The New Year found me doing honey-do items yesterday. Among the honey-do items was fixing the gate to the chicken yard. The task would’ve been easier had it not been for me being down on my knees in chicken droppings. Although I’ve learned many lessons about chickens from them, I still find being surrounded by their droppings an unpleasant situation. Even simple tasks of using hand tools turns unpleasant when you’re surrounded by chicken droppings.
This incident came to mind on reading a recent column where a newly married wife asked the ‘expert’ about whether or not she should admit to the affairs she had prior to their marriage. She used the term ‘bullshit’ affairs. I suppose that to her they were ‘no big deal, but when you’re married it’s no longer ‘all about you alone’. As the lives of both of you come together, so do your experiences and your past histories. Given that the expert often promotes sexual licentiousness, it’s no wonder that he would view affairs like that.
Whether or not her affairs amounted to a pile of fresh meadow muffins depends on who you are and what kind of marriage you want (I’ll go into that in a moment). To her husband, I am sure that the ‘affairs’ were important. Knowing about them matters to him. She may consider them meaningless, but now that she is his wife, they are important to him.
Whether or not an affair was a ‘bullshit affair’ depends on whether you’re the one that had it or the spouse of the one who had the affair.
I mentioned ‘what kind of marriage’ since how you handle those affairs do matter. If you subscribe to the idea that the two of you become one, where there is a mutual claims on each other, then the affairs do matter. Although they are long past, being honest about them gives the two of you an opportunity for some closer intimacy. Yes, it is scary admitting to such things and being vulnerable, but that is what is needed in marriage.
Part of intimacy involves the intertwining of your emotions, your dreams and your past histories. Weaving two lives together turns difficult when you leave off your past histories.
On the other hand, if you view marriage as more of a roommate situation, where they two of you share the same space, but maintain separate lives, then what’s theirs is theirs and what’s yours is yours. In such cases, it becomes important to compartmentalize the past. In some cases, you may have to devalue or detoxify the past before compartmentalizing it.
The down side to the roommate model is that it limits the trust that can develop between the two of you. When you cut off the past, you limit your intimacy. Although my preference is to have maximum intimacy, some of you may have settled for a segmented intimacy where the past is segregated from the present.
Whatever happened in your past, you can take steps that promote healing. Sharing your past, when done correctly promotes healing. You no longer have to carry that burden alone. When you can share your shames, hurts and fears with your spouse, it makes life’s journey easier.
The “How Can I Trust You Again?” webinar can help you with this kind of healing. Trust is important. Keeping secrets in the dark corners of your mind damages trust.
Although the recovery community often says, “You’re as sick as your secrets”, I prefer the saying that “The more the secrets, the less the trust”. Over time, I’ve discovered that there is a relationship between secrets and trust. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.
Rather than start your year off with limited trust and settling for a level of tolerable intimacy and trust, you can instead have a marriage where your trust is solid and dependable.
Best Regards,
Jeff
