You know you've been writing too much about relationships, when dating agencies start befriending you on twitter! Nonetheless, after making my last post a discussion of the bright side of rebound relationships, I will not yet withdraw myself from the topic, but give it one more go by writing this post about the effects of being in secret romantic relationships; which turn out to be quite negative...
Few people fully appreciate the psychological cost of secrets, although psychologists for a while now have been able to demonstrate that
"being a keeper of any type of important personal secret is detrimental to well-being".
One simple reason for this negative effect of secret keeping is that it hinders you from living important parts of who you are. Important secrets also tend to take up an increasing portion of the secret keepers thoughts, since by attempting to actively suppress thoughts regarding the secret, these exact thoughts actually get summoned into the secret keepers mind. As an illustration, just try this experiment: Don't think of a pink elephant!. You get the point.
So, psychologists know that secrets are often harmful, and as Anita Kelly reported in a 2002 monograph, the most frequently kept secrets usually surround romantic relationships (where secret keeping is mostly motivated by fears of social disapproval). Hence it comes as somewhat of a surprise that only recently psychologists have gone onto investigating whether secret romantic relationships also exhibit negative effects, and of what nature these might be.
One study that investigates the influences that a secret relationship has on those participating in it, as well as on the relationship itself, comes via Colorado State University's Justin Lehmiller, who finds that secrecy
"may limit the degree to which partners can become interconnected with and central to each other's lives on a cognitive level, which may harm the overall quality of the involvement.[...] Additionally, keeping one's relationship secret seems to promote a variety of negative emotions that interfere with physical and psychological well-being. To the extent that these emotions are experienced chronically, they could pose a significant health threat to partners in such relationships".
Based on a data driven model, designed to investigate the mechanisms behind negative effects of secret relationships, the study further argues that
"romantic secrecy (a) undermines relational commitment by means of constraining cognitive interdependence (i.e.,by limiting psychological closeness to one's partner) and (b) poses a threat to partners' personal health as a result of generating negative affect (e.g., nervousness and fear)."
This is, of course, not saying that a secret romance can't feel exciting at the outset; indeed, the same mechanism of suppression and intrusion that I mentioned above (here comes the pink elephant again!) might actually make it so. In terms of ongoing relationships, however, the study shows that
"keeping one's relationship secret may indeed have the same detrimental health effects as hiding any other important aspect of the self."
And given it's adverse effect on commitment and the reality that commitment is one of the main drivers of successful relationships, it is clear that secret keeping in a relationship is also going to spell bad news for the relationship itself.
Main Reference:
Lehmiller, J. J. (2009-11-01) Secret Romantic Relationships: Consequences for Personal and Relational Well-Being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(11), 1452-1466. DOI: 10.1177/0146167209342594
