Advantages & Disadvantages of Keeping Secrets

Source: Unsplash by Austin Distel

  

I have realized that most of the things that tear family, relationships, and friendship apart are keeping secrets. Secrets are everywhere. People do keep their secrets for one or two reasons.

 

 

So, before going that deep with the disadvantages of keeping secrets let first start by talking about the reasons why people may keep secrets.

 

 Reasons why people keep secrets. 

These are the reasons why people keep secrets;

1.  To avoid shame.

People have things that revealing to anyone will ruin their reputation. We all know how it feels like when you are involved in something that no one would expect to find you in such a situation. 

I remember I used to keep secrets about my grades when I was in high school. I used to hold them from my parents especially when I really did fail terribly. My parents have always known me to be a smart kid. Good grades were my definition.

 

 

So, the picture of me standing before my dad and telling him that I failed the midterm exams would never cross my mind. I felt so shameful of myself. The thing that I would do is to make sure that next time I do better than that.

 

 

You see the situation I was in. The people who have a positive view of their image, they wouldn’t want that to be destroyed. I don’t get surprised with those people who keep secrets. There was a moment in my country Kenya when you would be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS people would isolate you and stigmatize you.

 

 

This came along with the shame that one will feel. So, most people would completely keep their status a secret and suffer silently. We all know how people will start to look at you when you reveal to them that you have been diagnosed with such a disease.

 

 2.     People keep secrets to protect their love.

There are some secrets that if you share with the people you love you will be on the verge of losing them. Not everything people can be able to share with their lovers. Let me share with you this incident that my friend went through. From this short story, you will understand why people keep secrets to protect their love interests.

 

 

I have a friend I will not share his name. He came to me with a very tricky situation and he wanted me to help him out.

 

“Hey Ali, I have been a friend with a certain chick just across the streets. We have been friends for almost a year. We were so much close to the extent it happened that we had sex. Not once but several times. 

The truth is that we don’t feel attached to each other. I think we only did it for fun. A month ago I came across her friend who was so amazing.

 

 

She introduced me to her and it happened that we liked each other a lot. From my observation, I knew her friend and I had so much in common. I used to communicate with her most of the time and she would come over to my place. 

There is something still haunting me. I really don’t know what to do. I feel like revealing everything that happened to her I might lose her.

 

 

Which kind of a person will she think of me? Ali, I will keep it a secret because I really love this girl.”

 

 

You get the situation that my friend was in. It will be so difficult to tell her the truth about what happened. He will be forced to keep it a secret so that he doesn’t end up losing her. I never advised him to keep it a secret though.

 

 

I told him to her the truth because she deserved to know the truth. After she has known the truth then it will be a choice to stay with him or to walk away.

 

 3.     People will keep secrets to hide their true identity.

People who around you are not exactly who you see they are. There are different behaviors that people exhibit before the public and when they are in private. Some of the people’s identity is portrayed by the things they do in the private. 

That is why people will keep secrets of what they do in private to preserve their identity.

 

 

The things that these people might be involving themselves may be dangerous. They fear that if people find out about their true identity will come to the surface. If a person has an identity that conveys him negatively to people the people he/she care about then he will be forced to keep his or her identity a secret. These are the kind of people who you will never understand.

 

In one minute they behave in this way and the next they are completely off the grid. If you knew that your true identity will keep people you love and care about away from you, will risk that? If it were me, I wouldn’t risk that. I will die with my secrets.

 

Nothing hurts so much than being lonely. I hope you now understand why people keep secrets.

 

 4.     People keep secrets because some are way heavy for anyone to carry.

There are some things that are so heavy for anyone to carry. They can result in an emotional breakdown and cause a very serious problem to someone’s health. That is exactly why some people wouldn’t risk revealing their secrets to the people they love. 

Everyone feels guilty for hiding something but this guilt may be intensified even more when; a person shares something and it turned out that what he or she shared kept the situation more worst.

 

 

You don’t have to dig so much into people live if they don’t want to share everything with you. They may be doing that to protect you. As long as what they hide from you doesn’t hurt you in any way there is no need to get angry about that. 

A person who loves you and cares about you knows everything about what he or she holds in her/his head.

 

We have people who can keep secret the work they do for a living from their kids. I have seen this happening. The main reason is that they don’t want their kids to carry the burden of their parents. I would make the same choice if I was in such a situation just to protect the people I love.

 

 

You have to understand that sharing everything even the darker parts of you need so much for that.

 Are secrets good to keep?

Keeping secrets from the people you love and care about isn't good. It will do you more harm than good. Secrets aren't good to keep for anyone who wants to have a happy and free lifestyle. Secrets will only add another burden to your shoulder.

Secrets aren’t good to keep. No one should keep secrets no matter how incriminating they may be. You have to be honest about everything to the people you love. Reveal everything to them and it’s something huge let them help you to handle it.

 

Keeping secrets is like carrying all the burdens on your own. The weights of the secrets will wreck you down. What I recommend for you, is to share everything with the people you trust and care about. Let them decide for themselves whether they will stay or walk away. It’s not your part to make that decision for them.

 

 

In fact, sharing your secrets with the people you love and care about makes you feel so closer to them. It enhances the trust and strengthens the bond amongst you. This makes life more interesting. Lift the burden on your shoulder and walk happily. That is what a healthy lifestyle is all about.

 

 

If you will insist on keeping secrets, these are the disadvantages you have to know.

 Disadvantages of keeping secrets.

There are so many disadvantages of keeping secrets. Which I have clearly elaborated on in this article. Get enlightened right now!

 

 

 It is very good to keep some things hidden from the people you love and care about when you know that you revealing it to them will actually endanger your relationship with them. 

We all have some issues that we did a long time ago that we have never divulged to anyone. This is because of the fear we have concerning the consequences on the people you value.

 

 

If you have never kept any secret to the folks you love, believe me, at one point in your life you will find yourself doing so. Some people may not afford to lie; they will prefer to keep secrets than lying. Lying may seem to be something very easier to some people but lies are very dangerous than secrets.

Secrets have their benefits and disadvantages too. Today I’ll talk about the disadvantages of keeping secrets. I know you fully understand that every relationship, friendship, or family has its own secrets. Believe it or not, your parents will never tell you everything that goes on in your family. The lover you have right now also has secrets that he or she can never dare to talk about with you.

 

People have their own intention; it may be because of selfish reasons why someone keeps secrets. Some people will be keeping secrets to protect the relationship they have with the people they care about. We have some things we cannot forgive for anyone who did them.

 

 We may claim to be most forgiving but these mistakes that our closest people did any they kept them a secret they know that it is unbearable for you to handle. Don’t be too curious sometimes to find out what the folks you love are hiding from you. It may be better for you.

Take what you have been given and appreciate, don’t seek to know more, it may break you in a way that you have never imagined. I’m not trying to say that keeping secrets is good, but we have to let some things the way they are for the best of our own souls.

 

 

 Apart from what I have just talked about; for the best of our own relationships, you have to understand that secrets have a perilous effect, not on the people we love and care about but also on our own personality.

Here are the disadvantages of keeping secrets from people you love;

 1. You will not be free.

 

Keeping secrets will mold you to something different. Your relationship with the people you love won’t be effective as it used to be in the first place. This will happen because you will be distant from the people you love. You will be too afraid that you engaging too much with them will make you open up whatever you will be having in your mind.

This will make you short of words and most of the time you will find yourself secluded from your family, friends, or lovers. 

The secrets will make a great barrier for you to enjoy any time you have with the folks you love. Look how bad it will be. You will be in a state that no one can take you out of it than pouring out what you have in your heart.

You will be so much terrified of how people will react towards you if they find out that you have been keeping secrets from them. You will be existing physically in front but physically and emotionally you will far away from them.

 

 I know you know how it feels when you have stolen something from your parent and you have it in your mouth and you don’t want them to notice that you have hidden it in your mouth. 

The state you will be acting before them, do you think will make you free from saying anything? It will deprive you of so much freedom. This is exactly the same thing that will apply to you if you end up keeping secrets from the people you love and care about.

 2. Secrets will deprive you of happiness.

The moment you are no longer free to the people you love and care about you will miss doing a lot of things with them. You will not hang out with them as you used to, you will not have a deeper conversation with them as you used to. This will distant you from the people you love and keep you very far away from them.

 

The secrets will isolate you, and we all know what isolation means, it is loneliness, with loneliness you will never find happiness in yourself. Happiness stems from within before it spreads to someone else. 

So, if you have limitations within you, how will happiness find its way out of you?

You will be haunted by your own soul. Something will be driving you to speak out about what you have been hiding, and you will be holding it back. The push and pull that will be going on in your heart will create chaos within you and make you feel confused. 

You will lack internal peace, you feel lost in some ways and this might drive you deep into your darkest place you have never thought of. These are sufficient details on how these secrets can take away your happiness.

 

Secrets are everywhere; we have people who have the heart to carry the burden of holding thousands of secrets without feeling anything haunting them or feeling guilty. These kinds of people have situated their lives in such a way for a very long time. 

We all know that we cannot be good at anything without practicing on it. These kinds of people may have iron-hearts. We have people who cannot manage to keep any secrets because the secrets will crush them into pieces. So, identify which kind of person are you before thinking of keeping secrets.

 

You also have to check out what effects do the secrets have on the people you love before keeping them. If the secrets have a treacherous effect on the people you love, it worth it for you to open up and tell them what you know than thinking you are protecting them, but you will be losing them.

 

 It is very good to check out the secrets you are keeping. For example, someone is infected with a contagious disease in your family and you fail to tell your relatives about it. It will turn up to be a disaster as he or she will infect others with such a disease, and this will turn out to be a massacre.

3. Secrets will break your relationship

As I said earlier that keeping secrets can distant you away from the people you love. When this happens it's obvious that your relationship with the people you love will deteriorate negatively. Your bond with the people you love will decrease.

As the bond between you and the people you love decreases your relationship will be on the verge of collapsing. This is because what holds a relationship to be strong is how strong is the connection between the two people.

If the bond will be destroyed so will be the relationship.

Another thing is that, if the person you love finds out that you have been keeping secrets from him or her he will get mad. This will bring conflicts and fight in that relationship. As we all know relationships will never survive with constant conflicts.

If the conflicts go on for a long time without being resolved then this will eventually lead to the termination of it.

So, this is another disadvantage of keeping secrets that you should take note of. 

4. Keeping secrets will bring trust issues in a relationship.

This is another disadvantage of keeping secrets you should know. 

Do you think your partner will be happy if he or she realizes that you have been keeping secrets from him or her? 

How do you think he or she will react when he or she gets to know that you have been hiding things from him?

If a person shares everything with you in a relationship and you end up doing the opposite of that then you will end up ruining the trust you have.

He or she will hardly trust you again if he or she realizes that you have been keeping things away from him or her.

You will take all the reasons she or he had to trust you again. No matter how good you are at keeping secrets he or she will eventually find out and you will screw up everything.

Advantages of  Keeping Secrets.

These are the advantages of keeping secrets;

1. Keeping secrets enables you to make things right before the person you care about finds out.

There are some situations that when we find ourselves in we will have to keep secrets from the people we care about.

For instance, if you did something wrong and you know that it wasn't your fault at all and telling the people you care about that you did something wrong might ruin your reputation and eventually destroying the relationship, then in this case you will have to keep the secret.

Keeping secrets from them will enable you to fix the mess you did so that when they come to find out you are already on the positive side.

2. Keeping secrets at times protect your relatioship.

It's true that keeping secrets from the people you care about can result in the destruction of your relationship but sometimes keeping secrets can save your relationship.

There are some things that when you share with your partner or family will destroy your relationship.

Let us say, you stole a large amount of money from your father, fortunately, he is not aware that there is a certain amount of money missing in his bank account. 

You obviously know that if you tell your father the truth then you might end up being cut off and he might even disown you.

In this case, you will have to keep it a secret for the sake of protecting your relationship with your father. 

You will figure out later on, how you will make it up to him so that the guilt washes away.

Another example, if you cheated on your girlfriend and you know that she is very sensitive and telling her the truth might crash her into pieces and make her life messy then the better thing to do is to keep the secret for the sake of your relationship.

3. Keeping secrets helps you to be a cautious person.

People who keep secrets are always very cautious about everything they choose to do and say.

In most cases, they restrict themselves not to talk so much and share so much because of the secret that they are carrying.

This usually goes that way until this behavior becomes part of who they are.

It will reach a point that before they say anything they will think twice if it's something to be shared or not.

So, if you have the habit of keeping secrets this will develop to be one of your features.

You will be a very cautious person and being cautious is very helpful in the current world that we are living in.

To conclude; there are two main kinds of states in that secrets can be categorized. We have secrets that have no effect on keeping them, and we have secrets that have dangerous effects on you and the people you love and heed about.

  

The kind of secrets to keep is of these states; when you know that the secrets will affect the relationship with the people you love and yet the secrets don’t have any negative effect on them. 

I have to tell you that if you want to have a good relationship with the people you love and care about, you should avoid things that will make you keep any secrets between you and them. Secrets tear apart relationships.

Do you find it positive to keep secrets from the people you love?

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