When Secrets Hurt Your Relationship

I use to love hearing from my friends that they had this 'secret' they had to tell me when I was growing up as a teenager. Couldn't tell anyone, and I had to keep it to myself. I was really good at that a lot. My friends and family always confided in me about everything, and I was the one that kept the secrets within. As long as they wanted, I was that person. We all have secrets we all keep from the one's we love. What ever reason we have or keep secrets these days, most of us do it to protect the ones we love the most. I know I do for a lot of reasons, and with good intentions. But when does it come time to know where to draw the line between right and wrong with a secret? Where does one know where to decide that secret should be broken? For myself, I feel that secret would be broken if that person would intentionally would harm him/herself obviously. I would seek the advice of another adult or counsel. If that person had told me their secret,and I had told someone else, I have to deal with the pain and consequences. But when it comes to little other secrets, where to draw the line depends upon yourself and the person whom had told you the secret. For myself, too many people up in my life telling me secrets these days, and not knowing whom to believe these days. I have a tendency of not sharing my thoughts, feelings, and emotions with friends and therefore ,they are kept to myself. When friends confide in me, they know I won't go beyond their respect to break the rules.

But when other friends start talking about other friends to me, it becomes a whole other world to me. It becomes a completely different line of secrets, and I don't know if I like even hearing half of what I like anymore. When I feel that the friends trust is being betrayed or another friend is hurting another friend, I can't watch it anymore. I feel by that point, the friend who is clueless, must know what is going on. Where do I draw a line with the secret by now? One doesn't want to disrespect both friendships. At the same time, one can only handle so much secrets and lies on top of it. For myself these days, I have enough to handle as it is in my personal every day life. I surely don't want to be involved in the everyday life of what goes on behind my back of my friends. Yet I hear the secrets and stories all the time. It had gone to a point, it was built up, and I couldn't take it anymore. That one true friend, who had always had my back no matter what, didn't deserve what his other friend was doing behind his back. Secrets hurt for me when I ended up telling what I knew. Never did I realize in the end, it would wind up back in my face, much worse. Though I did nothing wrong, I probably should have kept my mouth shut and closed the whole time. In the end, I had wished the one friend had never came to me and told me the secrets to begin with. Now, I feel I'm the bad person here, knowing I had opened my mouth in the end. So where does one know when NOT to say something when it comes to secrets? No one knows for sure. As for some, like myself, I can say, that one must be extremely careful when confronting a friend about a secret and what should be told. I never imagined that secrets would live out to be so much as a drama type lifestyle and drag me down with it. I don't want it to begin with, and though I am always there for my friends, the secrets hold the truth. It hurts, deep down.

To hold something inside yourself, and then tell another soul is probably the worst thing possible to do. If it involves one hurting themselves, or hurting another, then that would be suitable for spilling the beans. Otherwise, these days, I believe that secrets just plain right hurt. For someone who has lived with holding secrets a lot of her life, I never encountered that trying to help someone out would back fire in my face and make me look like the bad person. I didn't do anything wrong, and yet I wanted to help both friends out. In the end, I hurt myself, and my two friends whom met the world to me. Trying to mend what is broken is tough. I should know, I am dealing with nowadays. I didn't lie to either of these friends, and did nothing wrong. However the one friend is betrayed by the other friend. Because the secrets were kept by me, the middle person, I was stuck between the two. Secrets can be good and sometimes can be bad. As teenagers, I thought they were the greatest thing growing up. These days in my late thirties, I don't think they are so great anymore. It seems I only tend to hold it in for so long before I want to burst out or explode. I am very good with secrets, but secrets tend to hurt me more than keep me safe.