Intimacy, as related (or unrelated) to privacy and secret-keeping

[flexagon]

A poll, LJ friends, inspired by recent discussions with my husband. You can probably guess where I most naturally stand on the following issue, but I want to ask you... and, ironically, yes I was asked to write this post. So:

Thinking about intimacy -- imagining someone you feel really close to, a lover, a spouse, or someone imaginary who represents whatever your highest ideal of intimacy is -- is it important that there are private things only known to the two of you?

Another word for these private things is "secrets". So we could also say secrets -- is intimacy associated with secrets? -- although some people would talk about privacy or specialness instead.

One view: no, it's an awfully fragile intimacy that breaks just because someone else sees it.

Another view: yes, some things that happen between people are special and private, and the relationship benefits from having some things unshared.

[Poll #1936110]

Points to consider: what about a whole relationship that's kept secret? Ever had one of those friends who's only your friend in private but wouldn't talk to you at school? Or, as an adult, someone who was attracted to you, maybe even your lover, in private but not in public? How does that relate to your thoughts about intimacy in those relationships? Unrelated to whether some secrets are necessary, is it necessary to have some things publicly known, as well? Why are weddings most often a public event done in front of family and friends?

Comments

[randysmith]

It's not that there are specific things that I only share with a particular partner and would be devastated if anyone else found out as that things that I talk about with someone and not with other people is a major mark, for me, of my intimacy with that person.

There *are* things that feel wrong to me not to share. I won't say that "must" be known publically; I'm a substantially bigger compromiser than that. But someone who's friends with/intimate with me in private but not willing to admit that in some social space grates on me over time. (This has happened--I once dated someone for a while that wasn't willing to be out about it in the main social context we shared. I understood their reasons for that, but over time it didn't feel good.)

[nahele-101.livejournal.com]

Interesting question...I have secrets that were shared with only one person or another. Usually these were based upon shared experiences. I think in those cases it can be a form of intimacy. Sharing that openly defeats the intimacy that occured and bonded you and another person together.

The Redhead and I have "in" jokes that definitely enhance our intimacy. "looking for the cookware" whenever a tent is set up for instance. Its not something we would share openly with others (but this is LJ-land.) She has revealed some very painful things to me in the past. To violate her trust in those matters would be a violation of her trust in me.

I think intimacy and trust go hand in hand. If you violate the trust, you often make it so the other person can't be open with you. Therefore losing the closeness you enjoyed.

Never had a whole relationship kept secret so I can't discuss that.
Never would be friends with someone who wouldn't openly be my friend (its a pride thing yo...I kinda rock.)
Never had a secret lover but I imagine having one is enhanced a bit by "NOBODY KNOWS THAT I AM BOINKING YOU IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM..."

I think weddings are public due to the historical connection of bonding two families together. The daughter was being passed onto a new family. It was important for the village to know that some cows and sheep were being swapped and the property associated with her now belongs to the new family. Something like that.

Anyways, I think some private stuff between two people enhances intimacy because it shows/provides a safe space to share openly. I know when my relationship with the Penguin Girl was dying, we lost that space and it hurt. It was the beginning of the death throws of that relationship.

Especially when thinking of past relationships that have ended, its not only the booty I miss, but being allowed into the depths of that person's mind and life.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

I answered "Yes", but I think the emphasis in the question is off. If there's a person P I am really close to, I generally spend a lot of time with them. If I spend a lot of time with P, there will be things about "us" that only we know, because otherwise I would have to spend a large constant fraction of the time I spend with P telling someone else about me and P, and that's certainly not going to happen. So even if we don't explicitly keep secrets, the information bottleneck implies some privacy.

I'm in general against secret relationships or people who are only friends with me in some situations, but not so strongly that it's an absolute deal-breaker.

[melebeth]

Interesting. I feel basically the same way, but I said no because the fact that my partner and share things that others don't know isn't inherent to my conception of an intimate relationship. It happens, because we are intimate. We are not intimate because we have information that happens not to be shared.

Interestingly, I do feel as though my partner sharing certain (non-sexual) activities I think of as being OURS can impinge on my sense of our intimacy, but that's a different axis.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I basically totally agree. Maybe I answered wrong.

[melebeth]

Or possibly I did. I found it interesting that the same viewpoint led to opposite answer choices. This is why writing good multiple choice questions is so hard!

[coraline]

i think i was cueing off of flexagon's language around "does making any given secret non-exclusive decrease intimacy" rather than "does possessing a set of secrets imply/increase intimacy"?

i have very few deliberate secrets, but many more unshared inside jokes or exclusive stories, any given one of which i'd probably be happy to explain to someone outside that dyad, but which taken as a whole are part of the emotional intimacy of that dyad.

[triesticity.livejournal.com]

I feel this way, too - like there will be things between me and a partner that other people don't know, but it is a function of the amount of time my partner and I spend together, and isn't "inherent to my conception of an intimate relationship."

[coraline]

Thank you for writing out the thing i was thinking but too tired to type in yesterday.

same here

[elbren]

though I was framing it as "if a relationship is actually intimate, it's going to have secrets" - just because, if you know someone well, you're going to get things about them that others just don't - same for being known. it's not a secret like "I could tell you but I won't" it's a secret like an unexplainable mystery (in the religious, not genre fiction, sense)

[a-kosmos.livejournal.com]

My answer is that "it's complicated."

Did you ever see the movie "Smoke Signals" where a woman describes her relationship to a man as "we kept each other's secrets"? I suspect that that is a lot of what I think about secrets. There are things that for one reason or another need to be between two people: friends, lovers, spouses, whatever. There are things about the Bear that I would never tell anyone; there are things about mutual friends that I'd never tell the Bear.

At the same time, I also think that there are the secrets that are yours and yours alone. Some might be comparatively minor and somemight be more significant.

[taegubcrusade.livejournal.com]

My "complicated" answer, as briefly as I can summarize it:

Intimacy, for me, is defined by the ability and opportunity to be fully honest and fully present with someone. As such, if I'm intimate with someone, we almost certainly have shared secrets, whether accidental or purposeful, but those secrets are a byproduct of the intimacy and not a requirement or inherent characteristic.

[ellenclaire.livejournal.com]

This. Yep.