Why Family Secrets Drive Your Children Mad

Deception can be tremendously harmful. Family secrets literally drive children mad. Let’s talk about the experience of being asked as newlyweds to keep secrets from their partner.

We all have desires. We wish to be a better partner, to be taller, wealthier, and so on.   Lies connect your fantasy self to who you actually are. You try to bridge the gap between them.

A popular lie is that we are passionate beings who make rational choices.  Yet, the choices we make are rarely logical. Studies using brain scanners, and other technology, show that most choices are made without conscious awareness.

Present a fashion conscious person a bag made by a high end brand and tests show her brain  lights up as if she were about to have sex with her fantasy heartthrob.

It’s not just women who are wired like this.  Men’s buttons are probably more easily  pressed.

In one day we are lied to ten to two hundred times, according to some sources.   Most of these are white lies. Think of two strangers. They have only known each other for ten minutes. They have already lied to each other three times. You are more likely to lie to strangers. Extraverts lie more than introverts.

An average married couple will lie to each other once every ten interactions. An unmarried couple will lie once every three interactions.

Therapists know these statistics. They also know about the harm pretence causes to self esteem, health, and happiness.

When powerful figures in a family have done bad things  they don’t wish them to be known.

Almost anyone in a combat zone does things that are inconceivable to when living in times of peace.

Ordinary peaceful people will, in crowds, riot and loot in some circumstances. It is a human tendency to follow the masses, even when the majority is wrong.

Movies are full of examples in which people marry for the bad reasons. Tragedies occur because relationships continue between those who were already in love.

Real life is even more complicated . . .

There is a cost when family secrets; these kinds of unresolved action, and their consequences, are hidden from family members.

Nevertheless, relatives will feel them.

A simple example is when a child, let’s say a daughter, is born out of wedlock. She is brought up by a married sister believing herself to be a natural daughter.

It cannot understand why her ‘father’ treats her differently to siblings.

Eventually, during a fight when the child is rebelling during adolescence the secret spills out with awful consequences.

When there are unresolved traumas carried down the generations transitions in the family life cycle become problematic.

All too often the extended family of newlyweds want to hide stories of illegitimate children, affairs, chronic illnesses, suicide, prison sentences, and other painful events.

In doing so, the cycle of dishonesty continues.

Testing The Loyalty Of Newly Weds

Families where the ancestors had suffered experiences like acrimonious divorce, migration, exclusion, humiliation, neglect and abuse, become overprotective of their members whilst being overcautious in accepting in-laws.

Like many of my clients my husband and me also suffered from our respective families’ difficulty in accepting our partners.

At the beginning, on the surface all seemed well; everybody was polite, kind and seemingly accepting.

Yet as soon as there has been a sensitive issue, like decision making on property, reorganisation following the death of a parent or a financial crisis, all the fears and negative projections passed down from the ancestors were activated.

I was criticised many times by my family for not collaborating on their scapegoating gossip.

They would say: ‘You are the problem, you should not tell everything to your husband.’

This kind of expectation splits the couple by asking each partner to keep secrets from the other.

This is a way of testing the loyalty of brides and grooms to their families of origin.

The implied question is:  ‘Are you more a member of this family or your new family?’

Often when partners are faced with this dark dilemma they cannot recognise what is happening. The way they try to deal with this situation may cause havoc for the couple.

How To Respond When Asked To Keep Family Secrets

When we are faced with family secrets, our aim is to heal the effects of the past traumas leading to suspicious exclusions whilst protecting our bonds to our partners as well as to our family of origins.

Not an easy task, but possible!

Ibn’i Arabi says: ‘Wherever there is a problem there is the idea of separation’.

A peaceful answer when asked to keep secrets from one’s partner would be ‘I ask you not to tell me anything I can’t share with my husband/wife’.

Secrets originating in past generations are more difficult to resolve.

You may not know the root cause of your behaviour, or that of your immediate relatives, yet something is unspoken.

Competent Family Therapists diligently take family histories, drawing family trees to highlight the areas in families where little is known, or discussed.

Using Ho’oponopono is also a very powerful way of staying loyal to one’s partner as well as one’s family whilst healing the past.

Click through to my article about the power of Ho’oponopono to learn more.

Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)image:Robert Spiegel

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