Should you ever keep marital secrets?

Many people write to me asking for my advice about various relationship issues. I love to help, and I try to answer every email that comes my way. I do, however, worry that I sound like a broken record sometimes. It seems no matter what the problem is, the solution is almost always the same: Talk to your spouse about it.

Examples:

Q: My spouse never wants to have sex. What’s wrong?

A: I’m not sure. Have you asked him?

Q: My spouse looks at porn on the Internet, and this bothers me. What should I do?

A: Tell him that it bothers you.

Q: My spouse makes snippy comments to my friends, and this bothers me. What should I do?

A: Tell him it bothers you and ask him to please stop doing it.

Q: I’m sitting here watching the sunrise and wishing my spouse was here to share the moment. I really miss her. What should I do?

A: Tell her what you just told me.

Until very recently, I would have told you that Speaking Your Voice would solve 90 percent of your marital issues. I assumed 10 percent of the time, it might be better to shut up, though. That 10 percent included all of those times when 1) your spouse would be deeply wounded by what you had to say 2) there was no possible way to solve the problem through communication.

For instance, let’s say your spouse is very sick with a chronic health problem. You get overwhelmed with his or her care. You are exhausted. Yet, it’s not like talking to your spouse about it will improve your spouses’ health. If anything it will just make your spouse feel guilty for being sick, so it’s probably better to stay mum, right?

I’m not so sure. You see, I have my own little marital issue that falls into this realm. It’s this: for the past 7 years, I’ve been the family breadwinner. I am the provider. It’s my salary that pays our mortgage, bills, and daycare costs. It’s my salary that we save into 401Ks and 529s.

I don’t like this. It’s stressful. I worry-a lot. I wish I wasn’t the provider. Me earning so much more than him gives me more power than I care to have. And it makes me see him as weak. I don’t like seeing him as weak.

I wish my husband wasn’t a small business owner, but rather a doctor, lawyer, or some other thing that would allow him to earn more than me.

But it’s not like he can go back to school to become a lawyer, and it’s not like I truly want that, either.

It’s just one of those things. I don’t like it. I can’t fix it. I have to become at one with not liking it.

Until recently, I assumed telling him about these feelings would be just one thing: hurtful. After all, what man wants to hear his wife say, “I see you as weak, and I don’t like it.” Really. None that I know of, but I’m sure some “I’m A Weak Man and I’m Proud of It” person will comment here, telling me that I’m sexist to assume that all men like being strong. (I always welcome your comments, by the way, even the negative ones).

Anyway, the point is that it seemed pointless to talk to him about it. So I kept quiet. Yet, the longer I kept quiet, the more the tension built up inside of me. And I just have to say this: the economy certainly did not help the situation. I don’t know about you, but my 401-K lost nearly half its value in the past year. My husband is earning even less than he earned before. I’m not earning as much either.

Over the weekend I found myself in one of those “I’m irritated with my life” states. Part of it was probably caused by the fact that my husband and I had accidentally gone three weeks without sex, but part of it was definitely the fact that I just wanted to stop being so responsible for once. I wanted to be married to someone who could just take care of me for a week or so, who could say, “Don’t worry honey. I just got a $10,000 bonus. We’ll be fine.”

And my husband seemed to sense this. He actually had wanted to cuddle earlier in the day, and he never wants to cuddle.

That night, after getting our daughter to sleep, he asked, “Want to go in the hot tub with me?” I said, “Sure.”

So there we were in the hot tub. I started to relax, and before I knew it, I was telling him about how I don’t like being the provider, how it completely stresses me out, and how it makes me see him as weak.

“It’s not like I want you to do something else for a living. And even if you did do something else for a living, you still probably would not earn as much as I do. It’s just that it’s frustrating, and there’s no solution. I know this is sexist of me to say, but I don’t think women should be providers. It’s genetically backwards. Do you understand where I’m coming from?”

He turned toward me. He grabbed my left breast with his hand, and he said, “I totally understand.” Then he fondled my right breast. And then he did a crotch grab.

I thought about saying, “Don’t even think about touching my boobs while I’m talking about my feelings,” but something about the whole situation made me laugh, so I said, “Why are you so frisky?”

He said, “Because you are naked.”

And I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. The point is this: I was not sorry for talking about my feelings, even though there was no way to solve the problem. Fessing up about the situation helped to ease the tension between us and bring us closer. My husband now knows me a little better than he did before that conversation, and it feels good to be known and understood.

So I take back my earlier estimate that one should speak up 90 percent of the time. Now, I think it’s probably more like 99 percent of the time. Why not 100? Because I’m sure there’s some good reason to keep quiet that’s evading me. Perhaps you can leave a comment and let me know what it is.

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