TMI

I just added mine at the bottom of his...Dee.

1. Don't tell us what it is, but do you have a sexual secret you have never told anyone?

I would have to say no… I don’t have a sexual secret I’ve never told anyone, since (as far as I know) I’ve shared everything with Dee. However, I will qualify this by saying I strongly suspect that Dee probably doesn’t feel that way.

First, I think it’s human nature to suspect that someone we are close to is harboring secrets – I think that, in a way, we’re all somewhat suspicious by nature. Sometimes those suspicions bring about full-blown jealousy, but more often than not this suspicion is something we take as a matter of course, and doesn’t affect our lives or relationships. For example, I suspect that Dee fakes it more often than I know, but… I could be wrong, and for the most part (to coin the phrase) what I don’t know doesn’t hurt me.

Second, in sharing my “whatever” (thoughts, feelings, opinions…) with Dee, I know I sometimes fail to adequately communicate as well as I would hope to. In failing to do so, I think there are times when the same subject arises at a later date, and by doing a better (or worse) job of communicating what I think is the same thought, it’s entirely possible that the perceived change in what I’m saying might indicate to Dee that I wasn’t completely honest earlier, or that this time around I’m hiding something.

Finally, I think that sometimes what I would identify as the most critical or important piece of information conveyed may not be received or identified as such by Dee. For example, I gave her my answers to an extensive questionnaire – my “Christmas Gift” to her, previously identified in this blog – and I’m sure that if you asked me to highlight the top three or four pieces of information I wanted her to know – and remember, and asked her to highlight the three or four she thought I’d pick (or that she herself feels is most important and remembered most), you’d end up with two fantastically different answers. And so it is that, two years down the road, she might say to me “this is how I feel” (repeating something she had said before and felt was important, but which I heard, thought incidental, and failed to commit to memory), only to be hurt and upset when my response is “why haven’t I heard this before? I thought we didn’t have any secrets!”

And I think that every couple has these same issues, to a greater or lesser degree. And for myself, I think Dee an I are very much on the lesser end of that particular bell curve, but these things do still happen from time to time.

I always say my life is an open book. And this is, essentially, the truth. I just cannot keep secrets. They always leak out, especially when I've had a little bit to drink. I want to keep secrets. But I never manage it. Though I have been pretty good at compartmentalizing. DH knows everything about me. My friends, however, typically do not. I can do without the wrath of middle aged judgmental women! Sad but true.

2. Do you have a nonsexual secret you have never told anyone?

I can honestly say I don’t have any secrets. There are a great number of things that I’ve shared with Dee… and nobody else – but there is nothing I can think of that I’ve never told anyone. Having said that, I’m sure there is something, somewhere, at some time in my past, that I haven’t shared with anyone (including Dee), but it isn’t anything important, as even I don’t recall what it might be.

I can pretty much keep a sexual secret from most people. But nonsexual secrets? Forget about it. My friends know that to tell me something is to tell the world.

3. Did you ever tell someone a secret only to have them spill it? What were the repercussions?

It’s a funny thing about secrets… the way the salient details slip your mind as time passes. I’m absolutely sure I’ve shared secrets with others, only to have that confidence betrayed – that I can remember, and I can remember that I was embarrassed by it. But the experience was years ago, and I don’t have the first clue what the revealed secrets actually were, or why I was embarrassed.

As ironic as it is, even though I can't keep a secret I expect other people to keep them. I tell people stuff all the time that I don't want repeated and DUH! What do you think happens? This happens on a professional level as well as a social level. And yet, I never learn!

4. Did you ever spill a secret someone told you? What were the repercussions?

I’m sure that I have spilled a secret or two, but I honestly can’t recall having done so, and any secrets spilled would have either been inadvertently revealed or spilled long, long ago. When it comes to matters of confidence, such as the sharing of a secret, I value the trust others place in me above almost all else, so keeping secrets is very important to me (unless there is a very good reason not to). As I’ve shared with Dee, even in a (thus far hypothetical) situation where our daughter confided in me (in a don’t-tell-mom scenario), I would keep that confidence unless there was a valid reason not to (and then I’d tell her straight off that mom needs to know). And in the same way, I value the trust Dee puts in me as far as taking the right road (to tell or not to tell) if I were confronted with such a scenario.

Well of course I have! And quite honestly, the repercussions are usually not nearly as bad as expected. I believe knowledge is power and open communication can cure a whole lot of things. If people just came out and said what was on their minds, the world would be a better place. I'm convinced of it. DH would disagree, I'm sure.

5. Tell us a secret someone told you, however along ago, that you've never told. (You can disguise name or details)

I can’t think of any secret to respond with here – the salient details of previous confidences (a/k/a those told to be “BD” – “Before Dee”) have been lost with the passage of time. The only secrets I can recall are Dee’s, which I’m not about to share... though, come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure that there’s anything I know about Dee that really, truly IS a secret – as she says, her life is an open book, so I’m not sure there’s anything about her that I’m the only one who knows.

Hmmm...Can't think of anything anyone told me that I haven't told someone about. Though that is a gift onto itself. If I am told something, and nothing happens with it for a week, I will have completely forgotten it. Thereby ensuring the safe haven of the secret, locked in my very forgetful brain!