Paradox of trust and secrets

A woman discovered her husband’s affair following the death of his mother and unleashed a kind of a rebelliousness against the constraints that he had put on himself and that they had put on him. When asked what particularly hurt her, sexually speaking, the husband talked about how he only could experience pleasure with her if she was the initiator, if she was active. If she can experience the drive of masculinity, he feels less passive, less imposed upon, less having to surrender to an all powerful woman, but that he has basically, for 20+ years, held back. We had 2 chairs: one chair of inhibition / disclaimed, disqualified self; the other chair of man when he’s confident and reaching out to her and he’s in touch with his desire. What was her hurt? That the one time he actually had that unbridled lustful desire he was more able to experience pleasure with the other person, it going to someone else. That is what she was jealous of.

We may ask the question: Are you cheating? But our partner is not obliged to answer. In every relationship, there are parts of ourselves that are communicated and parts that are excommunicated. We may want to question the degree to which we see fidelity as a kind of transparency (an open book, truth telling – no secrets) can have consequences on the sexuality of the couple. The more fearful the partners are and the more threatened they are by the other person’s autonomy, the less there will be overlap. It’s paradoxical: the more I sense that my separateness threatens you, the less I am likely to talk to you, the more you are likely to think I am hiding things from you, the more I am likely to find that you are being intrusive, the more I will hold things back, the more you will feel that I am being distant from you, holding from me and why don’t you talk to me and tell me everything and I don’t tell you because you don’t listen to the things that I will tell you that you may not be comfortable with. And so I’ll curtail my openness in order to protect you, when in fact you will not be protected because you will experience my curtailing as what is threatening to you. A Dance.

Trust is having the capacity to know you don’t know everything. If you need to know everything, you don’t trust … definition of autonomy. They need to be able to tolerate what they don’t know. You have a right to ask, but I’m not always sure you can expect an answer.