Episode: 124 Privacy vs. Secrecy: Where Do Healthy Relationships Draw the Line?

s Sara Khaki

People make informed decisions that lead to living a life without regret. This is Sara Khaki and Shawna Woods from Atlanta Divorce Law Group, and this is the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast.

s Sara Khaki

Welcome to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. I’m attorney Sara Khaki and I’m joined by our managing partner, Shawna Woods. Today we’re discussing privacy versus secrecy and how that plays out in relationships and partnership and hopefully how it doesn’t play out to lead you to divorce or the breakdown or relationship or even friendships. So let’s do what you and I love to do, definitions.

s Shawna Woods

Hey.

s Sara Khaki

How, what is the difference? How would you define them? What’s difference between privacy versus secrecy? Or is it the same thing?

s Shawna Woods

No, I don’t think it’s the same thing. There are a lot of examples that you give where I think one’s one or one’s another, but that’s going to be different for every relationship. Right. Because every relationship has different boundaries on what they think privacy is or secrecy is. So for me, the question really should be, is this thing that I’m keeping to myself, would it hurt the relationship? Would it cause them reasonably distrust me or put them in fear for their safety or make them think I need some kind of assistance or I’m not being safe myself. So it really is the question of if they found out this person I’m in a relationship with, whether it’s a marriage or whether it’s a close friendship, if they found out I was keeping this from them, would this damage the relationship?

s Sara Khaki

versus privacy.

s Shawna Woods

Versus privacy is those things we reasonably get to keep into our inner thoughts or we reasonably get to just keep to ourselves, that if the other person found out about it, it wouldn’t put them in fear of distrusting you or having the relationship break apart over it. But it’s also something that you just don’t wish to discuss with other people.

s Sara Khaki

Yeah, I agree with you on that. A lot of it is, first of all, I don’t think there’s a black and white line.

s Shawna Woods

No.

s Sara Khaki

And I think there’s a lot of gray. And I think it requires a lot of conversation between a couple to find out where that line is for them. But privacy is definitely a matter of something I’m keeping for myself and that secrecy is something I’m keeping away from you. actually going out of my way to by omission or action to keep this away from you. And like you talked about examples, I thinking of examples of it, privacy is more like journey, thoughts you’re having to yourself. And to me, like I’m obviously married in a happy marriage. And one thing I have learned in a happy marriage is that you have to have some individuality. And I think that’s what privacy provides, you know, right? Is that still your sense of autonomy?

s Shawna Woods

Exactly.

s Sara Khaki

your sense of individuality. And sometimes that requires for you to nurse and foster these fleeting thoughts for yourself till you come to an understanding from within how you feel about something before you need to express it. Even to your most dearest, most loving, most safest person in your life, right? Like every fleeting thought might not need an audience.

s Shawna Woods

I mean, I’m not just supposed to stream consciousness all my thoughts all the time.

s Sara Khaki

I not a fair relationship with me, Shauna. I advise some discretion.

s Shawna Woods

discretion could be wise. Now I agree with you, especially with the journaling or working through. There’s a good saying that says don’t believe everything you think. And you have to work through, do I really think those or was that a thought that was passing through or a feeling that was passing through? And you don’t necessarily need to share all those with your

s Sara Khaki

Exactly.

s Sara Khaki

Some of it is a waste of your partner’s time, their mental energy, their mental health. I mean, I remember one of my dearest, bestest friends, Davina, she’s my go-to person when I’m having like a tiff with a sham. And I remember calling her once and just telling her like all these things that I was so mad with a sham about. as a good girlfriend, she’s like, oh my God, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, you’re right, you’re right.

And then I kept going and I kept going. She’s like, hold on, hold on, back up. Have you been sharing all of this with Hisham? All these thoughts, all this like unfiltered, you know, stream of consciousness? I was like, yeah, like every day, he won’t listen. She said, first you’ve assaulted his ears, now you’ve assaulted my ears. Your husband is not your diary in your journal. I need you to get a diary.

I need you to stop journaling. And then let’s decide what needs to impact your husband’s daily, like, mental health by this bombardment of feelings. And I have to tell you, it’s one of the best marriage advices I got because I do think we don’t know. We’re just taught, have an honest marriage, have an open marriage, have a relationship, partnership. You should be able to tell each other everything. Yes, sure. That’s all true.

But when you have two busy lives, right, or just two people who are trying to accomplish their own individual goals and then their combined joint goal, not every fleeting thought and idea needs to be expressed. It can cause a lot of inefficiencies and a lot of time suck because, you know, you and I both are very similar. We have a lot of ideas. I could have a great idea today.

Tomorrow I might be on to the next one. But my husband, because he’s a loving husband, or a partner that is a loving partner, they want to be a champion for your ideas. They want to be a good shoulder for your hurt. I might be upset about something today. I might be over it by tomorrow, because I have something else I have to go and take care of. Should I take my husband down every rabbit hole of feeling and thought down that passed with me? No. No.

s Shawna Woods

Yes.

s Sara Khaki

nor should he do the same to me. So I think there’s a privacy, a healthy level of privacy. You ask for some, I need some alone time. I need some self-reflection time. I need to go on a walk by myself. I may need to go on a quick trip by myself with my friends, right? I may need to journal things. I may need to talk to a friend about certain things that I’m not ready yet to put together all the pieces.

to present to you as an idea, right? Secrecy, you’re deleting text messages, you’re hiding money, you’re hiding information.

s Shawna Woods

You’re hiding your phone, you’re hiding your whatever it is, you’re your emotions, you’re hiding what you’re feeling about something or someone, or you’re hiding a friendship that you don’t want them to know about. So hiding here is the key. You are actively keeping them from whatever it is. Your thought processes, we should keep those primarily to ourselves until we’re ready to share them with someone.

Think about all the things that go through your mind every single moment of every single day and then think about someone else telling you that. Right. The over-embar- just it’s so much coming in at you all at once. Not only that, as far as the thought processes and the journaling, I have to tell you there’s some times when I will say something and I go, I don’t mean that at all. Right?

It just, it was a thought that I thought, let me explore that for a minute, but you can’t unsay it once it’s said, and it may affect somebody else, and then they think that’s really where you are in your head. So privacy for me is an essential part of a relationship. That means I am protecting you from the weirdness that may go on in my head.

Or I’m protecting me from the weirdness that you’re going to think about me from all the things that may go on. Secrecy is the thing that will kill the marriage. Privacy is the thing that will save it.

s Sara Khaki

Absolutely. I do. And I think that if you’re, for every marriage, that may look different. Like, what is privacy versus secrecy, right? And there could be marriages where a spouse says, I should be able to go through your text messages and it shouldn’t be a problem. We should be able to go through each other’s journals. It shouldn’t be a problem. You’re cringing even at me saying that. I do. Right? And I think that’s the…

That’s your line. That’s your line of privacy that you want to have autonomy over. And for somebody else, it might be, yeah, what’s the big deal?

s Shawna Woods

Let’s talk about that. Text messages, I think that if you have a partner who wants to see your text messages, there’s some level of mistrust there that’s, and that was my crinch. There’s some level of mistrust there that already exists. Now, I think it would be really weird if you’re like, hey, can I use your phone? And they quickly hide it or they quickly try to delete things. That’s the red flag. That, let’s open the phone up and let’s share and figure out what we’re doing.

But if you’re asking somebody, let me see your text messages, what trust already broke down is my question.

s Sara Khaki

I agree. I think that’s where I think you have that privacy versus secrecy. If you need to, if each couple needs to, you know, report back, here’s my phone, here’s your phone, let’s do an audit, we have some serious trust issues. Yes. But where I think that people have different black and whites or different, the different gray, you have couples that very much feel that my cell phone is my private business.

my bank account is my private business, my social media is my private business, and so forth and so on. And you have couples that share all of that, not in a way of auditing, it’s just, it’s a life efficiency thing, right? Like you were describing, like I gotta grab your phone, because I gotta get this number out of there. I gotta get on your account because,

I need this account information to give to this extracurricular activity. so it’s not, for us, it’s not a privacy issue. It’s just part of the marriage. But there’s very much marriages where that is a line for them. And I think that’s, it’s important to know going into a marriage, where is that line? Now, I will say this. This is not based on any sociological study or anything. We’re not experts.

Other than the law, we’re not experts. I think that marriages that started earlier on, as, because know, Sham and I have been together since we were pretty much kids. These things, they’re so much more blurry, like his phone, my phone, right? His account, my account, because we built all this together. All of it was formed together and built together. Half of my accounts, he started them up for me, right? And vice versa.

Then you have couples that met at a more established point in their lives. And I think at that point, you guard your autonomy and your privacy. It’s a lot more dear to your heart. And it’s a lot more to give up.

s Shawna Woods

It’s also not natural. And I can speak from that from being in older relationships or from when you’ve had a more developed adulthood and you’re in and into relationships. It’s that it’s just not natural for you to grab somebody else’s laptop or grab somebody else’s phone or have them do that. So it may feel a little jarring when it happens. So you may have to develop, where is my comfort level with this? How is that?

For me, if you’re in a relationship and you shouldn’t have to close a laptop or hide anything away, but I do think, especially with finances, it can be a little different. You want to, at least in my expectation, would want to develop a discretionary fund, and I know we’ve talked about this before. A splurge account.

s Sara Khaki

This verge account

s Shawna Woods

A splurge account that says, you don’t get to look on what I’m… And I don’t want to know what you’re doing with your splurge account because we just don’t need to agree—

s Sara Khaki

That’s where I think is one of the healthiest way to have financial privacy without financial infidelity, financial secrecy. We’ve talked about this before. It’s such a beautiful boundary to say, this is your splurge account. That’s the budget in there. This is mine. That’s the budget in there. And we do as we please with it without having to justify any of it. And then, of course, the trust has to play its role in there.

s Shawna Woods

Absolutely. I think for me the strongest line would be the journaling, right? Because the journal is so personal. It’s where you can just write random thoughts at any moment during the day. I think peeking in there or interrupting that kind of flow is a huge violation of privacy, but it may not be for the person next door. So to your point, you’ve got to decide together what the privacy versus secrecy lines are.

and they may not be as clear as you think they are.

s Sara Khaki

I think the gut check would be, if my spouse found out about this, would it devastate them? Would it devastate me? Would it be something I would want to hide from them?

And I think when we’re talking about going through your personal thoughts and finding out how you feel about them, what I hear is somebody trying to take their initial gut reaction—what I always refer to as your animal instinct—and raise it to a level of human awareness.

Because no matter how much we grow or become self-aware, our knee-jerk reaction to something our partner says might be anger. Maybe you’re cursing them in your head. But once you filter through that initial reaction—whether by journaling, walking, thinking, or talking to a friend—you might reach a different understanding.

And your final response might be compassion.

That private process might allow you to come back and say:
“When you first said that, my initial reaction was that you were a jerk and I hated you for it. But now I’ve processed it and I see it differently.”

I think that’s a beautiful thing—to share the journey, even if you needed privacy to go through it.

I think secrecy often stems from conflict avoidance. It’s avoiding tough conversations, avoiding the work that partnership requires. And secrecy eventually breaks the foundation of the relationship, while privacy allows you to grow into a healthier version of yourself before engaging in the conversation.

s Shawna Woods

That’s so beautifully said.

Another part of that journey may also be deciding to let something go. After reflection, you may realize it wasn’t important enough to even bring up. Maybe you were emotional that day or influenced by something else.

You worked through it privately, and now you’ve decided not to share it because it might unnecessarily hurt their feelings or create tension that doesn’t need to exist.

So you ask yourself:
Is this going to make my marriage stronger, or is it something I can simply let go?

s Sara Khaki

That’s such a good point.

No matter how much someone loves you, every person only has so much bandwidth—so much audience they can give you. You have to use discretion about how much of that emotional bandwidth you’re asking them to carry while they’re also trying to pursue their own goals and support the goals of the partnership.

s Sara Khaki

Thanks for listening to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. If you’d like to learn more, go to atlantadivorcelawgroup.com/resources.