https://www.sandylingo.com/i-know-the-secret-to-a-long-marriage-no-lie/

“There must be complete honesty between spouses,” said no married woman ever.

I think I believed this commandment for a brief time after I married.  At least until Rick shoved the wedding cake into my mouth.  I made a decision in that moment to keep secrets, and there was no turning back.

I didn’t tell him that I intended to eat three more pieces of the cake.

I didn’t tell him I was tired and wanted to go to the honeymoon suite to just sleep.

I didn’t tell him I was wearing ballet shoes under my wedding dress because it really did bother me that he wasn’t taller.

Or how I thought it was kind of hilarious and downright ironic that his mother fell on her butt after slipping on the rice that was thrown.  Oh, and that I’d forgot to take my pill the night before.

And I’ve gotten more circumspect with each passing year. 46 years.

People ask, “What is the secret of a long marriage?”

Deception.

After all these years of marriage, he still doesn’t have security clearance; there are some secrets he’s just not allowed to know.

There are secrets better not shared.  My weight, for instance. Which has not changed since my wedding day, so I say.

How much I tip my hairdresser.  How that dent got in his car.

What happened to the rest of the pie.

My occasional party smoking.

That “this old thing” is a dress I just cut the tags off five minutes ago.

The dream I had that featured Tom Jones, a hand puppet, and a pirate with a peg leg.

I reserve the right to redact swaths of information that are unflattering to me:

“What do you have in that big ass tote bag?” he asks.
“Books from the library and the 14 I bought at The Booksellers on Fountain Square.

That I cried my way out of a traffic ticket on our 45^th anniversary and that I may have told the cop it was our 50^th.

There are habits I keep under wraps.  That sometimes I brush my teeth while on the toilet.  That I shave my chin in the shower.  That sometimes there’s a booger I feel compelled to retrieve.  That I clean out the refrigerator, orally.

My stupidity.  The time I left a case of beer in the bottom of the shopping cart. The fifty-dollar bill I threw away with the trash.  The time I locked my keys in the car with the car running.

My ignorance about the most common things.  How electricity works. Where South Dakota and Arkansas are.  How to deposit money into the bank.

And what decadent things happen in his bed when he’s out of town?  He has no idea.

He has this $534 pillow to cup his precious pate.  Each night he arranges it with the zipper facing right so he doesn’t “wear it unevenly.”  Wonder what the prince would say if he saw how I wad it up to the size of a tangerine and stick it behind the small of my back while I’m writing.

He has no idea I lie in that bed, wearing my pajamas, all day, with the ceiling fan on what he calls “tornado” speed, pleasuring myself with MSNBC and the New York Times.  Or what I bring into the bed:  toenail clippers, Doritos, my unwashed feet.

All of this in an effort to remain on a pedestal, even if I am tottering a bit.  (Who put me on this pedestal?  There’s the rub:  maybe me.)

It’s bad enough that I have to keep my secrets from him.  I learned long ago that I can’t tell him other people’s secrets, either.  He’s not a gossip, really.  He wouldn’t betray a confidence for the upper hand or to lubricate the conversation.  He’s a pelican with a deep dish of a mouth where all those secrets lay, unswallowed.   When he opens his mouth, they just fall out!

So I can’t tell him about someone’s surprise party unless I hide his phone and lock him in the house until right before they yell “Surprise!”  I can’t tell him who’s had a face lift.  Who kissed her old boyfriend at the class reunion. What the neighbors paid for their house.  Whose diamonds are fake. Whose orgasms are fake.

There are vast quantities of secrets I won’t share.  But he knows. He knows when I am discouraged about my writing,  when I am missing my dad, when I am regretting an argument, when I am worried about my blood sugar, when I think I’m losing my marbles.

He knows that I think about the time we are apart, the time we have left together, the time when there will be just one person in the bed.  He knows the secrets that are important.

Maybe, just maybe, his secret is that he really does know all of my secrets, but he doesn’t care.  Maybe he thinks the real deal is good enough.