Gail Saltz - Anatomy of a secret life: the psychology of living a lie

[ Contents ]

To Lenny, with whom I share my secrets and love

It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.

D. W. Winnicott

[ Acknowledgments ]

Thank you to my husband, Len, and to my daughters, Emily, Kimberly, and Tori, who are my inspiration, my touchstone, my greatest joy. Lenny, without your support, encouragement, and pride in what I do it would not be possible for me to do it at all. You amaze me every day with your strength, your patience, your empathy, and your ability to give us so much love. Thank you to our amazing daughters, who are so smart, so fun, and so caring. Special thanks for tolerating times when I was at work on this book. I am one lucky mom!

A special thank-you to Marly Rusoff, who never ceases to amaze me with her energy, creativity, warmth, humor, and ability to spot just whats needed. You made this a better book. Thank you to Sandi Mendelson, who has continued to support me with her smart and savvy guidance.

I would like to thank my editor, Amy Hertz, for her vision, her wonderful critiques and additions, which made this a much better book. Thank you as well to Marc Haeringer for his thoughtful insights and careful attention, which also greatly improved this book. Thanks to Nate Brown for his efficient handling of all matters in such a kind and polite manner. Big thanks to all the staff at Doubleday Broadway and Morgan Road Books for their great enthusiasm and support of this project.

Last, but perhaps most important, thank you to all the patients and people who have reached out to me in my office, and via e-mail, letter, or phone call, to share their secrets with me in the hopes of understanding the secrets they keep from themselves. Thank you for trusting me to be your guide on the road to self-understanding.

[ Authors Note ]

Over the last thirteen years I have seen many patients in practice in addition to interacting with people via my work in the media. I have drawn on their stories in order to illustrate the experiences I describe in this book. Their stories are composites, and I have invented all the names and identifying data used in the stories. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

[ 1 THE SECRET LIFE ]

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

from The Shadow (193054)

A woman in the doctors waiting room natters on about the weather, oblivious to the fact that no ones really listening. Maybe shes a chatterbox. Or maybe shes terminally ill.

A man stands in line at the bank, frowning to himself. Maybe hes overdrawn. Or maybe when he gets home hell tell his wife he no longer loves her.

A child on the swing in the playground wears long sleeves, though its the height of summer. Maybe her mother is overprotective. Or maybe her mother beats her black-and-blue.

The husband in bed turns to face you. He may be thinking only of you. Or he may be thinking only of your closest friend.

The man on the treadmill next to yours at the gym runs as fast as he can, turning his iPods volume up as high as it will go. Maybe he cant lose those last five pounds. Or maybe he cant get rid of the image of that woman he met at the bar, and cant drown out her screams.

And you: Maybe you know yourself. Or maybe you dont.

We all have secrets; we live and breathe them every day. We may not know what one anothers secrets are, but we know theyre there. Theyre always there, invisible presences in everyones lives, the subtext beneath the text, the almost uttered but then swallowed sentence, the cryptic, fleeting expression on someones face. Humankinds basic needs are food, water, and shelter, but secrets arent too far down the list of essentials. They provide a safe haven that allows us the freedom to explore who we are, to establish an identity that is uniquely our own. But even the deepest secrets can also be shared; they are the currency of close relationships, the coin of exclusivity, sometimes the key to love itself.

Under some circumstances, however, secrets can also be profound sources of shame, guilt, anxiety, despair. While were always surprised when we learn about the misbehavior or strange habits and predilections of friends or public figures, in another way we arent surprised at all. Weve grown to expect that such behavior will crop up occasionally, that unusual personality traits will be routinely revealed. And we expect it not only because weve seen it in other friends or public figures (and we certainly have), but because we have been known to behave in this manner sometimes, too, and because we also possess well-concealed traits and habits and interests that would be considered strange by other people.

Secrets can cause people to behave in ways that seem entirely out of characterto go to any desperate length to conceal what simply must be hidden, at all costs. They can require so much vigilance and attentiveness and sheer time that they begin to dominate an entire life, in effect becoming that persons life. Everything that is unrelated to the secret becomes secondary and irrelevant and is cast off. A kind of fearsometimes, nearly a paranoiasets in at the mere idea of the secret being unearthed. What if someone finds out I stole that money? What if my employer reads my blog and sees that Im not just an ordinary nanny, but that I also have an active sex life and have taken Xstasy? What if my best friend finds out I hate her husband? What if my most private self is revealed? Then everything will be lost. The possibility of discovery is played out again and again like a sickening loop of film.

Many secret lives remain sub-rosa for surprisingly long periods of time. Relationships are kept hidden through sheer ingenuity, and dark acts stay in perpetual darkness. The serial killer learns to live with secrecy as his constant companion; so does the illicit lover, or the tax cheat, or the thief. The balance of power between secret and secret-keeper is constantly being negotiated. If we can control our own secrets, making sure they occupy the place we want them to, then our lives can seem manageable. But when our secrets start to control usand far too often they dothen a normal life clicks over into something else: a secret life.

When that happens, everything changes. Suddenly we find ourselves forced to give up any remaining vestiges of openness and casualness and instead submit full-time to the exacting rules that the secret life inevitably demands.

And the reason we are forced to submit in this way is that the secrets we keep to ourselves are only half the story. The other half is composed of the secrets we keep from ourselves. These are the ones that have been forced underground over time, in some instances since early childhood. They are the ones that we simply dont want to know about, so embarrassed or enraged would we feel if we were forced to confront them head-on. Glimmers of those feelings occasionally surface without our understanding why; we may overreact to seemingly trivial events, or have a strong response to a particular person, or be disturbed by a dream weve dreamed without really knowing why. In these moments, weve somehow entered the cordoned-off territory of the secret from the self, and while we may not understand this has happened, we know enough to tighten up security even further.

But without access to these inner secrets, we cant really know ourselves at all. Instead, were forced to spend our lives in a state of continual vagueness, ignorant of the reasons behind our own actions and perceptions.