I’ve always thought that in a relationship one needs to be completely open and transparent in order to foster trust and confidence. Secrets are thus not allowed, especially when love is involved.
I have recently come to a conclusion that the above principle has a limited absoluteness. Yes, trust is paramount, but it’s not 100% dependent on transaprency and total openness. What is more important is how much you can rely on the other person and vice versa.
Unless there is space for secrets, then there’s no freedom of individuality. For example, if I get to know a secret which I am told by a family member, but am confided in not telling the secret to my partner. If I tell the secret to my partner, then I breach the confidence of the family member, yet if I don’t tell it, will my partner, my wife in my case take this as a sign of mistrust? In my case I told my partner that there’s something I cannot tell, and she agreed.
And this goes both ways, there must be places of freedom, hence secrets that my wife has and are not for me to be known.
Eventually she has to have the right to keep things to herself, if the nature of the secrets is such that they are not against me. Will I know whether they are against me? No. But, I can trust. If our love is true, the trust will be kept even when I’m neither informed nor will be informed about it in the future. If our love is not true, and if trust cannot be kept if not all information is shared, then that’s not trust and then that’s no love. So, it’s a decision to be potentially sacrifised for the sake of true love.
This presuposes a bigger truth in life and that is the fact that we never know everything. Nature keeps secrets from us, we keep discovering things about ourselves, we learn new things about old things. All because we are not omniconsicous. Nor can we convey everything. So, should we really strive to always tell everything when that is not possible anyways?
I sometimes thought sincerety is above all values, and I still think so, but I don’t think anymore it’s insincere to keep some things to myself, and vice versa, to be kept some things from myself.