The Secrets We Share

Shortly past midnight my phone would ring.

And the call would normally linger way until daybreak. This routine lasted for a long, long time. Until one day – sadly, but thank God as well – it stopped. My caller finally gave up on me.

Those calls that stole my time for sleep were one way. My caller needed to unload many things that were making her life heavy. She would blabber on about her unhappiness, her fantasies and hidden desires, which found outlet only in being told.

She found release, at my inconvenience. But I didn’t mind. I understood that it was the better way, for her. The other option would be far too costly for her good name and public image. It was okay that she made me the repository of her impermissible, other self.

My tolerance was to allow my friend to breathe; it was clear how badly she needed to. But, soon, came a twist to our nightly appointments. She said something which made me feel that I “owed her one.”

It was not fair that I was always on the receiving end, she implied. She meant that as I had already known quite a lot of her secrets, I should also tell her some of mine. That was a blow; I was dumbfounded.

All the while I thought she understood that I was being kind by listening to her. I was not expecting gratitude, though (I tried to condition myself to enjoy those lengthy conversations, and, yes, I had my own fun time through it all). But I did not expect to be held in anyone’s debt for that, either.

She insisted that I opened up to her. I firmly resisted. It was my personal position to do only secret penance to absolve myself of my secret sins. I knew, of course, that longings, fears and guilt when kept bottled up could eventually overwhelm us. I took the number of people that showed up at psychiatric clinics everywhere as proof to that.

There’s no doubt about the healing value of honest self-expression. But, on the other hand, to attempt to secure our cherished relationships by blurring borders of privacy can oftentimes ruin it, instead. When people – whether spouses, family or friends – share their innermost secrets in the spirit of intimacy, they court the possibility of paranoia unto themselves, or are liable to cause distress in their loved ones.

Whether it’s between a man and a woman in love or between two close friends, or among family members, a relationship can be damaged by unnecessary openness. Yes, every profound relationship involves both the impulse and the freedom to be truthful about oneself to the other person. But, like all things, these must be handled with restraint; otherwise, one may indulge in them to regrettable excesses.

Oftentimes, the very desire to pour out our thoughts to the people we most want to keep in our lives can make us lose them. Conscious and unconscious feelings of guilt develop when we let our friends know too much about us, especially our most guarded secrets. It’s the beginning of the end of the relationship.

I had another friend whom I asked to fill out a questionnaire when I was gathering data for a documentary film on motherhood. Instead of just simply checking boxes for her answers, she sent me a detailed and incredibly revealing letter. A day after I received it, she frantically called, asking me to burn it.

She wrote the letter late at night when she was feeling so low. In it she related that she often bitterly regretted marrying her husband, who was also a close friend of mine. He had brought her, she said, far less joy than she expected, and, while she swore she loved him so, quite often she hated him.

That was the last time I heard from her. I lost contact with her husband, too. Our friendship was killed by the secret she shared with me.

We grew up believing that to tell everything – our past and present misdeeds, even our ugliest wishes – was a good thing. We were to hold total personal transparency as a virtue. He was a good person who hid nothing.

Confession was good for the soul, we were told. Perhaps, confession before a priest. And I was not a bit a holy man.