Do you tell your spouse everything?
When Drew and I started dating, we were both working in youth ministry. We were mentoring teenagers. We were having one on one meetings. We were hearing 17 year old secrets.
And we kept them.
And we didn’t share this information with each other.
That practice continued when we were married. And it also stretched over into our individual friendships, Bible studies, and small groups. I have been in a small group of some sort for years. And I don’t tell Drew the details of what is shared in these sessions. These are grown-up secrets. And I keep them.
I may share with him the bits of information that relate to me, ie: what our Bible study leader taught us. Or what we were studying for that lesson. Or what I realized during our lesson.
The same goes for Drew’s small group experience.
We both mentor some college students now. And we don’t share those secrets either. We even hang out with individual friends, and we don’t share the things that are told to us by our friends.
Sure, sometimes that means one of us doesn’t know if another couple is pregnant. That’s ok. It doesn’t happen often. And when it does, we simply apologize and explain that we don’t share others’ deep information with one another. I think it’s much better to apologize for not knowing, than to apologize for sharing too much.
So that’s how we do it.
What about you?
Do you tell your spouse everything? Or do you keep others’ secrets a secret from your spouse?
No I don’t. I work for the national health service in the uk and as a therapist and I certainly don’t break confidentiality that goes hand in hand with being able to do the job I do. I will tell him how I feel if things get on top of me like anybody does in a marriage, but there are some things like confidentiality clauses that have to be upheld in a professional capacity.
Secrets, yes. We keep those. It is important for our relationships with others, that our friends/family know that they can share with us, without our spouse automatically knowing everything. There have been times when we have shared too much, but typically we keep our verbal filters working at full capacity. We do a lot of “some one in the group was talking about___ and I thought/shared___”. That way even sharable info. isn’t connected with a face.
This is something I’ve thought a lot about lately. My tendency is to share everything – not always the best idea.
Although within a marriage, the rules seem to be different.
I think what you said is a good approach …
“it’s much better to apologize for not knowing, than to apologize for sharing too much.”
I don’t share if I don’t think it’s important enough, or if I think it will bother my spouse.
However, for the most part – anytime someone tells me “this is confidential, don’t tell anyone else”, etc … I interrupt them with a disclaimer that though I may not tell my wife everything, I reserve the right to do so.
So, yes, sometimes I keep things private – but I’m not required to. If you have to tell me something that I can’t tell my spouse, maybe I shouldn’t hear it yet.
Truth is, I often need my spouse to help process some things … I’ve found in most cases, I’m glad we talked.
As long as you both know there are secrets and there are good reasons, as stated, and it’s not hurting your relationship, sure.
wow, um…i pretty much tell landry everything. unless someone specifically asks me not to share with Landry, they can assume that he will know. we are ONE. we are each individuals, yes, but when we said I do, we were joined as one, and i really feel more comfortable sharing as much as possible with him.
obviously there are things that i simply can’t share because the emotions or thoughts run too deep or just i just haven’t been able to fully process them yet.
i asked landry the question. it’s complicated with him. he’s a counselor. so often, he will tell me some of the things a person is dealing with, but i never know who it is or often even if they are male or female. and there are some times when he just won’t tell me….
so i dunno.
We Share pretty much everything…at least I’m sure I do. I can’t really speak for my wife.
Judi and I share basically everything. We withhold accountability stuff that our close friends have told each of us in confidentiality but otherwise we’re completely open with each other unless someone specifically asked me not to tell Judi and the said information doesn’t affect her.
Being in ministry ourselves, we approach what we do as a team and everyone that we mentor and disciple understands that. On the other hand, if I’m mentoring a teenage male and we discuss “guy stuff” and problems that are fairly exclusive to males then that’s something I won’t necessarily disclose to Judi but it’s not really a “secret” I’m keeping from her. If she asks what we talked about I say “guy stuff/issues”.
99% of our friends are mutual friends so we pretty much find those things out together, and neither of us have any personal opposite-sex friends, that’s a huge no-no in our book.
i certainly don’t think one way is wrong and the other is right but my wife and I do try and tell each other everything. Sometimes details get left out but we do our best to make sure each other knows. Now and then I can definitely see a case where the privacy of a friend is more important than making sure your spouse knows everything, but for me, those times are not often. Good question.
Mandy, this is a good question. Wayne and I tend to tell each other everything, BUT, we respect someone’s desire to keep things a secret. It’s not often, but a few times I have had a friend tell me something and specifically ask me not to tell a soul. I kept that secret, because that’s how I would want to be treated, also. I figure, it’s not my news to tell.
Some people would disagree with you. I, on the other hand, do not.
I keep other people’s secrets a secret from my husband if they ask me to. If they tell me I can share, then I do. After all, it’s THEIR secret, not mine. Plus, to be quite honest, my husband only has the emotional energy to deal with one woman…why would I burden him with the traumas and stories of more women? Ahem.
I know i am jumping in kind of late, but we dont share the “secrets” of others. We have both been hurt by people who have abused our trust so we both have a respect for others and their confidence.
We are both involved in Jr. High and High School Ministry, so there are some things we just cant keep secret because of the nature of working with minors, but unless it is a life or death secret we dont share it. if we need advice, we ask without names.
I think my wife tells me everything, but I am generally a quite person so I don’t share people’s secrets. Unless I feel there is a prayer need then I’ll tell my wife for sure.
Like a few others here, we don’t do secrets between each other. We’re upfront about the fact that we are one, and people know they are talking to both of us if they talk to one of us.
The only secrets we keep are when planning surprise trips or something of that nature. And then it’s not a secret for long anyway.
From a ministry perspective, we pretty much do most things together anyway…so confidentiality issues don’t exist. If they did, we’d likely follow the lead you guys have done. But I can’t see us doing that at the moment. ‘Course God might have different ideas.
I keep secrets when I am ask to – most of my friends know I tell my wife everything so if they want it kept from her, they tell me. If they ask me not to say anything – to be on the safe side I generally ask if it is okay to talk about it with my wife. If they say no – I don’t tell her.
On the other hand, I keep my share of secrets. For example, bible study in the AM is a meeting. Many of my life group study material are kept at work to study during lunch. My radio stations are all tuned to secular radio stations but I can tune to a Christian station by simply moving the change with a quick seek one direction or the other, etc. It is not like I hide my faith; I have a bible on my night stand, one in the car, go to church, etc. I don’t know… a secret none-the-less.
Something I’ve learned in ministry is that there are some things you SHOULD keep to yourself.
Without going into a lot of details, one thing that I’ve experienced is that if you “vent” too much about even little frustrations, my wife holds on to them a whole lot longer than I do. I’ll vent, get over it, and move on…and she holds on to them forever basically stacking up a mountain of discontent, frustration, and eventually bitterness over stuff that I’ve long since moved on from. SHE takes it personally.
One of the small parts of our move has everything to do with this scenario. We’re moving on from the church ministry job that I absolutely love and have no problems with because I goofed up and shared too many LITTLE frustrations with her. No need for all that.
You might be thinking, “well, maybe your wife should learn to handle things more patiently and better than she has…” and while I’m sure there is a small bit of truth to that, she is THE MOST patient, sweetest, beautiful soul of a person that I have ever known.
It basically comes back to me.
I have a friend of many years that I think used to keep our conversations to himself. I am friends with he and his wife and something has changed in their relationship the past few years and he started sharing more with her and she is constantly repeating or asking me about things I told him alone. He has even forwarded my emails to her.
Many of these things are things I would share with her if it came up – so they are not exactly secrets, but if I had wanted them both to know, I would have brought it up when we were together. I have decided to stop confiding in this friend as I don’t feel respected or that I can trust him anymore.
I have brought it up a few times and it still goes on. But not anymore – I have control over this situation – but am saddened to lose this aspect of our friendship.
I have shared things with my husband but after a few times of him doing the same thing and bringing things up to my friend, I stopped sharing with him. All MY secrets seemed to be safe, but he lost his judgement when it came to others. I valued my friends and their privacy so stopped sharing. I guess I am hurt that my friend has not afforded me the same courtesy.