“There are also those who keep secrets simply because they never learned how to share and communicate”

Avigail still has the letters her chassan sent her during their engagement; she can’t bring herself to toss them. The letters whisper hope and joy, they share his lofty goals of building a bayis ne’eman b’Yisrael, they paint rosy dreams for the future — a totally different picture from the reality that emerged after the wedding.

“He was sensitive and deep, and special in many ways,” Avigail recalls. “But that concealed the very serious problem he suffered from, a problem that was an absolute secret, but that made it impossible to keep living with him.

“The hardest part was finding out that he knew all along that he had a serious problem. His whole family knew. They thought marriage was a wonderful solution — as if I’d be blinded by a diamond ring.”

Today, Avigail is divorced, trying to rebuild her life and regain her trust in people after suffering a deep betrayal.

The Price of Silence

When secrets are kept, it’s not only the spouse in the dark who is hurt. Those who keep secrets pay a heavy price too.

“Keeping secrets steals a lot of emotional energy,” says Tzippy Heller, a clinical psychologist who specializes in couples and family therapy. “Studies have found a direct link between secret-keeping and stress, headaches, insomnia, anxiety, and depression. And the bigger the secret, the greater the energy needed to keep it.”

“It’s like with an avalanche: the first secret is compounded by more secrets in order to keep that first one. Maybe it doesn’t even start out as a secret. Think of a young avreich who feels that he needs to take some time off to go on trips and unwind. He might feel embarrassed — his wife is so dedicated, working and caring for the family without a break — why does he need a day off to go for a hike? None of her brothers do this.

“So he goes secretly, without telling her… and then the lies start to pile up.

“Carl Jung, a psychoanalyst, called secrets ‘psychic poison,’” she adds. “The secret keeper is afraid to speak openly, to chat freely, because he’s always on guard that perhaps the secret will get blurted out.”