I am going to give some examples of how everyone can be hurt by the policy of always telling other people’s secrets to a spouse, or repeating what other people have said.
I referred to my hurt when, as an adolescent, I shared a secret with a married woman who was a mentor to me and I found out she had told her husband. She and her husband were leaders of my youth group, and I told her that I had a crush on one of the boys. Silly, right? From the point of view of an adult, I don’t see it as any big deal that her husband knew. But I was 12 then! It embarrassed and hurt me. And even as an adult looking at it from an adult point of view, I still say that there was no reason her husband needed to know about a nice litle girl’s crush on a nice boy her own age.
Then there was the time my husband came home and told me that he had found his good friend’s stash of online pornography. This man was also my friend, someone very dear to my heart although we were not close the way he and my husband were. I was horrified, and very angry to be told! I did not want to think of our friend that way. If I had found out something like that when I was younger and, like many young women, a bit self-righteous about men’s sexual sins, it would have completely altered my opinion of our friend for the worse, possibly even spoiled the friendship. Fortunately, at that time in my life it did not have that effect and I felt only compassion for him, but I was humiliated for him, too. I felt sort of the way I might have felt if I had walked in on him in bed with a girl.
Then there was the season in my marriage when my husband’s behavior toward me was wrong and causing me a great deal of pain. I longed to confide in a particular woman friend, if only so she could understand my obvious sadness. I did not because I was afraid she would tell her husband. Now, I really like her husband and think the world of him, and if it had been my intimate secret alone that I was sharing, I wouldn’t have minded him knowing it. But he was friends with my husband, and however hurt I was by my husband’s behavior, I did not want him to be lowered in the eyes of his friends. So I never did tell that woman.
As for repeating negative things people say about a spouse: There is more at stake than hurting the spouse’s feelings. Relationships are destroyed that way! Most of us say petulant, hurtful things about other people sometimes – when we’re tired, in a bad mood, angry at the person, or just not thinking. A careless word spoken in a bad moment – an insult we might not even have meant, or something we might come to see as wrong – gets repeated, and it may not be forgotten. Not only could it hurt a sensitive person for a very long time, it could result in a fight out of proportion to the real intentions of the one who spoke carelessly. I know this because I am now, after two and a half years, attempting to repair relationships with in-laws that were almost completely destroyed by people saying things they shouldn’t have and not minding their business. My husband repeated hurtful words to me that led me first to mistrust his family, then to view all their actions and words through a haze of hurt feelings, and finally to cut off contact.
There are times when people start to tell us things and we should just cut them off and say no, I don’t need to hear this, it isn’t appropriate. No, you will not insult my wife to me. No – if you have a problem with my husband, you will talk to him about it, or to both of us together. No, if I need to know this secret, your friend should tell me himself, or tell you that he doesn’t mind you telling me.
Of course there are exceptions, but there is no obligation that I am aware of in scripture or Church tradition to reveal another person’s shame to your spouse in order to – what? Shoot the breeze? Try to get closer to your spouse by parsing other people’s intimate junk? Before saying anything, we really should – and none of us do this all the time, including me – ask ourselves, Why am I repeating this?
I look at it this way. My woman friends might be comfortable enough to change clothes in front of me, but I have no reason and no right to describe their bodies to my husband just because we share “everything”. Sharing another person’s intimate secrets without need is the emotional equivalent of talking about that person’s fat tummy, saggy breasts, or hysterectomy scar. I have no right to expose my friends’ imperfections, pain, and tender, intimate feelings.
The truth is that spouses *don’t *share everything. We wear different clothes, have different tastes, different memories, different feelings, and different souls, because although we are one flesh in some mystical sense, we are still different people who on Judgment Day will be judged as individuals.
