I was disappointed in the movie, “It’s Complicated”. While it stared two of my favorite actors, Alec Baldwin (all crazy phone calls and chubbiness aside, I still love him) and Meryl Streep, it was unbelievable and predictable. However, there was one striking moment when Meryl Streep’s character admits to Alec Baldwin that she was complicit in their divorce, and had in fact given up on the marriage long before it ended. You can literally see the dynamic between the ex partners shift as they become more than stereotypes. They become deeper and more interesting. They become real.

 

I had so many secrets when I was little, sometimes I couldn’t sleep at night. Would my best friend find out I had invited another girl to my house for the weekend? Would my teacher discover I had cheated on a test? Would my parents discover, well, anything? It seemed at times that my job was to present a false front to the world, and keep the real flawed me hidden away. Who was the real flawed me? Selfish, jealous, competitive, not nearly as bright as I pretended to be. Sadly, that was what I believed.

 

It took me many years to peel away the layers of me and reveal the layers of secrets I had buried. I made dozens of phone calls. Contacted past boyfriends, bosses, and friends. Ad tedium, I might add. One year in my thirties was like an ongoing Catholic confessional with my parents serving as the priest. And, while they knew most of my ‘secrets’, it was a tremendous relief to be able to shed the belief that there was anything I could do to make them stop loving me.

 

Secrets keep you little and hidden. They tether you to old lies and old beliefs. When I taught weekend self-discovery seminars in the 90’s, I would open with a list of questions for participants. How many people had had affairs, how many had taken drugs, been to jail, you name it, we asked it. Whether participants revealed themselves or not was irrelevant. The point was to introduce every possible subject, which could conceivably be the topic of a secret, and let them know this was a place they could finally open up.

 

So, you might ask yourself, do I need to tell everyone my secrets? The answer is, not necessarily. Some are true intimacies to be shared with those closest to you. Some are inappropriate in the context of certain relationships and settings. So here are a few rules I try to live by now:

 

·      In your marriage, tell your partner everything. Marriage is the most self-testing and challenging relationship out there. Small secrets keep one partner in the role of parent and the other in the role of child. Bigger secrets just create separation and loneliness.

·      If you have a secret from a past relationship, confess it to the person your were in a relationship with. In person or on the phone. In this lifetime. I KNOW this one is controversial. AND it doesn’t matter if you think they already know. I am saying, from your mouth to their ears, tell them. Like it or not, there is a psychic bookmark that gets left in unfinished relationships. Finish it by telling the truth.

·      Try to live by your own moral and ethical code. Stop pretending it’s other people’s approval you need. Get your own approval by living according to your standards. If you slip up, admit it (to the appropriate person), correct it if you can, learn from it, and move on.

 

If you find any of these daunting, good! No one said the pathway to freedom was going to be easy. If you find yourself at a loss as to how to get started, don’t despair: I have a new seminar on relationships coming up in January. Make a New Years resolution and come!

 

Martha Wright is a Life Coach and seminar leader with over 20 years experience designing and teaching life skills in Fortune 500 companies around the world. She lives in Princeton NJ. Follow her on Facebook and twitter. https://www.wrightlifecoach.com.