Secrets

I was thinking about how norms around “keeping secrets” are both 1) not super clear and 2) can hurt people a lot of misunderstood, which I thought made for a perfect intersect for me to share my expectations publicly.

I like to operate in a system where every person has one person to be their confidant. Usually this is a romantic partner, but it could also be a best friend or similar. If it is your best friend, I do expect that means you don’t also tell your partner. If you are seriously dating someone, I will assume they are your confidant unless corrected. I think this is good for the soul - to be able to share things and use another mind to help you figure out how you feel about things.

If I say I'm going to keep something a secret, by default, with no other rules or stipulations, I promise to not tell anyone or allude to it + give people enough info to figure it out, with the exception of my confidant. I also promise to make the confidant promise not to share it with anyone else.

This may mean that If i start dating someone else seriously after promising to keep the secret, that it is told to the new person as well, so >1 person knows.

I may reveal the fact that I am not revealing something, if that on its own is not enough to make more deductions about the content. I will try not to but sometimes my face is too readable.

This is only in the case that the person telling me the secret does not have their own relationship, either not through me, or through me but close / strong, with my confidant.

If the person telling me the secret has their own relationship with my confidant, then I will ask specifically “what is ok for me to share with X?” If I don’t ask this (i.e. i forgot?) then I won’t share anything.

Symmetrically, If I tell you a secret, I am fine with you sharing it with your confidant and no one else, and asking that person to not tell others, if I do not have a relationship with them. If I do have a relationship with them, I will try to specify what is and is not ok to share with them.

You can ask for extra security on the secret (e.g. no telling partner, no letting people know that a secret even exists ) and I will honor that, 100%, it's just not the default expectation .

In general, nothing that I observe / experience is by default a secret unless someone asks for it to be, though if I think there would be even a 10% chance of serious and undeserved consequences for something getting out, and my reveal would be the thing to ‘let it out’, then I will anonymize or not share to anyone except confidant.

Exception: the subject didn’t get a chance to talk to me to ask for something to stay on the DL, like if they passed out, didn’t know I saw, etc. I will keep it secret until I get a chance to talk to them.

I am not currently being bound by any NDAs . If this changes I will delete this line

I know other people have different norms around this and I encourage you to formalize and post your own!