Secrets in a relationship?

I currently have a bachelors in psychology and I am only five classes away from my masters in professional counseling. After the completion of my masters I plan to go for my PhD in family, marriage, and relationship counseling and then pursue a career in this field. Needless to say  I think alot about my relationship as well as the relationships of others that confide in me the woes of their companionships as well as the victories. I have been involved in many relationships throughout my life and I have found that besides issues  involving money the number one reason alot of relationships end, either romantic or plutonic is due to secrets. When I have surveyed friends, family, acquaintances about this issue they are all so quick to say “well what if you are planning a vacation for the person or have a surprise gift for them”. I want to make it clear that there is a big difference between a surprise and a SECRET. A surprise birthday party, or vacation to Las Vegas, or that dress or boat they have always wanted is totally different from a secret involving having an affair, spending more money than what you and your partner agreed was reasonable, or anything else that you know that if your partner knew would cause them to flip their lid.

So my question is, is it ever O.K. to have a secret from your partner? Some say it depends on what it is, my answer to that is “does it matter?” An associate of mine said well “my wife does not know that I still smoke from time to time, I don’t think that is sucha big deal”. To most of us that may not seem so bad right?? Well what if this person turns up to have some form of cancer due to excessive smoking and the wife says to the doctor “this is impossible! HE HASN’T SMOKED IN OVER 20 YEARS!!” Then the doctor turns to the wife and says “no ma’am this man has the lungs of a 70 year old SMOKER!” What begun as a simple “secret” is now the death of him and possibly his marriage. Now this wife is about to lose her spouse to a disease that she thought would be the LAST culprit she would have suspected. Can you imagine how hurt she would be and how betrayed she would feel? How selfish he would seem? Do you think she would even be willing to really be in his corner and help him through therapy and chemo and everything else seeing that he clearly has been lying to her this entire time? The issue with keeping secrets is that in order to keep a secret you have to lie at some point. Now you havent only kept a secret from your partner but you have also lied to them and THIS is where the real trust starts to go down hill.

In order to keep a secret you HAVE to lie at some point, then you have to lie again to keep the lie you told making it total out to be: A secret and two lies, and it just snow balls and snow balls until you don’t remember the last lie you told and you get CAUGHT!! Then you spend the rest of your life trying to fix the lies you told and tell the truth all the way down to having to spill the secret you tried to keep and the damage done most times than not is unrepairable. The person that was lied to or the secret was kept from may take years to trust you again or may never again. Imagine if this is your spouse of 10-20 years or just a serious relationship. Is it really worth it? I know we are all human and things happen that sometimes we had no intentions of happeing or things going as far as they went but if you can, when you FIRST hear that voice or sound in your head telling you “I don’t think is a good idea” you should try your hardest to knock it off right then and there!!! If not it could cost you way more than you were willing to pay.