40 People Reveal The Deep Secrets They’ve Kept From Their Partners For Years

Sometimes we feel a desire to "unburden ourselves" to someone we just started dating. But they aren't necessarily interested in a long-term relationship and/or feeling obliged to keep our secrets. Trying to connect with another person but keeping a healthy distance can be tricky.

Dating coach Hayley Quinn, who helps men and women to build confidence and get their mojo back, told Bored Panda that "it's good to be authentic with people we meet, and be our 'true selves' so we can work out if there's a connection. However, you can miss the mark of authenticity and crash land into oversharing if you do this before you've had a chance to build trust."

To explain her point, Quinn invited us to imagine revealing our deepest, darkest secret to the barista who serves us our morning coffee. "You wouldn't do it, right? With social relationships we have to phase into openness and before we share, make sure the other person is on the same page. Make sure you check out if they're happy with where the conversation is going by making statements like 'let me know if I'm going off on a tangent here' or 'you can tell me if this is too much information for date 2.' This also brings levity to the interaction. Finally, make sure that interaction is 2-sided. You don't want to dump all your emotions on a person without being willing to also hear them out."

According to Sheri Stritof's article on VeryWell Mind, which has been reviewed and approved by psychiatrist Carly Snyder, we do not have to share everything with another person if things get serious as well. We have the right to privacy in any relationship, including with our spouse, partner, and family. In a healthy commitment, both parties have to acknowledge the sense of emotional and physical privacy needed for their mental well-being, otherwise, ironically, a couple ends up limiting their intimacy with one another, not enhancing it.

Hayley Quinn agrees to this line of thinking. "Being in a relationship is not a contract to disclose everything about our lives. For a lot of people it's important to have built a degree of trust before being candid: you may not want to tell someone about your past on date 1, but by 2 months in you may feel more comfortable to be open," she said.

"The important question to ask yourself when it comes to when and if you should disclose information is whether it would make a material difference to the relationship today. Things like health conditions, criminal records, children all will have a bearing on whether someone is happy to continue building a relationship with you. Also remember that ultimately you need acceptance from your partner, so rather than fearing you're going to put them off, prioritize instead finding someone that supports you totally."

Secrets that can hurt your marriage are ones concerning:

• Having an affair;
• Job problems;
• Keeping an addiction or substance use habits hidden;
• Legal problems;
• Lending money;
• Lying about how you spend money;
• Not paying bills;
• Not revealing an illness;
• Seeing family and friends secretly.

But there are some things you might consider keeping to yourself, like:

• The exact number of people you've slept with;
• How great your ex was;
• Finding your partner's best friend really hot;
• Hating someone in their family or close friend circle.

At the end of the day, every couple decides where to draw the line. They both, however, need to play by the same rules.