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 few years ago, I told my boyfriend that I'd bumped into a guy we both knew at a party. I didn't mention the fact that I'd made out with him, and that we'd since talked on the phone almost every day. A few weekends ago, I lied again, telling my coworkers that my weekend was fine, when in reality I spent it fighting with my roommate and crying in bed. I managed this lie without even thinking about it.In her new book, Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie, psychoanalyst Gail Saltz explores this human propensity to deceive. According to Saltz, many secrets are normal and even necessary — as individuals, we rely on them to reinforce our individuality. But she also shows how some secrets can overtake our lives: Not telling the people in your office about your shitty weekend is reasonable, but keeping my boyfriend in the dark about my infidelity haunted us for months after I finally told him. All of us are essentially liars, says Saltz, even those of us who view ourselves as fundamentally honest. — Sarah Harrison You say secrets are essential to a person's identity. Why is that?
Having a thing be private is what helps define you as you, instead of as "blended," so-to-speak, with somebody else. There's a naturally developmental snap a child makes from You know everything about me — the idea that there are no barriers — to I can keep a secret. That's part of what creates individuality, and in that sense, it's healthy. Keeping different kinds of secrets is a way of trying on different identities before you're ready to go into the world with them. You see a lot of that in adolescence, and these days adolescence stretches out into God-knows-how-long. So a lot of people are like, Hmm, I'm going to try this on for size, and I'm not going to talk with people about it yet. Sometimes they do it through the internet, sometimes they do it by acting one way in one arena of their life and a different way in another arena. When does a secret become harmful? This is a gray zone. A secret from yourself that's causing you to act and behave in ways that end up being self-destructive qualifies as harmful. Similarly, secrets that you're keeping from others that are going to be destructive and harmful to them — and usually in that instance, to yourself as well — are problematic. We all have little white lies and secrets, and those aren't the problem. You don't have to be an open book. You write that "For the secret-bearer, the conflict between concealing and revealing can provide a psychological tension and urgency and stimulation not so different from the physical urge to urinate, defecate or reach orgasm." Why do people feel such an urge to reveal secrets? The underpinnings have to do with our primal instinct to be attached to others. We'll do almost anything to avoid being abandoned. And since sharing secrets creates intimacy, part of that is a method of looking for that intimacy. And it empowers the revealer, too. Absolutely. Telling your secret creates a circle, and the person inside the circle has some power with you. By contrast, people often use secrets to keep someone out, to make them feel powerless. These are all about human dynamics: being competitive, wanting the power, wanting to be included, wanting to be intimate, wanting to do desperate things to not lose love: Oh my gosh! He's slipping away. I'm going to tell him something deep and meaningful about myself that's been a secret, and that will be my way of holding on. You mention in the book that love could be defined as someone who you tell all your secrets too. But is it always better in a relationship to be totally honest, or should some things be left unsaid? I think honesty on the big things absolutely.
What about sexual fantasies? Should they be talked about, or does that ruin them? There are some people for whom that works, and boy does it work well. It's stimulating, it feels intensely close. But there are some people for whom that kind of innermost thought doesn't work once it's out. But I would say this is part of a loving relationship: Allowing each other to have a little piece that you trust is okay — not too big, not too important, not going to hurt you, not going to hurt them, not going hurt the relationship, but trusting them to have that. Why do people get so upset when their partner cheats on them? I think part of the reason is that we want to be the only one has biological access. I want it to be my genetic material. When your partner cheats, it becomes, Who's offspring am I nurturing, feeding, expending my effort and genetic material on? It has biological underpinnings, and then weighed on top of those are more modern thoughts: If you've had sex with someone else, it must mean I wasn't enough for you. It's a rejection. Taking into account the biological aspects, do you think it's possible for men to have no-strings-attached sex? The data shows that it's more possible for men, that men are more comfortable with casual sex. But I will say this: When a woman cheats and he says, "Oh, that's fine," it never works out that way. Again, I go back to his primal, biological feelings — he'll be damned if he's going to go out and hunt and gather for someone else's kid. How common is infidelity? The numbers are vast ranges, but we can say that women are catching up with men. And we can say that it's not as uncommon in women as we think. Why are women catching up with men? It's a combination of factors. Obviously, it's a less repressed society today. You're not going to get a scarlet A. Many more women are in the workplace, which is where a lot of things get started. And today a lot of things get started on the internet, and women are on the computer as much as men. Do you think that people have a predisposition to cheating? Well, I will say this: If you had a parent who cheated that you were aware of — because a lot of kids know, even when nobody thinks they know — that increases the odds that that person will cheat later, because it's just not unusual to identify with the parent and reenact some of the same things. If you know that one person in a couple is cheating on another person, do you keep that a secret? There isn't one right answer. You need to know who you're telling on. You need to test the waters. I would not come out and say, "I saw Bob sucking face with his secretary." If you say something subtle enough, there are women who will be like, "I don't want to know, I am looking the other way." I've seen plenty of women who knew their husbands were cheating. I just saw this woman who got venereal disease from her husband, and she was like, "Maybe I got it from toilet paper." This is an extremely accomplished and intelligent woman who knows that you cannot get VD from toilet paper. She had to know. Yeah, and when you really don't want to know, denial is very powerful, and you're friend ain't going to penetrate that. So you have to float something to see where that person is. There's an art form to confrontations. Even with yourself. Right, the biggest message of this book is this: It's not that people should not have secrets, but that people should understand what's going on in their own mind. The unconscious is very powerful. If you don't know what's going on, it can drive you to do all kinds of things. If you do know what's going on, you'll make choices that will be self-informed and generally be quite a bit healthier. n°
©2006 Sarah Harrison and hooksexup.com. |
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