We’ve got to have our secrets, right? We want to keep things to ourselves, especially the embarrassing or traumatic stuff, the bad choices, and poor judgment calls. Rather than own them and tell people everything, we keep our mouths shut.
But what about when you’re in a relationship? What happens when you want to spend the rest of your life with someone? Can you still have secrets?
No.
It may sound extreme, but if you're keeping secrets in a relationship, you may as well end it now.
What good is spending the rest of your life loving someone if there are things between you?
Many secrets you keep have good intentions, such as the inclination to tell your boyfriend the shirt he’s wearing doesn’t make him look like a used car salesman — even though it does.
But as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You may think you’re doing right by your partner by keeping things to yourself, but secrets add up. Sooner or later, they will come crashing down around you.
Even the smallest of lies and secrets chip away at your bond. Finding out your partner lied to you or didn’t tell you something irreparably alters the way you look at that person. You know that they are capable of lying and, therefore, you will forever wonder if he is lying to you anytime words come out of his mouth.
It is always better to just tell him the truth. If you’re keeping secrets from the person you’re dating, you can’t possibly love him enough to make it last a lifetime. The truth will always outweigh hurt feelings.
If you want a relationship to last, you have to practice radical honesty coupled with radical acceptance.
To radically accept someone means:
I love you, right here, right now. I have your back, no matter what. I know your flaws, failures, and shortcomings — and I still love you. I will not resent or resist them. Instead, I will extend tenderness to them.
If you can’t take the truth — and it’s enough to break your relationship — the relationship was never worth saving in the first place. Secrets poison love. They are tiny droplets of venom that eventually add up to destruction.
It makes us vulnerable to let someone know everything about us. It makes us susceptible to danger should the relationship go south. It takes serious guts to give someone that kind of ammo. It takes trust to a fault.
If the person you’re in a relationship with can’t be trusted with everything, they aren’t worth your time. If you can’t be yourself and know that the person you love accepts you unconditionally, walk away.
There can be no question of how much you love your partner. You must be in it for the long haul, or give it up. It’s all or nothing when it comes to love.
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