According to many research and statistics, you shouldn't - if you value your marriage.
Secrets are not your friend
According to CBN.com article, "The Secret to a Healthy Marriage? Don’t Keep Secrets!" - Paula Friedrichsen writes, "When it comes to marriage, secrets are like arsenic; tiny amounts may not be deadly, but if ingested repeatedly arsenic can be lethal."
She earlier wrote, "Honesty and transparency marked the beginning of the restoration of our marriage. Although I never intended to deceive my husband and become involved with another man, my undoing was in keeping secrets from him. What began as little secrets, evolved into bigger secrets, finally progressing to giant secrets..."
You see the trust you must have for a healthy marriage is in itself built on openness, transparency, honesty and communication.
If you falter in any of these, the potential to alter the closeness and friendship of your relationship may start slow, but drastically speed up the process of marital decay.
Results of keeping secrets
Secrets is not hiding small bits of information, keeping secrets of any size or any information can deteriorate and eventually shatter your marriage! Why? Because marriage is built mainly one one element that is fragile, yet tough - trust.
Another surprising result of keeping secrets in your marriage and relationship is the physical results - your body actually feels the negative effects of keeping a secret!
According to Gail Saltz, MD, a psychoanalyst in private practice and clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill-Cornell School of Medicine and author of five books, including Anatomy of a Secret Life (Morgan Road) and The Ripple Effect: How Better Sex Can Lead to a Better Life (Rodale), in a Bottom Line Secrets/Health interview she wrote, "Even if a secret isn’t carried to the extreme of creating a secret life, keeping secrets provokes inner conflict. Should you conceal or reveal -- and if you do reveal your secret, to whom? This conflict inevitably leads to anxiety and endless worry... Living in this state can produce sustained stress that may contribute to various health problems, including digestive problems, headaches, back pain and high blood pressure. If you’re prone to depression, chronic stress makes you all the more vulnerable."
Secrets are secrets whether little or big
In his article "Why keeping secrets in a marriage can cause a breakup", Todd Daigneault writes, "Secrecy can build suspicion between two marital partners... Although he or she, themselves, may also have secrets of their own, a definitive reaction of mistrust, suspicion, confusion and befuddlement usually follows."
As marriages go, it's not as the saying goes, "The ends justifies the means," but quite the opposite - It's all about the means; how you get to the ends, that will determine the outcome of your marriage.
I was recently reported that 25% (Quarter) of American couples keep financial secrets from their spouse.
Conclusion
No matter how you slice it, secrets in your marriage is bad, bad, bad. There comes a point to where there really is no justification in continuing secrets in your marriage.
A Discovery Fit & Health article reports, "David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, also at the University of Texas, has found that secrets cause the brain to kind of fight with itself. One part of the brain wants to tell the secret and the other wants to keep it hidden. Writing down secrets has shown to relieve this stress on the brain by releasing stress hormones, while holding secrets in keeps the stress ever-present [source: Eagleman]."
And the same article also reports, "Keeping a secret often becomes less about protecting people and more about becoming overly preoccupied with the "thing" or maintaining the double, secret life. It takes over as an "unhealthy obsession" for our own secrets and those we keep for others [source: Jaffe]. It can be a lot of work to maintain and live that way."
We simply cannot list all of the items and examples of what secrets may be, but if you understand and apply the main principle, that secrets are not healthy for you, your body and especially your marriage relationship, then it should be a fairly easy case-by-case assessment whether you should talk to your partner or not about a situation, action or event.
As we say in our book, radio show and whenever possible, "keep it real!"
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