Secrets From a Spouse

What’s so great about this question is the underlying assumption that a married couple is so interconnected and close, that the expectation is that they share everything; thus making it unfair of the parent to burden the child with a secret that may come between the adult child and the spouse!

So let’s check this out, because how true is that statement that a couple must share everything, that unshared information creates a burden on the marriage, and that it would be unfair for individuals to place that kind of burden on a couple?

How true, you ask? I say, “Utter nonsense!”

But it seems too simple to sweep away the question altogether because there is some merit to the dilemma posed.

And there are two parts to this: Should a parent share information that must be kept a secret; and is it a given that all information—secret or not— must be shared with a spouse?

Let’s look at the conundrum from different angles.

Take a couple that is happily married. Married for about a year. And the mother is shmoozing with her daughter, Sarale, and says, “Don’t tell anyone but Uncle Shmuel is getting engaged tonight to a lovely woman. Isn’t that nice? He has been so lonely since Tante Chava was niftar.”

True, the mother should not have mentioned anything to her daughter to begin with, because if it was supposed to be a secret until that evening, for whatever reason, telling her daughter meant violating someone else’s trust.

But she did tell (even though Uncle Shmuel probably told her, “Don’t tell anyone but I am proposing tonight to a lovely woman…) and now Sarale’s husband walks into the door and of course the first thing she wants to do is burst out with the wonderful news.

The answer is NO. It is not her secret to tell. And anyway, they will find out in a few hours the official news. Unless the lovely woman turns him down. And then for sure it’s best if nobody needs to gossip about it.

“Oh my goodness!” you are thinking. “How is this going to affect her marriage, keeping secrets from him?”

You are properly horrified because YOU tell your husband everything! Everything!

And imagine if her husband finds out at the vort (from his mother-in-law, of course!) that Sarale had known all day about the great news and hadn’t let him know. Won’t he be hurt that she withheld such momentous news from him? I mean, Uncle Shmuel is his family now, too!

It’s all in the attitude, in how we view information, gossip, and secrets in our lives.

I learned something very, very, very important five years ago from my daughter. I only have one. She was the kind of daughter that walked into the door every single day after school and didn’t stop talking. I knew every singe detail about her life. No secrets. There was nothing she wouldn’t share and I loved listening to her. There was nothing she could not tell. And there was also nothing I could not hear.

She grew up into a wonderful adult and she continued to share.

Once, she was in the car with a close family member. The cell phone rang and a doctor informed that family member that the tests results had come in, with a cancer diagnosis. My daughter came home, to my home where she lived, and did not say a word. Weeks later, when my family member broke the news to me, and also told me my daughter had been in the car when she got the news, I confronted my daughter in hysterics. “How could you not have told me?” I demanded.

She looked confused, “Ma,” she said. “It was not my news to share.”

It was a powerful lesson.

When she married, our relationship has not deteriorated with her adult realization to sort  her information;  what she shares with me all the time (every time her one year old says, “Duck.”), the stuff she would never tell me (you can figure that out) , and the kind of things she tells me only at the right time (when her sister-in-law is getting engaged).

As a matter of fact, the relationship has only improved, knowing how trustworthy and intelligent she is.

When a marriage—or any relationship—is based on sharing indiscriminately, it speaks of the flimsiness of a relationship, not its depth.

But this is when the parent asks the adult child to withhold information—about Uncle Shmuel—for a short time,  for something unimportant in the long run. Ultimately, the spouse will learn the information so it’s not technically a secret from him; or it’s so unimportant that he could not care less (Your father left to Eretz Yisroel for Lag B’Omer? Hey, why didn’t you tell me?)

But what if the parent asks the child to withhold information indefinitely from her husband? Or never reveal it at a ll? About serious or important stuff? (Your little brother has just been diagnosed with autism, your sister Chanie is having a hard time financially, Totty is having a little surgery)

It would depend on what the information is, why the secrecy, and the consequences of keeping the secret from the spouse.

In general, it would prudent for a parent not burden an adult child with information that is not his or her place to know in the first place. Like personal troubles, be it financial or marital, or about other siblings. A parent that shares inappropriately with a child lacks boundaries that usually spills over to other areas of his or her life. There should not be information that secretive shared with a child. A parent should have other people in his or her life with whom he can share private thoughts, feelings,  and happenings too private to share with a son-in-law or daughter-in-law; because technically, as close as a child is to a parent, the in-law child is almost just as close—or should be. In a healthy relationship, there is that expectation of unity, of one-ness in a marriage. Every parent wishes that for her child.

In that case, if information is shared, why can’t the spouse know about it?

If the adult child has a good marriage, a parent would understand that any pain needs to be shared in order to tolerate distress. If the child has a troubled marriage, the parent lacks good sense in commanding secrecy. The adult child will either make a determination to divulge or withhold the information from his or her spouse based on the circumstances.

If information cannot be shared because it is directly related to the spouse, as in how the mother had an argument with the machateinesteh and doesn’t want her son-in-law to know about it, obviously she lacks parenting skills—necessary even when dealing with adult children—by telling her daughter the gory details of the argument.

So if this article is asking if a parent should share information that is asked to be then withheld from a spouse, the answer is no. If the information is gossip, it should not be shared even with the child herself! But if this article is addressing the expectation that anything told to one spouse is automatically expected to be public information in the marriage, the answer is absolutely no as well.

The dilemma should not be whether or not an adult child can share information to to him in confidence by his parent—or anyone else—but what would be the consequences in withholding that information.

Is the information important for the spouse to know? Or, is it simply that the spouse is such a yenta that s/he takes offense at not being up to date on family gossip and community scandals?

Why would a wife need to tell her husband about an argument their mothers had? If he finds out and asks why she didn’t tell him,  it should suffice to say to him, “I didn’t want your relationship with my mother to be affected because she loves you a lot.”

Is there a specific reason her husband needs to know about the argument?

When in doubt, a rav to pasken such a shaila is only a phone call away.

The same would hold true if a parent criticizes her child’s spouse. And then says, “But don’t tell your wife I said that!”

Of course the parent would be grossly wrong to say that to her son.

I wonder how much stupider it would be for the son to share that with his wife.

It is not only when a parent confides in a child and requests privacy in him not revealing the information to his spouse, that we must respect that; but it is when anybody confides in a friend or workmate or sibling or cousin, then it is clear that he does not want the friend’s husband or sibling’s wife to know this information (even without names!).

This extends outwardly even more so when people confide in rabbis, teachers, or community askanim. Why exactly should the spouses of these people be allowed to have access to the information? Will you have me believe that people who spend their lives helping others have such superficial marriages that they cannot tolerate the decency of their own spouses respecting the privacy of others?

And this applies even more specifically to people whose very jobs legally mandate confidentiality, such as therapists.

As a mother to my married children, I learned very early on that to deepen a relationship whose rules have changed in regard to what we should and should not share, I would never tell my child not to share what we talk about with his or her spouse (unless I am planning on surprising my daughter in law with a birthday gift!); on the other hand, I respect my children’s privacy not to share what they ask me to keep confidential from their siblings, my other children (somebody is always expecting and expecting me not to burst out with the news until forever!).

As parents we may sometimes have the challenge of being asked by children to withhold some private information from the other parent. A parent may have to explain to the child the ramifications of keeping that secret, and why it cannot be withheld from her or his father. Standing between a rock and a hard place, one would ask a shaila, a shailas chochom. But not simply ignore the child’s—or parent’s—request for confidentiality. That is not acceptable.

Another related issue may be adult children pitting one parent against the next by confiding in one parent and saying, “But don’t tell Mommy!” For this scenario not to occur, an underpinning of a strong marital relationship would be necessary, and even more, positive parent-child relationships in which children feel their parents’ relationship as their safety net; one in which there are no parenting secrets between spouses, in which a child feel strongly that both parents are working together in his best interests.

This relationship does not kick in automatically when the children become adults and marry. Parents usually should be on the same page and involved together in whatever is going on in their children’s lives in ways that it would not happen that a parent needs to promise to keep secrets about her own child from her spouse (and I’m not talking about the screeches of “Don’t tell Totty that I potched Malky and I didn’t eat supper and I didn’t do my homework!” and my answering screeches of “If you say I’m sorry to Malky and finish eating and do your homework right now then I won’t tell Totty!”)

We may be best friends and share most of our lives, but there are limitations. My clients’ confidences are sacrament. Random confidences shared by friends, family, or others are not mine to share. And he most definitely feels the same way about things told to him in confidence.

Got it?

Good.

Our little secret.

Originally published in Binah Magazine