Don’t Keep Secrets

Arnold Schwarzenegger recently disclosed that he has lived a life of secrets; multiple affairs, deciding to run for governor without telling his wife and even tried to have major surgery without her knowledge. It appears that he is now a shell of a man, without the love and trust of his family. It seems all he has now is the poor taste to write a book about his bizarre life.

I grew up in a family with secrets. Not ‘I killed your father and buried him in the backyard’ secrets, but ‘let’s keep this quiet and nobody will be the wiser’ secrets. Which in my book are actually worse. Keeping information from another sends a direct message: I can’t trust you, or you’re not important enough to me to tell you the truth. And secrets have a way of being found out, even many years later.

I don’t understand the psychology of secret-keeping, but I do know that my experience with it has probably caused me to go a little overboard the other way. I show my husband most everything I buy, with receipts and an explanation of the thought process for making the purchase. Way too much information for him.

I am all about full-disclosure and have a real need to understand peoples’ motivations. When  an action does not line up with my perceived motivation of another, it makes me a little crazy. I have to think it through until I can settle it in my mind. This can take seconds or it can take months.

In my opinion, secrets are a manipulative form of lying and can have catastrophic results. The thrill of knowing something that others don’t is never worth the damage it can cause.

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Ephesians 4:25

http://www.heritage.com/articles/2012/10/03/life/doc506c83abe53c6201915387.txt?viewmode=fullstory