Cincinnati's Channel 12 suggest you tell all your secrets to heal all your health woes. Good luck with that.
For those keeping score of which secret is worse to keep, online gaming addiction has leaped ahead of online porning addiction. At least that is the scoring system proposed by Dr. Jerald Block, who claims (via the Boston Globe via Escapist Magazine):
"People feel a lot of shame around computer games. Whereas, it's socially acceptable to have a porn problem. ...As a society, we understand that porn is something people do, and you can see a psychiatrist and get treated for it," he said. "But gaming is hard to describe to anyone else. So these people can't explain their situation to friends."
Apparently, tthe need to keep a secret all depends on whether or not you can explain (i.e., justify) yourself. And, in sync, the desire to pry out the secret -- the level of emotion one takes in its revealing -- depends, too, on its justifiability.
There are times when no matter how much you wish to avoid it, you have to share secrets. For example, say you're the U.S. government and the CIA is running secret operations in Holland. You have to let the Dutch know or bigger problems can result. On the other hand, say you have a secret intelligence assessment of Al-Quaeda. Do you really have to let everyone take a peek, even the nudnik who left the orange covered report (so it wouldn't be noticed?) on a train?
Here's (another) revelation of women that will torture men. Ladies tell their secrets to each other, in public and right in front of their oblivious gents.
While the symbols and signals of distressed distaffers vary by economic class and culture, a longstanding form is Nushu, a secret language developed in the 1400s by Chinese women. For some women it is a way to share her criticism of a male-dominated culture and see what connections she can make. For others, it is a way to share "...their hopes, their joys and their many sorrows."
What you never want to be said of a secret (particularly when it is the infidelity that serves as the fulcrum of your novel) is that it's revelation and the events surrounding it, " flutters on the edge of melodrama." Alas -- and woe is me -- that is part of the Cleveland Plain Dealer review of Andrew Sean Greer's book The Story of a Marriage, a tale set against the "turbulence" of the 1950s.
Instead, you want real life drama, like a 71 year old woman torn like a real life Gossip Girl over what her family will say when they find out that for five years she has been having twice-a-week sex (sorry, the love affair of her life) with a younger man ... who hasn't yet delivered on the promise to leave his wife.
What secret does Smindzora really share about himself/herself when he posts "secrets"acquisitioned from LiveJournal accompanied by music from The Frey?
As with most people's secrets, what s/he says is secret is likely only an attempt at misdirection from the secrets that will reduce his power.
Some day soon enough you will want that brain cell back. It will be too late. You will have wasted it brain power on knowing secrets of no interest. What did it do to your life to rattle the cerebellum with the secret wedding and maybe-pregnancy of Beyonce or that Minne Driver kept first her pregnancy secret and then the father and, probably soon enough, her wedding.
What actually is the term for a secret your don't care about? And is there some way to build up immunity to them?
The good news for Pumla Mkatali arrived too late. Two years may not be much sand within the hourglass of eternity, but it makes a big difference in a human lifetime.
A Pretoria judge ruled that she had the right to keep secrets from her husband. So, if she didn't want to tell him about the SMS (text message) she received late one night then she didn't have to share it ... no matter what their normal marital agreement was. That good news also arrived too late and in bad circumstances for her high ranking government official husband, David Linley Sonkosi. Perhaps if he had known the law he would not have beaten her to death because she wouldn't tell him who she got the message from or what it was about.
Marketing is the massage. Again. Always claim to have knowledge of the unknown, because it is so much cooler to say you are using secret Urawaza rather than claim you're relying on Heloise's hints. To one up your friends, family or enemies even further, claim your life hacks are stolen from the "Ito Family Dinner Table" (second post) and hope your audience isn't familiar with Japanese television ... or the internet.
Perhaps a little secret (that you don't confess until you realize it made you dumber) is buying the "cheat notes" for Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Perhaps a big secret to not reveal is how your government helped undermine another. But when the little secrets are revealed the big secrets unravel and when the big secret is undone the little secrets spill out as well. The best example of that may be the Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick administration and personal life, the threads of which are coming ever more undone with the towel slipping further down every day on big secrets and little secrets.