I kept my best relationship ever a secret for a year

Two years ago, I was at a crossroads. I had met the woman I thought was my perfect partner, and after initially not wanting anything serious, we decided to take the plunge into a committed romantic relationship. To this day, she is the best partner I've ever had – but that doesn't change the fact that I decided to keep my entire year with her a secret.

While I was 26, she was 18 years older, 44. Before I could process what was happening, I realized that I only wanted to tell select friends that we were together. No family members, certainly no family gatherings, no big Instagram stints… in fact, looking at my social media profile, you'd think I'd been single my whole life. My now ex-girlfriend thought I was ashamed of our age difference, but that couldn't have been further from the truth.

Whether it was a fleeting fling, a difficult situation, or an incredibly healthy and loving partnership like this one, I've always chosen to keep my relationships private. It's a choice I made before I was even aware of the feeling, and I've never really been able to describe why. If I'm honest, our age difference was a big reason for our split – but it was also more than that. I kept things secret because I was driven by an inexplicable fear of how I would be perceived by others in every way, although the age difference didn't make that any easier.

One feeling that has often crossed my mind is whether I'm alone in this. Keeping a romantic partner secret from the world feels more like something befitting a war melodrama or a Shakespearean tragedy, but clandestine relationships may be more common than we think. While we can easily find statistics on how many of us condemn clandestine affairs, numbers on secret relationships are much harder to find (for obvious reasons).

Typically, this means not telling friends and family about a partner, keeping intimacy secret, and generally keeping little information about one's relationship with the public. LGBTQIA+ relationships are the most common victims of this, although it wasn't an issue in my own situation. When there's so much pressure to conform to a more accepted sexuality, it's easy to understand why some couples prefer to stay in the closet and keep quiet.

This all sounds harsh, but things can be much more complicated than they seem. Whether our thoughts are harmless or harmful – I believe they can be both – secret relationships exist at all stages of life, only the circumstances change.

For many, the most obvious time to keep a partner a secret is during school. From disapproving parents to peer pressure, teenagers and young adults not only feel uncomfortable, easily embarrassed and like the world is against them, but also that they are not good enough. We have seen this on screen (just think of Marianne and Connell in Normal people), and we all probably have similar stories from our own school days (as you can probably imagine, I have plenty of them).

But what happens when these feelings continue into adulthood and more serious relationships and we want to stick it out for the long haul? Natasha, 26, agrees: “I didn't want to keep my partner a secret, but I think after we split up and got back together, I was reticent. Maybe I didn't say it because I wasn't sure the problems between us had gone away.”

“At first I thought I would tell my parents, but then the problems between me and my partner got worse and I felt isolated. I'm not ashamed, but sometimes you feel the fear of the people around you about how bad things are.” Natasha and her partner are currently still together.

Psychotherapist Livia Shepherd explains why she thinks adults behave this way: “When people keep a relationship secret, they are almost always trying to avoid negative judgments from others – the basis for this can be relational, societal and cultural structures and identities.”

“They avoid possible interference, conflict, confrontation, and fear of rejection or commitment can be a strong factor in what they share with others. Protecting themselves, their partner, and the relationship from harm is the primary motivation.”

Continue reading

In my own situation, protection and rejection were key. By trying to protect myself from the judgement of others, my partner felt like she wasn't a priority, even though she was to me. I often used the analogy of parallel train tracks – they ran alongside each other, complementing each other, and occasionally crossing when possible.

While this type of secret relationship had its downsides, it also had unexpected positives. I felt like we were able to keep ourselves first and foremost, allowing each other to grow while also doing the big things in life that we would otherwise have neglected. My partner took longer to come to terms with how we functioned and seems to remember just as much bad as good.

But Shepherd says, “Having a 'secret' can lead to a loss of self-esteem and a power imbalance within the relationship. The relationship is in its own bubble, which means it has some unreal qualities and ultimately makes it less viable. A person may be conflicted about their perception of themselves and how others perceive them. If the relationship represents this difference, this may be a reason to keep it secret.”

Regardless of the reason, I realize that keeping a secret about someone you love is no easy task, and that there will almost always be consequences for you and the other person. There can be a huge disconnect between why you don't say anything and how your partner interprets the silence. But while these are hard realizations, sometimes the pain can lead to better things.

Now I'm single and out of my secret relationship – which ended two years ago – I'm more confident than ever about my boundaries and what I can offer a partner. Like a stone in a stone polisher, this secrecy put pressure on me to find those answers.

I won't keep my next partner to myself, but a secret relationship has definitely made me better at loving in the long run. Keeping things secret forces you to confront your priorities and who you really are as a partner – if you don't like what you see, like I did, you have no choice but to do something about it.