yourself having wild fantasies that don’t involve your partner. Is it secretive and dishonest not to tell, or is having a separate fantasy world (with or without masturbation) part of a reasonable expectation of privacy? People disagree intensely. One way to discern the right answer is to ask yourself how troubled you’d be if you learned your partner was doing the same thing you were doing. Like everything around sex, this is largely subjective: what for one person falls within a reasonable expectation of privacy is another person’s inappropriate secret.
The great German poet Rilke says something helpful here:
“a good relationship is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility,
and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
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Guarding the other’s solitude is about allowing your partner the right to a private, not a secret life. It’s a recognition that even the most sexually exclusive relationship functions a bit like a Venn diagram, in which the largest portion is a shared intimacy, but in which each partner is left with something that is theirs alone. It means having the trust to expect the truth, but also the respect not to ask questions that invite dishonest responses.
I’ve never asked my wife how many people she slept with before me. I don’t know how often she masturbates, or what she thinks about when she does. I trust her to manage her private sexual life in such a way that it doesn’t rob our shared intimacy of passion and power. And I trust her to be faithful as she trusts me.
We don’t have the right to a hidden life that contradicts our public commitments. But we have the right to a private world – and a private sexuality – that is ours alone.
—Photo rpongsaj/Flickr
About Hugo Schwyzer
Well put, Hugo. I appreciate the distinction between private and secret. If there is no room for privacy in a relationship, i wonder if there is room for trust?
Well, Hugo, at least you don’t put all the blame on men here.
But am I missing something here? Last week you told us that men shouldn’t not tell their women about their porn habits. You said that women have a right to know about the porn use of their men and then make their own judgment about whether it is acceptable or not. But here you are saying that men (and women) can exercise their fantasies however they like without any obligation to answer questions about how much or how often they rely on those fantasies.
I agree much more with this piece. To apply it to last week’s piece, a woman really doesn’t have the grounds to even open that can of worms.
Let me break it down:
Lying to a man to commit paternity fraud = privacy
Having a pr0n stash your girlfriend or wife doesn’t know about = secrecy
Or more on a more granular level:
Stuff that helps Hugo out = privacy
Stuff that makes Hugo feel icky = secrecy
“I didn’t bother to actually read the piece, but I hate Hugo so I’m just gonna go from there.”
I think he’d say it depends on the relationship, though. He said that in this piece. Personally, I assume my male partners look at porn and I couldn’t care less, but maybe that’s a dealbreaker for someone else. So, in the context of my relationship it’s privacy because it’s analogous to going to the bathroom with the door closed (something your partner is ok with but doesn’t need to see or talk about). But in another relationship, it would constitue secrecy if the other partner would be deeply hurt and perhaps want out of the relationship if they knew.
I personally don’t get why the porn thing was SO offensive. If I was with someone who said it was a dealbreaker for me to watch porn or fantasize or masturbate, that’s their prerogative. I’d just get the fuck out of dodge before they started making even more demands that to me are unacceptable restrictions on my freedom. Everyone’s different.
Mariella, I think for a lot of women there’s a feeling that their SO is negatively comparing them (or their sex life) to what they see in porn. Personally I think the issue is, or at least should be, less ‘my guy uses porn’ than ‘why is his porn use bothering me?’ It could be insecurity. It could also be that the way he uses porn is setting off red flags on some level – if he spends hours and hours surfing porn sites, or speaks disparagingly of the women in the porn he enjoys, or gets angry if she likes porn that he doesn’t personally enjoy (“Penthouse is one thing, but that yaoi shit you read is gross!”) that’s a different cast on things.
I think this is a great question and a great distinction. This is one of those fundamental issues in any kind of relationship – how do you include someone else in your life and at the same time remain an individual person? Like a lot of aspects to relationships, there are some pretty clear absolutes and also some gray areas. There are great examples of healthy privacy, great examples of unhealthy secrecy, and also some murky things in between.
I would also add that being selective about detail can be a thoughtful way to spare someone’s feelings. Absolute, complete, continuous transparency and honesty with your partner is a bit unrealistic and maybe even unhealthy. I mean, letting your partner know every detail about what you’re thinking and feeling every moment can be pretty intense and pretty destructive. That’s unbridled self-expression, and when cut loose it can be hurtful without being very constructive. When your wife is nine months pregnant, a full inventory of the women you daydreamed about having sex with that month seems pretty cruel to share with her. Telling her more generally that you continue to be a horny husband is just as true, without the unhelpful detail.
Secret is what you refuse to acknowledge. Private is what you refuse or aren’t asked to tell. In the end, ignorance is bliss, either way.
my boyfriend likes to send and receive pictures of his female friends naked or as close to it n ive told him that it humiliates me n hurts my feelings cuz for one usually he asks for them n two these specific people that send the pictures all r about 120 lbs soak n wet n when i asked him y he never asks his heavier friends for their picture n he says that they r not his type i myself weigh about 165 n ive told him that i dont care what they look like as much as the fact that we personally know them n they come n visit us if they feel they like to send pics bac k n forth then i believe they r interested in each other n not just as friends i told him he could have a thousand naked pics of people that we dont personally know but if they were our friends n they knew i didnt like it then out of friendship they would respect how i feel..so he says he wont n well i found more in his phone n he adamantly says that im trying to change who he is n i dont allow him his privacy well i dont think he really luvs me or he would see how much it hurts my feelings n embarrasses me n would not want to see me go thru that more than seeing his female friends naked so any input on this situation could really help thanks
Move on. He’s not going to change. He’s engaging in selfish and inappropriate behavior that’s hurting you. So leave. Find someone else that also considers this to be inappropriate, and make sure that there are clear (but reasonable) consequences of engaging in such behavior (for example, the relationship will end).
He is cheating on you.