How bad are secrets in a relationship? That’s what I’ve been wondering ever since I saw The Drama, the slightly silly if slickly entertaining Zendaya and Robert Pattinson vehicle about what happens when you discover an unimagined side to someone you thought you knew completely.
We all keep secrets – a small study published in January found that respondents had, on average, nine types of secret squirrelled away (stuff you’d expect: lies they’d told, romantic desires, sexual behaviours, money). The most important ones crossed their minds on average every two hours, with a potentially negative effect on psychological wellbeing.
In a relationship context, though, I don’t think they’re necessarily bad. Secrecy is sexy, isn’t it? A relationship spicer-upper; or, at least, a way of shielding your partner from the grim knowledge of your fungal nail infection or, far worse, your crush on Boris Johnson (a recent article in the Cut suggesting that openly sharing crushes with your other half was healthy horrified me). I approve, in principle, of the French notion that it’s psychologically healthy to have a “jardin secret”, a hinterland that is no one’s business but your own (no surprise from the language that gave us “mystique” and “frisson”). What kind of emotionally incontinent baby needs to tell their other half everything?
In reality, though, I’ve known my husband for more than 30 years and we effectively share a single brain at this point – good or bad, there isn’t much we don’t know about each other. I realise I’m tempting fate here by declaring I couldn’t be blindsided by a startling revelation like Pattinson’s character, but I’m saying it anyway: there’s absolutely no way. I had to keep someone else’s secret from him for a few weeks earlier this year and it felt wrong and deeply uncomfortable. I don’t want to do that again. Actually, my biggest, guiltiest secret currently is that, as soon as he goes out, I turn off our obnoxiously loud robot vacuum cleaner and then let him assume it’s malfunctioned. Now I’ve busted myself on that (and I suspect he knew anyway). My jardin secret is a barren patio.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
