Someone Asked, ‘What’s A Secret You’ll Never Tell Your Partner?’, 40 People Delivered

We managed to get in touch with Bisexual_Space_Lover, and the Redditor didn't expect the post would blow up the way it did.

"I randomly watched a video from 2021 where someone posted a Q&A asking their followers to anonymously confess their deepest secrets. Then I scrolled through Reddit and just kept thinking about the replies and just decided to post the question on r/AskReddit," they told Bored Panda.

"Most posts there don't gain much popularity ... so I thought that maybe it'll get 1 or 2 replies and left it at that. Came back 1 hour later and jeez, I saw over 100 replies! I read through all of them and sheesh, some [entries really] concerned me. I upvoted and commented on a few of the replies and continued with my day. I came back the following day and was surprised at the number of upvotes."

According to Sari Cooper, an AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist, & Director of Center for Love and Sex, a boutique practice specializing in sex therapy issues in New York City, infidelity, substance abuse, pornography use, and considering leaving one's partner are the types of secrets that frequently arise in sex therapy and couples counseling.

"Partners keep a variety of secrets from their partners for many expected and at times surprising reasons," Cooper explained on Psychology Today. "They may feel something is too taboo to discuss—like marital problems, financial issues, sexual preferences, or their own or their partner's mental health and addiction issues. They may have broken their sexual exclusivity or monogamy agreement in a long-term committed relationship or marriage. And they may omit information or outright lie about topics like their physical health, their previous sexual partners, or beliefs on death or religion."

"In my practice, I often see major changes in family dynamics because some family members know only a part of a secret—without knowing it is only part of the secret—which makes those who know the full secret cautious and distant for fear that the rest of the secret may accidentally come tumbling out," the therapist said.

"For example, I have worked with men whose secret of seeing sex workers get discovered by their female partners. A wife who discovered her husband’s past secret sexual alliances with sex workers disclosed this secret only to one of her siblings while her parents, her other siblings, and her partner’s entire family were kept in the dark. She did this so that she didn’t feel so lonely with the betrayal, which naturally devastated her emotionally."

Bisexual_Space_Lover believes that it's probably impossible to go through life without keeping a single secret.

"Some of the comments made me reflect on my own life and some made me think of things that happened in my past. I'm not in a relationship so I didn't have much reason to comment," the Redditor said.

"I don't think that [it's possible to fully reveal yourself to another person], there are lots of people who have taken many secrets to their graves."

However, is something really a secret if the person keeping it is not experiencing anxiety, rumination, or guilt? Indeed, Cooper said there is a difference between keeping secrets and maintaining privacy.

Privacy is not bad for a person's physical or emotional health, while secrets can impact a person's well-being and decision-making. And privacy, rather than secrecy, can be healthy not only for the emotional but also for the erotic intimacy of a relationship or marriage.

"An existential anxiety provoking many people is that they’ll never fully know everything about their partner and alternatively, they won’t ever be fully known by them either. This dilemma of unknowingness and the fact that we change continually throughout our lifetime is the fear that many partners try to conquer through demanding full disclosure in their relationships, and this quest for knowing all can cause suffering and disappointment," Cooper noted.

So maybe we should stop expecting to know everything about our loved ones?