Are you who I think you are?
Secret Lives
My friend told me this story not so long ago. It was about her grandfather who she loved fiercely. He was a big personality who had a special place in her family. He was her mother’s dad, and they called him Pappy.
Nothing unusual about him, perhaps, other than he had spent some time incarcerated for assault on another man. I can’t remember the exact details. It had been when he was younger and no one thought or spoke too much about it.
He died unexpectedly, in his 70’s, without having been sick. A heart attack, I think, and then gone. On the day of his funeral, an unknown woman rang his house wanting to know where he was. The call pulled loose the threads of the double life that Pappy had been living with a second family. The family were deeply shocked, but worst of all, they would never have an opportunity to ask him the questions they badly needed answers to.
The other story that springs to mind came to me from one of my own family. They went to university with a young man who spent several years inhabiting a false persona that extended to an elaborate back story, a fake accent, and hundreds and hundreds of lies. The young man portrayed himself as European, from a lot of money, and explained to his new friends that he was here visiting on some kind of student exchange. When he was finally unmasked, it turned out he lived an hour away, and had gone to school with people my son knew. He didn’t seem to be using the fake persona for any type of financial gain, but rather to imagine himself a different person.
There are a bunch of other stories I could share too, but some of them are current, or are just too sensitive and shocking to recount — even generically.
They all got me curious though.
Firstly, did the secret-keeper really expect to get away with it? What role does shame play in their behaviour? And what is the legacy for both the secret-keeper and the loved ones they deceive? How does it affect their lives during and after the unmasking?
I was less interested in the most obvious question — why did they do it? I imagine there are many answers to that — dissatisfaction, boredom, personal gain, need for connection, need for prestige etc. In a way, it almost doesn’t matter. It’s done. But now, what are the consequences?
Trust and the Individual
When do you make the decision you trust someone? Right at the moment you meet? Or over time as they display the “trust” signs you look for? Or do you rely on how others view them and take your cue from that?
Trust is seen as a foundational factor in how we evolve our relationships. It helps us decide how invested we’ll be and how much intimacy we will allow.
I resonate with Charles Feltman’s definition: “Trust is choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else.” As Brene Brown points out, trust is built on little moments.
And just as it is built, so can it be eroded.
Think of the little moments when you’ve gained or given trust. What does that look like for you? Is there a pattern? Research shows that certain signs, signals, and behaviours rate highly on the trust-o-meter: smiling, and people who look like us. Over a lifetime, we develop confidence in reading certain behavioural cues as trustworthy. Once we think we’re on solid ground with someone, it’s more likely we will go all in and become vulnerable.
So, imagine spending your life with someone who you believe to be trustworthy, to find out they had a secret life. Not only is there shock and disbelief, but the very ground you’ve been standing on for most of your life shifts.
I remember my first experience of an earthquake (Meckering; 6.5 magnitude; 1968). When the earth trembled, I was terrified and confused. It shattered my reality. THE EARTH SHOULD NOT MOVE.
When the “earth” of a relationship undergoes the same stress, we are not only faced with a shaken reality, but it also triggers a complete re-writing of our memories. We begin to ask: what was true and what was tainted by the lie?
With that comes a sense of bereavement because our identity has been stolen. How can we be who and what we think we are, if things weren’t as we thought them to be?
That’s a pretty massive deal - messing with another person’s sense of identity!
Trust in Society
This got me thinking with a broader lens about the basic moral code that underpins human society — ideas such as valuing human life, not stealing from each other, and not lying to each other. Those basic tenets may have seemed to grow from religious contexts, but they are so much more than a superimposed doctrine.
I mean if we can’t trust, respect, and protect each other, what’s left? Was it Thomas Hobbes who said “without trust, society cannot exist?”
According to the science…
It seems we’re caught in an intriguing bind. We need to trust, but we can’t be trustworthy. So how can we keep even the most basic social contract intact with our propensity to deceive?
And secret lives… well in the end, they certainly don’t just impact the secret holder. They erode a little bit more of the social fabric.
It makes me wonder if our human purpose should really be to interrogate the nature and value of honesty? Maybe search for ways we can get better at it?
Or would people find all that truthfulness just too boring?
