When Hide Wakes Up Trust: The Beginning of The End of Great Relationships

Hiding.

It’s a funny word.

It basically means to keep out of sight, conceal from the view or notice of others.

Have you ever concealed something from sight from your partner or spouse?

Probably-sometime-most-likely-you-have.

If you are on this planet in a human body, you’ve been prone to hiding something from your partner.

I know.

It’s weird.

And I’m not talking about hiding a birthday present.

I’m talking about hiding something you did you’d just as soon not have them know about.

You know, like a purchase.

Or checking out some guy’s abs from work while on Facebook.

Or checking out your ex’s bikini pics in Cancun.

Yeah.

That kind of hiding.

You know this whole subject of hiding has kind of got the cooties connected with it, doesn’t it?

You do this thing. You hide a receipt. You scroll through some co-workers’ pics on FB. You make a purchase that you should have discussed with your partner.

And all the way home you have this one-way conversation with yourself as to whether you should tell your partner.

That’s the Cootie's Drive Home.

Couples begin to hide things in their relationships and it starts out as fun and games until someone gets hurt.

And here’s something you may not have been educated on.

You can hide the action or thing.

But you cannot hide your mental image pictures.

See, you can “hide” these “I gotta have these shoes” in with your other 16 pairs of shoes and he will never know.

That’s like sophisticated hiding.

Or if you’re a guy you can buy that $450 driver (golf club) and stick it in your golf bag and yeah, your wife’s not going to know.

You can hide the thing.

But you cannot hide your mental image pictures.

See, they forgot to teach us way back in Grade School about these dang pictures. You think no one sees them.

Well, they may not see them directly in full 3D color, but they pick up the radiation coming off those bad boys.

Radiation?

Yes.

Those puppies leak.

And the real kicker is those pictures get filed in your mind under,

“Things I’m not telling my partner or spouse.”

“Jessica, you didn’t go over budget when you were at Neiman-Marcus did you?” her husband Paul calls out from the living room while watching TV.

Jessica while in the kitchen stops midair while putting away the dishes.

Immediately up come the pictures of her hiding those Jimmy Choos’ amongst her other shoes in her closet.

Leakage.

See what happens here?

Jessica, while looking at these pictures thinks for a billionth of a second,

“Shit!” “What do I say to Paul?”

“I don’t think so honey!” she calls back.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

That “I don’t think so honey” is leaking radiation.

Paul squirms ever-so-slightly on the couch as he watches TV.

See, that file of pictures Jessica took are classified, right?

That’s a crazy-ass file, let me tell you.

And it’s very, very exact.

When Jessica went over budget at Neiman-Marcus the fraternity of cells in her entire nervous system woke up and said, “Holy shit, she bought the fucking shoes too.”

Welcome to the Cooties Drive Home.

Same with the golf club.

Every time Jessica goes out to the garage to do a load of laundry, Paul wonders if she will see that club.

Like that club will somehow be glowing like some luminescent green Glo-Stick.

So, how does this action of concealing from sight, leak?

It leaks an emotion called Hiding.

True.

There is an emotion called Hiding.

You see it best in teens coming in late from curfew.

And see, you know they are leaking radiation bad.

Because hiding is this whole PR production one does to spin a good enough story to your partner or spouse that you didn’t do something that you actually did, which is causing you to spin the PR story you are now telling them.

You may need to read that again.

And the other crazy-ass killer aspect of this is when someone is spinning their story, you fucking know there’s a radiation leak.

You do!

But you can’t quite put your finger on it.

It’s like a gas leak in your kitchen.

“Honey, do you smell gas?”

“I can’t tell...I don’t think so.”

You go in the kitchen because you know.

You did smell gas.

But it has appeared to go away.

But damn, you are fucking sure you smelled gas.

And your teen?

I mean you love your kid more than you love America.

And he or she looks at you innocently like it’s all good.

Teens are fucking really good at hiding, right?

And damn if your internal Geiger counter isn’t going off in your head.

That needle wasn’t even moving until he or she started talking.

And then it’s just pointed right at your son.

And you look him dead in the eye like you’re Clint Eastwood from Dirty Harry.

But see, your teen knows he’ll get the Clint questions on his Cootie's Drive home.

So, he’s already prepped himself.

You look at him.

You ask.

He looks at you and tells you all is good.

And for a billionth of a second that needle moves slightly.

Radi-fucking-ation.

But damn. It wasn’t enough needle movement.

You ask a few more probing questions and your mental Geiger counter moves slightly and stops.

Fuck.

You know there’s a leak.

But there is no real proof.

So, you let him go.

Hiding.

Weird. Ass. Shit.

Hiding is Only the Tip of the Iceberg

Hiding the deed is not near as bad as the fact that a being feels he or she needs to conceal from your view something they did or were involved in.

See?

This is buried deep inside all of us to one extent or another.

Possibly as you work on your own self-improvement or your own religious beliefs you strive to do better. Of course.

This is the natural inclination of any ethical being.

But let’s be honest.

You still are subject to that hyperlink into your ancestry that echoes this tiny distant voice that says, “Do not let them know where you hid those doubloons.”

If you accept some responsibility for the urge to hide, no matter whence it came, you will do so much better.

I find so many couples that won't take responsibility for what they're hiding from their partner.

Like guys wearing camouflage while sitting in a tree to shoot deer.

The reason that deer is moving slowly is he smells the gas too.

The fact is this:

Down through the ages the DNA chains on telling the truth have become so tangled up, that when confronted with a moment of truth, people, like that deer, do not feel safe.

They do not know why.

They just know they do not feel safe.

So, when you don’t feel safe, you default to something that is safe.

When you’re on a roller-coaster ride and although strapped in, when it gets too scary, you grab your seat or your partner or both, and hold on harder.

Feeling unsafe always defaults to something you will do or say that makes you feel like you will somehow prevent danger.

It’s why your teen says what he or she says.

It’s why your partner or spouse says something to deflect the radiation leak.

That moment of truth is too much moment.

Think about that.

The moment of truth is too much moment.

Why didn’t Jessica just walk into the living room and tell her hubby,

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I did go over budget!”

The moment of truth is too much moment.

Why can’t the teen say he was making out with Jenna who you met at the school dance?  

That moment of truth is too much moment.

I mean really, this is what leads many to go finally confess to their minister.

It is not so much the deed, as the fact that they cannot continually hold onto that much spiritual radioactivity in their soul.

Hence the expression, “I have to get this off my chest.”

Exactly.

Beings were not made to carry that shit.

They need to tell their girlfriend over a drink.

They need to tell their buddy over a beer.

They want to tell their minister.

And when they feel they cannot unload that radioactive piece of emotional DNA, they hide it like an Easter egg or drink or take some kind of drug to numb up the hidden deed.

Now, in the everyday coaching or counseling I do, the real danger is the person being oblivious to the effects of hiding.

And hiding is just the tip of the iceberg.

Let’s back this train up a bit.

The first thing to confront is this:

A being steals a moment.

That’s the theft.

Jessica hid some friggin’ shoes.

That’s not the theft. She bought those shoes.

What did she steal from Paul?

See?

What Jessica did was steal the truth from Paul.

She withheld it.

Somewhere along the line the penny has to drop that you cannot act independently when you are in a committed relationship.

The weird-ass part of this is you think you can.

You cannot even go buy a gallon of ice cream and put it in the freezer and not have some conversation about it good, bad, or indifferent.

YOUR ACTIONS ARE ALSO THE ACTIONS OF YOUR PARTNER.

You stay late at work. And there’s no hanky-panky. You don’t call.

There’s going to be radiation.

You go out with the girls and you end up going to a male strip bar “just for fun” and you mention you had a great time to your hubby but not the dollar bills you were stuffing in the netherlands.

There’s going to be radiation.

And when you do something that you hide or conceal from your partner, there is a tear in the fabric of the relationship.

This is why hiding does not work.

Paul’s Geiger counter went off and that’s why he asked Jessica the question.

See?

If you don’t think this is true, then right now kindly go tell your spouse or partner something you have recently withheld from them.

Did I just hear you gulp?

Right.

Does just the thought of you going to your partner and telling her that you spent fifteen minutes checking out her best friend’s yoga videos on Facebook make you squirm like a kindergartener?

I told you.

Hiding is weird-ass shit.

See, now that moment in time you are withholding, creates a vacuum.

Stay with me on this.

Ever seen your spouse or partner with something obviously on their mind but they are not talking about it?

What do you do?

You inquire.

“Honey, you have something on your mind you want to talk about?”

She says, “No, I’m fine.”

Vacuum.

Pulls you right in.

The parent asks the teen. Paul asks his wife. Jessica, having put a load of wash in, cuddles up next to her hubby on the living room couch and asks,

“Honey, you didn’t you buy another golf club when we agreed to wait until we see what our tax bill is, did you?”

Gulp.

Fucking Glo-Stick Golf Club Leakage.

Listen:

Withholding is an action of pulling back.

And you know when Paul senses it and Jessica senses it they are in fact picking up the actual stolen moment.

They do not know the specifics.

But there is a tremor in the force.

You know this too.

I’m writing this so you can be smarter and confront that you do in fact perceive these things.

And so does your partner or spouse.

You are fooling yourself if you think they don’t.

The difference with what I do is I get couples to cough up the fur ball.

Because if you do not remedy these moments that are hidden, they will accumulate and become not just a fissure in the foundation of your relationship, but will lead to a continental divide you can barely save from ruin.

Hide Has a Dance Partner

Now, with all this talk about hiding, I said this was just the tip of the iceberg.

Hiding in and of itself is really just an aberration. If you just confront it for what it is, it’s a piece of sixth-grader craziness at best.

And it’s not the final poisoned tipped dart in a once really happy relationship.

No.

See Hide has a dance partner.

Her name is Trust.

Trust is usually calm and serene, you know?

I mean you trust your partner, right?

You don’t even have to think about it.

But when Trust gets alerted, when Trust no longer feels comfortable getting onto the dance floor, it means she smells gas.

And quite frankly she goes from Trust to I Don’t Trust pretty damn fast.

And understand the bedrock, the very foundation of any relationship is Trust.

Yet Trust has this rocky history.

You know this from your own experience.

Trust has extended herself out there since the day she learned what it meant to trust.

And first in line before Trust is,

“I believe.”

When your dad took your training wheels off your bike you had to believe. You had to trust your Dad.

Because somewhere right up to that exact point you were in a condition of not quite sure you could believe.

So, when you hide, you wake up Trust.

And it’s truly unsettling.

It’s why when there’s a disturbance in the Force, it is so disturbing.

You’re causing a fissure in the bedrock.

And when Trust gets the idea something is amiss, her “I’m not sure I can believe you soundtrack,” starts playing in the background.

Paul has that track playing.

You have that track playing with your teen.

And when this soundtrack starts playing in the background, the entire fabric of the relationship, starts to unravel.

Strand by strand.

That’s what I meant about couples being oblivious.

It’s not until the whole tapestry comes crashing down and one finds out there’s been an affair or you’ve both gone rogue on your finances do you see the divide widening.  

And when couples begin to not trust their partner, I don’t care how “great the sex is” or how much they “love each other” or how they “love to spend time at their lake home,” all of that...all of it goes up in smoke when trust leaves the building.

And the horrible part of this is sometimes one of the parties has a bigger investment in keeping the conceal game going rather than just saying,

“Twas I who took money from the college fund to handle a gambling debt.”

Yeah, hiding is fairly easy.

We learned it early on by stuffing a cheat sheet up our sleeves when preparing for that chemistry test in school.

But revealing the Hide?

Yeah.

Life soon teaches you that if you want to play Hide n’ Seek, that when you get to the seek part, it takes some cojones.

That moment of truth I spoke of earlier is ironically the moment that ends up defining the individual.

The Moment That Defines Your Future

Possibly as you are reading this you thought of instances where you had your own hidden moments. Or you discovered one from your partner or spouse.

Or both.

These moments can be filed under “Silly,” “That was stupid of me,” “I won’t do that again,” and a hundred others.

And you can get through the Jimmy Choos and Callaway golf club incidents and carry on.

But understand.

It is never the shoes or the golf club.

It is the uneasiness that can seep into a relationship where Trust feels like they’re not sure they want to dance.

And when you or your partner begin to hesitate, or tiny little doubts begin to creep in, these are the strands in the tapestry coming unwoven.

And like many of us, we see the fray in the carpet or the tiny tear in the curtain and say it’s insignificant.

“You have to look really close to see the tear.”

Yes. This is often true.

But tears eventually rip.

You know this as well.

And when couples come to me, I’m usually wearing the Rip in Charge Hat.

And boy the language about the rip in the relationship can be volcanic.

But see, if you rewind the video tape you will find the moments where each of these tears occurred.

Seemingly innocuous.

Seemingly.

That is why these moments define your future.

They are not innocuous at all.

When you hide, you tear.

Trust wakes up, startled.

When you spin a story, you create suspicion.

Trust is putting her makeup on because something is up.

You will find that Hide and Trust do not do well on the dance floor.

No matter what music is playing.

So, before anyone gets hurt consider this:

If you each sat down and just told each other these moments you would gain back what?

Truth.

Integrity.

Restoration of trust like you will not believe.

And if you love your partner for real and you both do it, you will find that it’s almost too funny to believe that most of your hidden shit is sixth-grader nonsense that has snowballed into thinking about separation or divorce.

If you’ve ever had that thought with your partner, then you know what I’m talking about.

Those thoughts are the red traffic light that says to stop.

Stop before it becomes a continental divide.

I mean, have you ever run a red light in the middle of the night thinking you got away with it and three days later you get a ticket in the mail for $267.00?

I told you.

Hiding is weird-ass shit.

I offer a free 30 minute consultation over the phone to discuss any issues you have that you feel might be blocking your personal or business success.

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