So, I used to date a Catholic priest. This meant that, unlike most people who aren’t having affairs or hailing from feuding clans, our relationship was top-top-secret. It also ended in both of us losing almost everything we valued in life. I don’t think this is a coincidence.
Lesson 1: Don’t go out with anyone who wants to keep it secret. It’s a sign that you’re dealing with someone not ready to be held accountable or commit. If they need to make lifestyle changes to be ready for a relationship, let them take that step before you get involved. If they’re afraid of hurting someone (aka a partner), don’t make yourself complicit in that.
I took an adult Confirmation class he led before we started seeing each other. During one lesson, a woman asked: ‘is it always wrong to lie? What if there are Nazis at the door and you have a Jew in your attic?’
Sometimes it’s worthwhile to ask stupid questions: you might still receive an interesting answer. His response was unexpected: ‘Not everybody has a right to know everything.’
It sure covered the Nazi situation. If someone is going to use information for murder, they’ve lost their right to be told the truth. Later, it covered the situation of our secret relationship. Why would anyone have the right to deeply personal information which would only be used to create a scandal?
Later I would find out that the same applied to me.
Lesson 2: If your partner is capable of keeping secrets from other people, they’re capable of keeping secrets from you. If your partner treats everyone a certain way, sooner or later they’re going to treat you that way too. Never assume you’re the exception.
He had been lying to me about his other relationships and when I asked for information, the response was the same. You don’t have a right to know. He had always been generally evasive, rarely using names (everyone he spoke of was ‘a friend’), but as the relationship progressed he grew more distrustful and less willing to volunteer information. In a vicious cycle, I grew more and more paranoid. I had no idea what his daily life looked like. Once I asked about his brother’s name and he wouldn’t tell me. It became a little game but he really didn’t want to say.
Lesson 3: You should be able to say what a typical day in the life of your partner looks like. You should know the names of their friends and family, or if you don’t know, you should be able to find out. If you can’t, that’s a problem.
I’m aware of the implications: somehow I had made him feel like information wasn’t safe with me. That’s one reason he wasn’t comfortable sharing information with me. Then there’s the fact that when you’re supposed to be celibate and aren’t, the wrong person knowing the right thing can mean losing your job. He’d built up a habit of keeping secrets (and not just for the wrong reasons; super-duper serious secret-keeping is one of the big things you have to do as a priest) and so knowledge was a precious commodity for him, not to be given away thoughtlessly. Thirdly, he actually was cheating on me. Or planning to. Or cheating with me. I never got the full details. In any case, he was hiding something from me, and so he started hiding everything from me.
Lesson 4: Do you notice when people avoid volunteering information — for instance, avoiding stating names and specifics, only answering questions, keeping the overall picture fuzzy? Do you notice when you do it? This can be a sign that someone feels on guard with you or that they have built up a habit of keeping the whole truth close to their chest. It’s something to be aware of.
It still hurt me that he didn’t trust me with information. I wanted to be his friend and ally, no matter how painful the truth was. This article might imply otherwise, but we were close friends and communicated well (when it didn’t come to personal details). So why was he dodging my questions like a 50s sitcom husband, metaphorically hiding behind armchairs as if we were in a comic opera?
Lesson 5: It’s unusual to be on guard against your partner. Make sure you know what’s really going on. Do you have trust issues from your past? Is your gut telling you something that your brain hasn’t figured out? Are you shutting them out because of something about them or something about you?
So was he wrong about what he said about the Nazis? Is ‘do they have a right to know’ a bad criterion for judgment?
At the time I thought it was brilliant. Looking back it feels like a warning sign. I think it’s a bit of both. The issue I see is that it addresses rights, but not obligations. It’s easy to explain why someone doesn’t have a right to know something, but what about when you have an obligation to tell? The two need to go hand in hand.
But I still think it’s a good question, and perhaps especially useful as a criterion when turned on its head. While you ask ‘have they lost the right to know?’ also ask yourself, ‘do I have an obligation to remain silent?’
This is (probably) true if:
- They could credibly cause unjust harm with this knowledge, intentionally or unintentionally.
- This knowledge is private, belongs to a sphere of intimacy you do not share with the person, has been entrusted to you, or is information you should not have known in the first place.
- This person has requested not to know this information, or you reliably believe that the only result of telling them would be to hurt them. (giving bad news on a deathbed, for instance).
But the burden of proof is on you to find that the person does not have a right to know, and this is truer the closer your relationship to another person is.
And as I see it, you have a definite obligation to tell if:
- The other person is affected by the information you possess (a diagnosis, for example)
- You are close enough to the person that secrecy itself will be a source of distress (for example, a husband not telling his wife where he was last night, even if it was perfectly innocent)
- The other person would make different decisions if they knew your information. (similar to №1 but meant to emphasize withholding facts that could inform a specific situation).
There’s plenty of grey area where you may not have an obligation either way. Some people are, I think, more naturally ‘generous’ with information while others are more cautious about giving it away, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But a habit of secrecy (or conversely a habit of demanding information) can erode at trust and the comfort of a relationship, so it’s a good thing to be aware of.
Of course, the best advice I have is: don’t act in a way that tempts you to keep secrets! Choose the full consequences of whatever decision you make and follow it through to the end: standing with a foot on the platform and a foot on the train is unlikely to end prettily.
Where do you draw the line? Who has a right to know what?