Have you ever kept a secret from a spouse or a partner?
I’m not talking about a small thing, but something big, dark, and scandalous?
Well if you have, you’re not alone…not by a long shot.
What’s the darkest thing you’ve kept from a partner?
AskReddit users opened up.
1. Kinky.
“For most of my early 20s I used a fetish hookup website.
I have done some real weird s**t just to see if it did anything for me. A lot of it did but it wasn’t particularly safe and I dodged a bullet not contracting STDs.
I made a lot of amateur p**n during this time and then a gf and I joined an amateurs content sharing site Zoig and made a bunch more.
She knows I’m kinky but I did some pretty f**king weird s**t.”
2. High anxiety.
“I have anxiety attacks when my SO is away.
We joke about me believing he’s d**d when I don’t hear from him often enough, but it’s real. Like hyperventilating, heart racing, crying, rocking back and forth-real.
He loves going on roadtrips and does landscape photography. I can’t ruin that for him.”
3. Who else is out there?
“I keep having creeping thoughts of myself with other people.
I don’t like them, I don’t want those thoughts, but they happen regardless.”
4. Addiction.
“Kept a mild coke addiction from him, then later the start of what would be a very long h addiction (we broke up before it came what it did).
I’d had the personality for it, but never saw an actual dependency coming so I think it was more of a light personal secret/not all the time thing for me at the time.
4 months & 15 days sober so that’s good I guess.”
5. Wandering eye.
“I’m in love with my partner and I’m codependent but I find myself attracted to so many other women it gives me second thoughts all the time.
I feel like a jerk.”
6. Wow.
“I’m an IV drug user on and off.
I work long contracts in isolation far away from home and I use a lot when I’m away. I clean up when I’m going home so my wife can’t tell but I’m still not quite 100% when I’m home with her.
She’s struggling with stuff and it breaks my heart I can’t meet her needs but I need this job to pay for our future. I’m trying to quit the drugs, it’s easy when I’m home but as soon as I’m alone in this stupid little hole in the wall for work 4 weeks at a time I’m back to using. I don’t know how to tell her.”
7. Struggles.
“My girlfriend soon to be fiancé has no idea of my extreme mental health struggle in the past how I used to be medicated and even checked myself into a hospital when I was extremely s**cidal from said medications.
I’ve since been fine and haven’t had a issue of anxiety or depression in years BUT it still hurts me knowing my brain could be so dark.
When she talks about depression or anxiety she just doesn’t understand because she’s never had to deal with it.
So I’ve kept it to myself to not put my old burden on her. Maybe one day I’ll bring it up.”
8. Hard times.
“I’m thinking of divorce. My wife is scared of me.
If I am working on something and I swear or vent my frustration. She runs to me (usually I am alone) and wants to know how to fix it.
Then she leaves the house when I say I am just mad that: I burned my hand. Toilet is clogged. I stripped a screw and need to drill it out.
She told me this weekend that when I am mad she gets scared, and that just broke something in me since I can’t fully process it.
I don’t know why, I have never even raised my voice to her. But she cringes and covers her ears whenever a loud noise occurs. I spoke to my parents and friends, they think it sounds like she has been a**sed in the past.
But she doesn’t want to talk about it, and when we disagree we don’t even get to argue. She just locks herself away from me and our kids.
We are in marriage counselling because I haven’t been happy for a long time. But she was arguing with the Therapist about what I really feel and how I should take vacations alone since I have had panic attacks on vacation before and that ruins them for me (or maybe her).
I don’t know what to do, but I am tired of walking on eggshells.”
9. Can’t tell him.
“How bad my last s**cide attempt was before meeting him the next year. I had a full meltdown in my apartment and took all of my pain meds (chronic patient).
I was so high I sent out business-like emails and wrote my will on a Wendy’s napkin. I started convulsing and got in the bathtub. I was afraid to leave a mess for anyone who found me. I ripped down the shower curtain to line the tub and climbed in with my favorite blanket and stuffed animals.
I sobbed and thought about everything in my life that bothered me. I just laid there for God knows how long drinking s**tty vodka and fading in and out. I apparently responded to some of the messages from my love interest at the time and my best friend. She noticed my wording was weird and not at all like how I normally write. She called me and threatened to call EMS.
She told me I had to throw them up or she would call my dad too, who lived 2 streets over. I’m terrified of inconveniencing people so I threw it all up. She took her mom’s truck without permission and drove to my apartment an hour away while on the phone with me. I don’t remember much but I woke up feeling horrible in the ER.
The nurse said she ran into the lobby carrying me and screaming I wasn’t breathing. It must’ve been 100% adrenaline because she’s 8 inches shorter than me, and I’m not light. It was bad to say the least.
My husband knows I tried to hurt myself by overdosing but I told him it didn’t work and my best friend tucked me into bed. I don’t have the heart to tell him the truth.”
10. Terrible.
“That the real root of my trust issues stem from how I was s**ually assaulted by my extremely religious godparents’ son when I was 11-12.
It first started out with comments about my body, how I was “filling out”, then it evolved from there. My parents would send me to their house for whole summers and I particularly remember that one, my mom came to visit and I practically begged her to take me home.
She adamantly refused even after I told her I was not comfortable and was scared and she still left me with them. I guess from there I just slowly stopped trusting the ones closest to me.”
11. Nerd alert!
“I f**king H**E D and D.
It bores me to f**king tears.
Yet I’ve orchestrates an elaborate lie that gives the illusion I love it as much as he does and once a month I have to spend 5 hours sitting through a session bored to tears.
I do this simply because its one of the few hobbies in his life he gets to enjoy and I want him to have someone to play it with.
It’s been going on for 5 years now, and I have no way out lol
It’s OK though, the amount of joy I see he gets from playing it gives me comparable joy. So I don’t mind that much.”
12. Dark thoughts.
“I suffer from chronic depression.
My SO is super sweet and supportive, but I am afraid of unloading too much of my crazy on him.
I keep dark thoughts and feelings from him all the time, I’d make him miserable if I didn’t.”
13. Uh oh.
“Her father once told me if he could go back in time, he would never have dated her mother and have kids with her. Was pretty shocking thing to hear while on vacation with the whole step family.
The guy has Asperger’s. Weird family. The girl left me cold turkey a few months later after 7 years together, and I still didn’t even think about telling her that story.”
14. Don’t say a word.
“I never told my wife that her mother tried to have s** with me.
It was early in our marriage when we were living with her to save money for our own place.
Her marriage of 28 years had ended badly and she was emotionally fragile. She was very drunk and was absolutely horrified at what she had done when she sobered up. I promised not to ever tell my wife and I never did, even when she and I were fighting near the end of our marriage.
Some things are too cruel to do, even when you’re trying to hurt each other.”
15. Wow.
“I hooked up with a professor of mine in college and after that she would pimp me out to her colleagues.
That’s not the label she would have given it, but that’s what it was.”
16. Rough.
“I was born with only one hand. I have rheumatoid arthritis in the one hand I have, and I know it’s spreading.
I have osteoarthritis in my lower back and scoliosis to the point where I am most likely going to need spine surgery. I’m only 31 years old. I can’t do this for another 50+ years. I am in such bad pain now and it’s only going to get worse.
I have thought of s**cide but I can’t do that to my husband and kids. I don’t want my husband to turn into a care giver. I can’t envision not being able to take care of myself.”
17. Still afraid.
“I had a total mental breakdown in 2017 caused by stress.
Never told anyone, it’s the worst my mental health has ever been and I’m afraid of getting like that again and not getting help.”
18. Sad.
“She’s my ex now, but, she had just revealed to me some very, uh, confidential information, info I understand I’m one of only four people to know.
She asked me if I have any deep secrets like that. I lied and told her I didn’t, but the truth is, my grandmother by marriage (no blood relation) s**ually harassed and a**sed me as a preteen and teenager.
Literally nobody knows. I’ve never told anyone.”
19. Don’t tell him.
“He wanted to find a shark tooth so badly after I found one at the beach.
So I went and bought a small bottle of shark teeth from the gift shop, spread them out all over a strip of beach we were hanging at and marveled at every shark tooth he brought me.
I can never tell him the truth.”
20. The old days.
“How bad of a person I used to be before I met her.
She knows I was into the drugs and some other dumb stuff, but she doesn’t know the depths of depravity I delved to in order to fit in with the people I mistakenly wasted my time with.”
21. Mardi Gras.
“I’m from south Louisiana and my dad is in a Mardi Gras Crew. Every year he’s on a float throwing beads.
My husband has never been to Mardi Gras so his first time he was so excited and it was at my dad’s parade. Normally people on the floats throw the “good beads” to kids or women that will flash them.
I told my husband that if you yell “throw me something mister!” loud enough the people on the float will give you the “good beads.”
I told my dad and he told his float buddies, when their float came around my husband was screaming like a banshee “THROW ME SOMETHING MISTER!”
My dad and his friend pelted my husband with their best beads. When we were leaving the parade my husband was flexing all his nice new beads and thinks Mardi Gras is the best thing ever.
Didn’t have the heart to tell him that I told my dad to do that. He just thinks that because he was so enthusiastic, he got all the good stuff.”
22. Take care of yourself.
“S**cidal ideation.
I’m a really introverted person, and talking about things doesn’t really help me. I live a blessed life for the most part, but in the last couple years I’ve become really jaded. I’m not suffering, more that I just don’t see the point of continuing; everything is just grey.
I took out a really good private life insurance policy a couple years ago, and it covers s**cide (My policies suicide clause and contestability provision is up), so they’ll be taken care of for life.
I took the last year as a sabbatical and Ive spent it entirely with my wife and kids, just making memories and doing the things I enjoy.”
23. The secret.
“I was s**ually a**sed throughout my entire childhood and early teens.
I’ve told one person this that I got close to earlier and I woke up with her gone from my apartment. It really messed me up since I trusted that woman.
Now I live with my beautiful SO and never felt better but I always have this thought In my head. I feel like it’s something you should tell the girl you intend to marry but not sure if I’ll ever have the guts to do it.”
24. Better now.
“Declining mental health and an everyday drug addiction.
I wish I hadn’t been so good at hiding it.
I needed help.
Now I am A-okay! It took some serious legal trouble and a ‘rock-bottom’ episode to snap out of it and begin to get my life back on track.
Things have been improving since November 2017. Thank you.”
Have you kept anything dark from your partner?
Tell us about it in the comments.
We’d love to hear from you!
