Why Privacy Matters

The difference between privacy and secrecy is that the roots of secrecy are so often shame, fear and worry about what others will think, say or do when they learn our truth. It was logical and understandable for us to decide, as children, that being secretive was safer, because it often was as children. It was the smart thing to be and do. So we get to both honor that and find a new way forward as adults, a way of living that includes more radical honesty, less shame, and intentional decisions about what to keep boundaried as sacred privacy.

I’d like to start with a quote from Rilke:

“The point of partnership is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good partnership is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust.”

So beautiful.

I love to think of my partners as the guardians of my solitude. As folks who want the best for me, as I want for them, and who recognize that privacy is a vital part of health and wholeness, that privacy builds intimacy, and trust.

Privacy is a sacred and beautiful thing.

I call it sacred privacy because it’s about your autonomy, which is something I worked for many years to know, honor and embrace, coming from deep codependent thought habits. My autonomy is sacred to me, and privacy is a key part of that autonomy.

Privacy is about knowing your truth and deciding what you do and don’t want to share, in a way that honors your wants and needs.

As opposed to secrecy, which like codependency, is externally focused, privacy, meanwhile, is internally focused. It’s you deciding for yourself what you want to share and is not anyone’s business but your own—boundaried privacy.

Privacy is important because we need that space to recharge, to get to know ourselves and have solitude. Private time for introspection and self reflection is vital and gives us the chance, the time and space to know who we are in relation to no one but ourselves. That’s the huge shift from codependency. In codependency, we are used to thinking of ourselves in relation to everyone around us. Private time allows us to ask ourselves: who am I when the only one observing me is me? It gives us the chance to see ourselves when we are not performing our identity for anyone else.

So much of codependency is about performing our identity with the hope of getting approval from others. Privacy and private time give us a break from that external pressure to get to know ourselves and to attend to ourselves, for ourselves, on our own, which can also be a challenging thing to embrace when we don’t know ourselves after a lifetime of codependent thinking. When we’re used to relating to ourselves through the lens of our childhood roles as adults—the fixer, martyr, savior, saint, helper—when you’re alone with you you get to see how you relate to yourself and the world when your only focus is you.

To protect our privacy, we get to set boundaries in our relationships.

Before we can do that, we have to believe the thought that having privacy in our relationships is a good and healthy thing and doesn’t mean you don’t love your partners, children, parents, friends, it’s not that you aren’t connected. It just means your journal is yours, your conversations with your friends or therapist are yours—unless you want to share them. Privacy is a choice and it’s a choice you get to actively make and keep making—whereas secret keeping, because it’s driven by shame and fear, takes away our agency.

And setting those boundaries, particularly when we live with others, is so important, especially within the context of our codependent habit of giving our time, energy and privacy away in service of other people liking and approving of us.

Privacy is particularly important for us because without a private life, we have the tendency to merge with the people we love.

To get enmeshed and to take on their everything as our own, and to forget who we are in the process. I mean, how many times have you thought “I totally lost myself in that relationship.” I know I have. I’ve talked about it here before: Top 5 Codependent Dating Challenges. This is a thing we do. We chameleon and shapeshift and show up as someone we think other people want us to be instead of who we are. We lose that thread of connection with ourselves, and having a private life is how you maintain that connection with self, how you find yourself again and how you reestablish healthy boundaries that serve you and thus, all your relationships.

This is vital for us because at the core of our codependent habits is a lack of individuation, of remembering who we are under our role identity from childhood. Because codependency comes from the core wound of not-enoughness, of not believing we are worthy unless everyone around us agrees that we are, and is often formed in enmeshed family systems with codependent caretakers, as children our identity was often deeply enmeshed with those of our closest people: our parents/family, our religious community, our friends.

Later in life, if we don’t pause to individuate, to learn who we are and what we individually want and need, we enmesh with our lovers and partners. And individuating while in a partnership can bring up a lot of feelings for all involved.

Often one partner protests this move towards individuating and setting boundaries around privacy, and may present as angry, needy or annoyed at the changes, but at the core of it is often a deep fear of abandonment.

So why bother? Because on the other side of stepping into your autonomy, of remembering who you are when you’re not just in codependent service of your relationships, there is a lot of happiness and joy to be found, and your relationship can grow to be a healthier one, a more interdependent one based in mutuality, not in being consumed by and with one another.

The other benefit of developing a robust private life in a romantic or intimate relationship is a more fulfilling sex life. Makes sense if you think about it. When we can see our partners as their own people, not someone we are merged with, there is more room for attraction to grow because we can see them as a full person, as someone who is not us.

I know that may sound weird but I hear this all the time from clients: “we feel more like housemates or siblings at this point in our marriage. I know too much about them to feel turned on by them.” A client the other day goes “it’s not sexy to see him take his clothes off because he’s always walking around naked, there’s no allure to it…” Now, I’m not throwing shade on being naked, I mean, that’s silly. My point is, what you see everyday loses its novelty, so… maybe you bring a little va-va-va-voooom back into le bedroom by putting a robe on it, figuratively but also very much literally, knowwhatimean?

Let’s go through some examples because those are always so darn helpful, and I’m going to use the context of an intimate partnership here, and let’s just pretend there isn’t a global pandemic, just for ease of saying things like “hang out with friends at a bar”… and these are just some thoughts, individual results may vary:

• Each member of the relationship has their own friends outside of the relationship who they have regular phone/video dates with, text regularly, hang out with on their own (masked and outside of course) and sometimes they all hangout together; they have individual hobbies and passions too, which are just theirs

• One partner is in a book club that is just theirs

• She spends every wednesday night in the ceramics studio, while her girlfriend watches their kids

• He takes swimming lessons at the local Y every morning on the early side while his partner walks the dog and talks with their BFF

• One partner goes away on camping trips while the other goes on a writers retreat, and they don’t talk on the phone every day/night because they are fully present where they are, with their own private activities

• This time apart is balanced by time together doing things they mutually enjoy, not just couching it every weekend out of unintentional habit

Taking this time to explore what you’re individually interested in is so grounding, rewarding and important, and trusting that your partner(s) are taking time for themselves for themselves is a beautiful gift to give them.

So what should you make sure to share? Those things that would negatively affect your partner if you didn’t share it: like things that might impact their health or finances, your shared children/pet/home, their relationship with you, and most importantly, those things that would impact their ability to make an informed decision.

For example:

• If you’re spending your own money on your hobby, that can be private. If you spend half your joint savings on the latest Beanie Babies trend… that’s something you’re gonna wanna share.

• If you have the hots for your calligraphy teacher, that’s totally your business. If you’re making out with her on a pile of parchment after class… that’s something to share.

• If your partner believes you’re mutually monogamous and you’re looking on Tinder, Grinder, Lex or whatever… okay approaching a grey area my darling… and for suresies the second you swipe right and start a convo—stop. Convo time.

• If you had sex with half of the Park Slope Food Coop the year before you met your current date that is 100% just your business. If you haven’t had STI testing since then… that’s gonna be your dates’ biz for sure.

• If your kid told you they’re dreaming of running away to join the circus, then that’s something you can keep private. But if your 6 year old’s bags are packed and they’re ready to go, the taxi’s waiting, he’s blowing his horn, you’re gonna wanna go get their other parent, post haste.

My focus in relationships is radical honesty, truthfulness over secrecy, in a boundaried way that feels healthy for me.

If a date or partner were to ask me about something private, I would either answer honestly, or let them know that that is private or that I’m in process around it, I’m integrating it, and will share about it when I’m ready to. And if something feels shameful or scary to share, that is when I gently lovingly but firmly encourage myself to share it as a way to shed that shame and to broaden and expand my somatic and nervous system capacity to stay grounded and regulated in myself.

While keeping some things, like bathroom moments—those are 10000% private moments, even if I’m just up in there rewatching Schitt’s Creek for the 40000th time while doing a face mask, hair mask, etc in an epsom bath—that’s my private experience, not for sharing. My journal? Private. My conversations with my ride or die besties? Private. My work with my spiritual teachers? Private, until I’ve processed it for myself and then I’d love to share it—on my time, when I’m ready. I don’t have to share all of it, just the part that deepens our intimacy, love and trust, the parts that help the other person to know me, who I am and what’s going on in my life and my growth.

And I don’t share private things to try to get someone to love me or like me, to try to manipulate them to share with me, to create false bonds or to force connection where there otherwise isn’t one.

And I keep the secrets of those I love when I’m asked to, as long as there is no risk of harm in keeping that secret.

So what do you do if you feel threatened by your partner having a private life or vice versa, when your partner or person is jealous of your friend-time, monitors your calendar or phone or otherwise isn’t down with you having a private life?

Let’s bring in our old pal attachment styles here to understand this a bit. If we, or our loved one, function from anxious attachment, we may think that setting boundaries around privacy is a problem, that it’s a sign of a lack of trust because from anxious attachment we think it’s All In Or Nothin. Insecure attachment and all-or-nothing black/white thinking are going steady for sure.

So an anxiously attached person might confuse privacy and secrecy.

Whichever side you’re on, a loving conversation about the difference, a firm boundary and a reminder that privacy is about building trust and care, that it’s sacred and to be honored in a loving relationship may be helpful, along with assuring that person that you’re not trying to abandon them, you’re taking care of yourself, which fills your cup so you can give to them from your emotional overflow.

And if we or our beloveds are avoidantly attached, we/they may lean towards playing the old cards too close to the vest, and may think that sharing things is a problem because intimacy scares us. So the anxiously attached person may keep things private that would lead to more love if shared in a safe relationship container.

When we are in a relationship with someone who has insecure attachment they may see privacy as a threat.

That doesn’t mean don’t honor your privacy. Just be aware of the response you might get. And remind yourself that that can shift over time in a relationship.

So some helpful questions to ask yourself are:

• What do you make it mean if your partner is requesting privacy?

• Are you making it mean they don’t love you?

• Do you catastrophize if your partner says this is just for me, this is just mine?

And you can ask your partners these questions too, so you can meet each other with love, care and can give one another the reassurance and support that builds the foundation for reciprocity and growth.

Regardless of what’s beneath the surface, you get to honor your own and your partner’s sacred right to privacy. You get to set mutually loving boundaries about what you want to share and what you don’t. And if your partner insists on going through your phone or reading your journal then you get to ask yourself if this is a relationship you still want to be in—if it’s truly serving you.

I’d like to close with that Rilke quote – it’s so powerful:

“The point of partnership is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good partnership is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust.”

Thank you for taking the time to read Feminist Wellness. I’m excited to be here and to help you take back your health!

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