Mya Williams: Keeping Your Secrets Secret

I have always marveled at people that talk about sharing their secrets with friends and confidants and those of the like. Now, I understand one will always have one or two people you can confide in and share the happenings of your life with, I also have one of them, but I do think this should be only ONE person really. However, if it is a “secret”, especially those deep and probably dark ones, then I must assume that its revelation will most likely have grave consequences and maybe you shouldn’t be sharing it at all.

Personally I belong to the school of thought that one should keep their secrets to themselves, no matter what. Yes, share sensitive stuff you need to get off your chest with a trusted party; sibling, best friend etc but once sensitive crosses over to potentially life altering or irreversible consequences, please keep this information to yourself and yourself only! My rationale for this is very simple – people talk! And once a secret is shared, it has been disseminated and will surely be distributed; it’s a very simple law if you think about it. Even your very best friend, from childhood, who never meant to hurt you, may find his or herself telling another very close friend of hers that so so and so happened to so. It may also just come up as “ah, the same thing happened to my friend, -insert name-, she …..” Depending on what the gravity of the situation will be if a particular secret gets out, please keep it completely to yourself.

Let me share a story I heard recently. All I could think of when I heard the story was OMG! Two friends visited a close friend (to be referred to henceforth as the “host”) one day at her house. While they were gisting, the host’s husband came home from work and joined them. The host had recently become close with another girl who she met through a mutual friend of theirs. For whatever reason, this new friend was very keen on her friendship with the host; she was always at her house, giving her gist, sometimes even did odd jobs for her. Anyway, this new friend, let’s call her Michelle, had a “best friend” of many years (since secondary school) who was in their wider group of friends and they all knew as well, but they didn’t hang with her as often. Let’s call the best friend Fifi.

As the gist hit boiling point, the host dropped the bomb “hmmn you guys won’t believe what Michelle just told me, she you know Fifi is engaged and getting married next month but guess what? She’s gotten pregnant by her ex and she’s now running up and down trying to terminate it before the wedding”. At this point, my lower jaw hit the ground. For a second, ignoring what the secret was (because frankly most secrets are ugly) and just honing in on the effect its revelation would definitely have on Fifi’s engagement if it got to her fiancé, I imagined, what if these two friends and the hosts’ husband, had shared this information with other “close friends” and those ones too had shared same information with their own close friends? Fifi’s extremely delicate secret all of a sudden, would be like reading the news in the Punch Newspaper. What was funny was that, it was then relayed that the the host followed up the revelation with the ubiquitous “it’s just between us oh” and I couldn’t help but wonder to myself, Fifi must have also said that phrase to Michelle and Michelle to the host. Yet, the host has repeated it to three different people all at once. For those who might be saying to themselves “but its okay to tell your husband/wife because they are your significant other”, just answer this simple question, would you be happy if your friend told their spouse your deep dark secret and they potentially shared it with their own friends? I imagine not. If still in doubt, just refer to the movie “Why Did I Get Married”, the scene where many secrets were revealed at the dinner table, some graver than others.

Everyone has skeletons in their closets, some worse than others. All I’m saying is if you don’t want it out, please don’t share it.

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