I was just reading that we are as sick as our secrets.  I thought I would make a list of some as an experiment, as a purge, and maybe other people will relate to some of them.  Here are the ones I remember right now, off the top of my head.  When I got together with my A, I had a suspicion about three weeks in that she was an alcoholic.  I even said out loud, "God, please don't let her be an alcoholic."  I left it at that and never confronted her or talked to anyone else about it.  My family just fell in love with my charming A, so when it became clear there were real problems with alcoholism and all that goes with it (impulse control, lying, sneaking, rages and abusive language, etc) I consciously kept it from my family.  Even though -- or perhaps especially because -- my own family was familiar with alcoholism and drug addiction.  After a bad bout, when people would ask me what was wrong, I would lie and say "nothing." People would ask "Are you having trouble with R?" and I would lie and say no, everything was great.  I would even lie to doctors -- when we were trying to figure things out about other aspects of her health and avoid talking in detail about the alcoholic behavior -- she lied, too, even saying she didn't drink or smoke pot, which she did.  I went along with it.  When I would buy wine for a dinner or something special for a friend or get together (like expensive single malt scotch) it would be gone in days.  I lied to myself that it was a problem.  When there was a really bad night and my A was dry drunk and yelling and swearing, calling me names, etc -- I went in the bedroom and locked the door and she kicked the door and broke it off of the jamb.  I had family coming the next day and hurriedly fixed it so no one could tell, as I knew that kind of violence should be a deal breaker.  I am ashamed that I spent less and less time with my son (I was divorced) to hide our problems, even moving far away, among other reasons, so he and my family wouldn't see how bad things were.   When he was here I would give into her unreasonable demands (again, she was in the program but dry drunk at this point) so that she wouldn't get upset and scare my son. I kept it from him and everyone else that she hit me.  She kept insisting it was a slap to my hands, and eventually I let myself believe I was making too much out of it, and so, as I said, I lied to everyone and my son about it.  We always think we are sparing our kids, but they know and hate it all  -- he wanted to visit less and less.  She would break things in rage that she knew were important to me, or break things and/or throw things around and storm away, expecting me to clean up the mess.  She would act like touching me was repulsive.  Whenever we did talk as a couple about my A's behavior we always couched it in terms of "seizures" or "low blood sugar" even though she treated no one else this way and could stop her episodes in mid-tirade if someone called her on the phone or showed up at the door.  Sometimes I would tell my mom we had "an argument" but avoid saying that it involved me choosing to sit and listen silently while she called me every name in the book, attacked my character and my deepest beliefs about myself, told me I was fat, worthless, selfish, controlling (I am none of those things).  I felt so many secrets strangling me, but felt our love and counseling could get us through it.  I plan to bring up these secrets at a face to face meeting, too, but felt the strong impulse to get them out into the world to help me, and anyone who can identify with them.